When I was a kid, we had a four-line party line that included our house, my grandmother’s, my great-grandmother’s,and my uncle’s house. There were no secrets in our neck of the woods. (Except that my father was a lineman for Southern Bell, so he kept a hand set at our house, so Mom could make a doctor’s appointment without Granny beating down the door wondering what was wrong. She was a nice lady, but nosy as hell.) That was in the middle 1970s.
Since then, my family always had a private line, and these days, everyone over age 11 or so has a cell phone. Except for my crazy uncle. As a family, we have tried to keep him supplied with at least a basic cellular service, but it’s just not worthwhile, since he only turns it on if he wants to reach one of us - not to answer if we just need to confirm his whereabouts and whether he’s still alive. But my uncle is seriously nuts, and we just assume that some day he will die alone, and either the stench or the buzzards will lead someone to the body. I really wish that were hyperbole , incidentally.
I don’t miss the “good old days” of long distance, either. My first real awareness of such an animal was when my siblings and I were spending time with a family friend while my father was in the hospital. From the Williamsons’ house, I could see my aunt’s home across the river, but it was a long distance call to another county back in the seventies. There were a lot of times that summer when I really wanted to talk to Aunt Barbara, but I didn’t feel like I should even ask because of the expense.
I got my first mobile in 1998. It was a birthday present from my uncle and a slightly embarassing one because I had spent the last couple of years mocking people who would take every opportunity to show their cell phone (like placing it conspicuously on the table while eating in a restaurant for instance). It was still pretty much a status symbol in the mid-90s.
As it turned out, that phone proved very useful. A few weeks before I got it, I was actually without a phone for the first time in my life, after breaking up with my then-girlfriend and moving out of her house. I had also recently started working (first job) and my boss told me that I was supposed to be reachable easily. He was very nice about it but the message was clear. A couple of days later, I had a landline and the aforementioned mobile perhaps a month after that. Since my work depended on being able to agree to certain jobs quickly, it was good to have both.
All in all, I was without a phone for about four weeks.
Why would I want to have a bell in my house that anyone in the world could ring? (Quote paraphrased from some Chinese philosopher who I don’t feel like researching)
We had a party line when I was a kid. And the phone was mounted on the wall, so you had to sit there and talk. Rotary dial and everything. My mom finally broke down and shelled out the big bucks to get a private line and that was a very big deal at the time.
My freshman year of college, we didn’t have phones. There was one payphone on each floor. I had to call home, collect. (Do you know what that means, young grasshopper? ) The summer between freshman and sophomore years, the university installed a single wall-mounted phone in every dorm room and issued each of us a touch-tone code to use for long distance. You would get a long distance statement periodically and if you didn’t pay it, they could keep your grades and/or your diploma until you paid up.
Cordless phones became popular toward the end of college, but mostly after, in the early 90s. I also lived without a television for almost two years.
No phone in the late 50s/early 60s in northeastern PA, none for most of 1976 to 1980 and again from 1982 to 1984 in Pittsburgh. During the second two periods, the “emergency procedure” was to call my neighbor. When my dad got hurt in an accident, the city cops sent someone to knock on my door and clue me in.
I’ve also gone long periods without a car or television - and hope to more in the future. Just don’t touch my radio and the universe will be fine.
In the early 80s I had a co-worker who refused to get a home phone. It wasn’t because he couldn’t afford one, he simply did not WANT one.
Unfortunately for him, his job involved tech support and being on call - and the pager they loaned him didn’t reach his house - so the bosses told him to get a phone. He opted to get fired instead.
Yeah - my first apartment after college (1981) I had two phones - both rented from the phone company, and I had to return them when I moved and disconnected the service (and the phone company tried to charge me for not returning one - fortunately they backed off on that one).
The law changed right about then to allow people to own their own phones: seriously, you could NOT do so before. So I bought a cheap phone from Radio Shack or something to use at my next place. It was a corded handset, no receiver / base pair, and to hang it up you had to set it face down on a flat surface. When someone dialed another phone in the house, my extension chirped with every number - I could guess the number they were dialling because it would chirp with every click the other phone (not touch tone) made.
I used to manage a restaurant, pre-cell phone era. One waitress told me she had no phone, so I couldn’t call her to come in unscheduled. Turned out she did. I let her go.
) The summer between freshman and sophomore years, the university installed a single wall-mounted phone in every dorm room and issued each of us a touch-tone code to use for long distance. You would get a long distance statement periodically and if you didn’t pay it, they could keep your grades and/or your diploma until you paid up.