I remember when my mom got one of these pop-up phone directories back in the early ’60s, and I thought it was the absolute height of modern technology.
This little gadget held the phone numbers of all my neighborhood pals, which felt very important when your social calendar consisted mostly of, “Wanna come out and play?”
A few years later, it was promoted to the far more important job of holding the numbers of my girlfriends. This was long before cell phones, contact lists, caller ID, texting, or the ability to instantly destroy your dignity with one badly timed message.
Back then, romance required actual effort. You had to remember—or at least look up—the number, work up the nerve to call, and then survive the terrifying possibility that her father would answer the phone with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a prison warden.
I still have that little directory stored away somewhere. Every now and then, now that I’m single again, I’m tempted to dig it out and call a few of those old girlfriends.
But alas, I assume some of them may have changed their numbers by now.
Also their names.
And addresses.
And husbands.
And possibly their status among the living.
Still, there’s something charming about that little thing. It’s a tiny mechanical time capsule from an era when “keeping in touch” meant a handwritten phone list instead of 4,000 contacts in your phone—3,950 of whom you wouldn’t actually call if civilization depended on it.
Oh, my folks had one of these as well! I had completely forgotten about it until your post. My dad mounted it on a hook in the wall next to the phone so it was always handy, and it could be easily removed to add a new number.
However, we kids were NOT allowed to add any numbers to this device.
Waiting until 10:00PM when the long distance rate dropped to ONLY $6/hour so you could call a BBS on the other side of the country and get the latest USENET posts.
I did this once in high school with a girl (after some time of getting up the nerve to call). She picked up the phone; I asked her out, and she demurred. The next day the whole school was abuzz with the news that this dorky freshman with the same first name as me had tried to ask out the girl in question. I kept my mouth shut at that point and never corrected the case of mistaken identity.
This reminded me of my early days online, using America Online. At that time (1994 or 1995), AOL’s monthly fee gave you just five hours of online time in a month, with extra charges if you went over that.
My ritual for reading and replying to emails was:
Log onto AOL just long enough to download new emails, and then log off.
Read the emails locally while offline, and compose replies, as well as write any needed new emails.
Log back on to upload the replies, and log back off again.
AOL went to an unlimited subscription plan in '96, which put an end to that ritual (though it yielded the new issue of not being able to log in, because their dial-in nodes were full).
That era was also when people couldn’t even get a dial-tone from Ma Bell because their switches were maxed out. Their network went from a relatively low utilization rate to 100% in a short period of time.
I think it was earlier than that. I started on AOL in '91 when I got my Mac Classic. I had been using its predecessor, QuantumLink, on my C64 up to that time. I had used Compuserve – very sparingly – as its per-hour charges were outrageous by comparison at that time. Given that AOL had exponential growth in those first three years, I think they went flat-unlimited by 1994. I could be wrong…
OT … modems. I remember when almost no one had one, to everybody having one to access this new thing called the internet, to just “My computer is online all the time.”
I meant “modem” in the sense of the device you had to hook up to your computer, connect it to a phone line, and listen to a godawful squawking that sounded like a ham radio being violated by a garbage disposal.
Minivans. I rember when Chrysler came out with them in the mid 1980s, and then other manufacturers followed suit. Does anyone make them anymore? I think they’ve been replaced with SUVs.
Chrysler still sells the most popular one (the Pacifica) and Honda and Toyota have their own as well. I think it depends on your age, and your circumstances as to whether you see them a lot or not.
My GF is very practical when it comes to vehicles, and she often notes how much more useful her Honda Odyssey minivan is than my Toyota 4Runner SUV. In many ways, she has a point.
With all the seats installed, her minivan seats seven people. My SUV only seats five. With her seats folded down in back and middle seats removed, the resulting cargo space is enormous. She can put a bicycle (or three) upright in the back, whereas my large SUV has much less vertical clearance in the cargo space. (I can maybe get one in sideways.) Or she can pull multiple sheets of plywood in the back. Or a mattress and convert it to campervan mode.
My 4Runner does have better off-road capability and towing capacity. And it looks cooler. Minivans may be much more practical, but they have a reputation for being dorky soccer-mom vehicles. And because many Americans view themselves as rugged off-road wilderness types, I’m sure that’s why the sale of SUVs has eclipsed those of minivans.
