The first telephone number I ever called was 1-7-7. That was my father’s store. We had a party line and sometimes I would listen in just to pass the time.
When I stayed at my grandmother’s, I could just tell the operator that I wanted to talk with Aunt Mae and she would get her on the phone. I didn’t talk long because I had to stand in a chair and talk into the mouthpiece.
When dial phones came to town in about 1952, we had a special film at school to show us how to use them. They were a little intimidating. What if we forgot to wait for the dial tone? And we had to have at least four numbers. To this day I can call little old ladies back home because I remember their “base numbers” from when they were the moms of teenage sons and I was boy crazy.
In the early 1970’s, I got my first “princess phone.” I knew that phones would never get any smaller or any easier to carry around. I got a special ringer on mine that sounded like a cross between a doorbell and the timer on a stove. Delicate. Feminine. DING Ding. DING Ding. DING Ding. But then the timing got off on it so that it went DING. Ding DING. Ding DING. Ding DING. Ding. I’m very musical and it drove. me. beserk!! The phone company sent an old man out to fix the chimes, but he kept shaking his head and looking at the floor and mumbling, “Say whut?”
Friday my new Uniden TRU 8860-2 cordless handsets arrived. I’ve been waiting since May 7. It took 20 hours to charge them up. Right away I noticed a problem. When I pressed the MENU soft key to access the main menu, nothing changed on the LCD. I tried both handsets, same problem. I worked for an hour and then left them overnight.
This morning I got up and removed the printed stickers from both LCD screens.
It doesn’t go DING Ding, but it does play a dirge when certain relatives call and it will monitor my husband’s every move. heh heh
It has a bird or a chicken on the screen and an intercom function and a 100 name phone directory that I will probably fill up with prescription numbers.
I think you can turn it into a dried flower arrangement, extra luggage or a bicycle in an emergency.