I don’t know what got me thinking of this, but my fellow old farts will remember these things…
Ring me.
Get off the line!
Dial the number.
Hang up.
I wonder how puzzling these phrases are to younger folks? The phones of the mid-20th century were so different from what we have now, when having a “land line” is starting to be considered quaint.
These phrases and others — Drop a dime. Switchhook. Party lines. Ma Bell. — are all hangers-on from the time when phones had rotary dials, handsets, and (good lord!) even wires. We didn’t own our phones; we rented them from the phone company. And the dial tone wasn’t a tone; it was a buzz.
They’re from a day when you could make prank calls (“Is your refrigerator running?”) because there wasn’t such a thing as Caller ID. There was no Caller ID, no voice mail … hell, there weren’t even any answering machines. You dialed the number, and someone “picked up” or they didn’t, and if they did, the answering party had no idea who’d be on the other end of the line.
The other end of the line. Like I said. Wires.
Calls to out-of-town relatives were organized around the time of day. Long distance calls were expensive, and the farther away the relation was, the more expensive the call was going to be. Rates dropped in the evening hours, so it was tantamount to high treason to call grandma before 7PM.
For those of us who grew up under more draconian parenting techniques, there was the “phone lock,” a little cylindrical plug that was locked into the finger-hole for “1”, thus preventing anyone from dialing out (you could still receive calls). But clever teenagers quickly learned that even with the phone locked, you could still dial out by rapidly tapping on the switchhook (so called because, originally, a phone had a lever with an actual hook on it; you hung the phone’s handset on the hook, and gravity pulled it down and tripped the switch to break the connection; it’s also why you “hang up” the phone when you end a call.). Tap the switchhook four times, and it was like dialing the number “4”. Tap it six times; number “6”. With a series of taps and pauses, you could “dial” a whole phone number.
In my neighborhood, we had “POPCORN”. If you dialed the numbers associated with the letters — 767-2676 — you’d reach an automated Time-of-Day service. “At the tone, the time will be .. eight … forty … three … and ten seconds … [beep]. At the tone, the time will be ….”
And exchanges. How many young musicians really understand the title of the tune “PEnnsylvania 6-5000”? The exchange — a geographical area serviced by a single telephone prefix — began with the first two letters of the area’s name. I grew up in a neighborhood called Glenwood, and our number was GLenwood 6-3148. When the phone system dropped the letters and our phone number became just a bland, prosaic 456-3148, a little bit of magic went out of the world.
I suppose that someday these phrases will fade from the vernacular, joining others like “You sound like a broken record” and “We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.” I only hope they’re replaced with new phrases that reflect our current lives and habits, that these new phrases seep into the souls of today’s youth, and provide them with a hit off the old nostalgia pipe when they reach their elder years.
For now, though, I think I’ll ring off …
k
Thanks for ‘splaining the geographical exchanges. We didn’t have that in Juneau (at least not that I am aware of). I heard Tom Cruise offer a phone number that began with “KL5” in the movie Risky Business. It has bothered me ever since. Why would someone use letters in a phone NUMBER, let alone two different letters that represent the same digit…5?! Maddening. I can sleep now.
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Then my work here is done. ‘Nite.
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Fun post.
When I tell younger people we have a land line I’m usually met with an arched eyebrow and a “Really??”
Not quaint. Archaic. Like – “Cave Painting” archaic.
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I get that “bless your heart” look.
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I get *rollseyes*
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