Comments on: The Number You Have Reached

By: Donna Pointkouski

Donna Pointkouski — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:29:52 +0000

Thanks, everyone!

fM, that’s hysterical. I chose it from a list of telephone quotes because I just love Ambrose Bierce. But, I’m sure it was still in the back of my mind from reading your article, too. Of course, there’s that one-brain theory I mentioned to you, too…

By: footnoteMaven

footnoteMaven — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:43:48 +0000

Not that we think alike, but check out the quote in "A Sign Of The Times." -fM

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:56:09 +0000

You are so right about Caller ID taking all the fun out of answering the phone! I had never thought about it before. And dialing “0″ for Operator when we were kids.. and bored.. trying to get a conversation going. Today’s technology has pretty much killed “Do you have Prince Albert in a can” and “Is your Refrigerator Running?”. Thanks for a great post – I really enjoyed it!

By: Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Heather Wilkinson Rojo — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:24:11 +0000

We still have a big black rotary dial phone next to the computer. When my daughter was little her friends used to try to dial it by pressing the numbers, now they all want to take photos of it and dial home when they visit (she’s in college now!) Several have told me that our phone was one of their best childhood memories! It’s just a phone with a dial and a long black kinky cord!

By: Tracy

Tracy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:37:26 +0000

Though I am a few years younger, I do remember almost everything on that first list. I remember when my grandparents got rid of their rotary phone and got a “new-fangled” push button model, probably in the late 1970s or very early 1980s. My great-uncle, now in his 80s, still has a rotary phone that is hard-wired into his house and it still works. He uses it every couple of weeks to talk to my grandma.

My mom worked for the phone company as an operator in the late 1960s and I’ve always found those stories pretty interesting. Even more interesting is listening to my husband talk about his grandma going to work for Ma Bell as a telephone operator on roller skates!

Amazing how technology has changed.

By: Apple

Apple — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:44:18 +0000

We had a party line well into the 80′s, you couldn’t get a private line in the rural area where we lived. My mother still has a corded phone. Do you remember how you could balance them on your shoulder and talk while you did other things? Because the cord was attached to the phone the phone was never lost in the couch cushions or disappeared under one of the kids beds. We left for school and did not talk on a phone all day long. Long distance calls were rarely made and you’d better have a very good reason for reversing the charges!

Syracuse still does have a time and temp number. Since I still remember it I just called. These days you get a commercial, date, time, temp and forecast. I was startled that the woman’s voice that I expected had been replaced by a man’s.

Fun memories!

By: Greta K.

Greta K. — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:35:33 +0000

OK, it’s finally up (sorry for taking so long): http://gretabog.blogspot.com/2010/03/memory-monday-texas-telephone-call.html (I had to wait until my homework-doing daughter got out of Word to get to my draft post). My brother and his friends loved making prank calls, and I thought they were hilarious. I remember people in the country around Seymour (Texas) having party lines up into the 1960s-70s, and in those years we only had to dial four digits to connect to any other household in Seymour. However, they were actually seven-digit numbers to anyone calling from outside.

By: Sanjay Maharaj

Sanjay Maharaj — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:04:05 +0000

Indeed telephones have come a long way, who would have thought only a few years ago that there would be such a thing called a smartphone which not only lets you make a call but surf the net on the go. But we don’t have to look back to far I would say approx 5-6 years when phone booths were still visible everywhere but not anymore.
Phone booths indeed sound so ancient now. I remember when I was a kid my parents had to call the operator to place an international call .
Even a fax machine technology is now getitng obselete. Telecommunications and the recent innovation behind it has had a tremendous impact in not only our social lives but economic lives as well

By: Miriam Robbins Midkiff

Miriam Robbins Midkiff — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:49:38 +0000

My parents were on a party line until the mid 80′s…maybe even late 80′s. It was after I left home in 1984 for college. This is in Northeast Washington.

I still don’t have caller ID. That’s what the answering machine is for!