Vintage? Already?

     A piece of history hangs on our kitchen wall, and still serves us daily. It's not a cooking utensil, though modern versions of it are used to find recipes, definitions and substitutions for ingredients or how-to instructions for certain culinary techniques.

      Yes, I'm talking about a phone. “Smart” phone being the latter, where you can call up any information you need in the kitchen, including photos of what a dish should look like.

     

Our not-so-smart (but extremely dependable) phone is a wall-mounted rotary dial model that has been there since we built the house, about 35 years. How did it become “vintage” so soon? It harbors no recipes. Those are in books on my kitchen counters You can tell my favorites by the condition of its cover, or the splattered pages within and notes scribbled in the margins telling when it was first prepared, our impressions and suggestions for improvements. (Bet you can't do that on your smarty-pants phone.) If the phone is used during cooking it's to call a neighbor to ask to borrow a missing ingredient, or the fire department if things get out of hand.

Living in a Bowl

      Because we live in a “bowl” surrounded by forested hills, cell phone reception is extremely spotty. I've never gotten reception on my little flip-open cell phone (another borderline vintage item), so it's used just when away from our house. Visitors with more sophisticated phones rarely get reception here either. To get it you must climb one of the surrounding hills and find a clearing – not impossible, but enough trouble to thwart spontaneity.

      Phones in our house are used for just one thing: talking to another person. No camera or photos, no recording, no maps, movies, music or Wikipedia. No Pinterest or FaceBook. Just one-on-one conversations. (Well, unless you call the customer “service” department of some company and get put on terminal hold, usually with horrible music intended to soothe your increasing irritation. But that's another topic..). 

Our phone cooperative had announced it would discontinue rotary-dial service after a given date, but that date has passed and it still works so I hope they've changed their minds. While I sometimes dial with one of our touch-pad phones when I'm in a hurry, then pick up the rotary one to hear better, I will miss the occasional finger-dial when I'm of a mood. There's something calming--almost meditative--about waiting for the dial to settle back in its home position so you can dial the next number. It's akin to taking deep breaths and becoming present in the moment when you stop at a stoplight.   

Privacy

      A home phone is about as close as you can get to a phone booth these days. Remember those? Cell phones wiped them out alarmingly fast. In fact, that's why I had to get a cell phone. I knew where all the pay phones were in town and used them when I needed to get in touch with someone when I was there, but they've all disappeared. The only pay phone remaining is at our public library, but it's had an “Out of Service” sign on it for ages. I'm sure it will disappear any day, as well. Like the Maytag Man, the telephone repair guy must have gotten bored and left town. Where did they go? Is there still a place in the world where things are built to last and to be repaired instead of replaced? If so, I'd like to go there.

      The way some people carry on cell-phone conversations in public, they seem to think they're inside the privacy of the old-fashioned phone booth, or their own homes. They seem as unaware of everyone else as they are their phone constantly tracks their movements. Tracking can be a good thing when you're lost, but unnerving on a routine basis. Does it give people pause who cheat on a spouse or frequent businesses or places they don't want others to know about?

The Good 'ol Simpler Days

      When I was growing up everyone had just three-digit phone numbers, not the ten digits of today. We also had an operator who had to “place” your long-distance calls, or who you dialed in the event of an emergency. It was a small town and the operators knew everyone, of course. They may well have know you had an emergency before you dialed, having smelled the smoke.

      Once, almost a decade after having graduated from high school and moving away, I was making a long-distance call from my grandmother's house in our small town and when I gave the operator the number she said, “Chris, is that you?” She knew it was my grandmother's house and recognized my voice. We had worked together when I was in high school and it was a nice surprise to catch up with her. 

     More recently, when I was with my Mom in that same house and she needed an ambulance early one morning, when I dialed 911 and gave the house number, the emergency operator said, “That's Cathy's house!” She was right and I knew when she said someone would be there immediately, they would be. My Mom had a standing hair appointment later that morning but before I could call to cancel, the hairdresser called me to see what had happened. She'd already heard about the ambulance visit.

      Some of my childhood friends who lived in the country were on party lines where the number of rings determined which house the call was intended for. Naturally, not everyone respected the privacy of others and would sometimes listen in on conversations not intended for them. But then, rare are secrets in a small town anyway.

Homemade Cell Phone

      Being able to use the phone outside can be a problem if you don't have a cell phone, or they don't work

in your area. Spring through fall, we're outside early in the morning, mainly working in the garden. But, there have been times when we also needed to be able to answer calls from businesses my husband contracted with, or people I worked with, especially when coordinating our farmers' market. We had an exterior ringer at one time (as did our nearest neighbor, prompting some confusion) but it had given up the ghost. Our cordless phone didn't work very far from the house, so we fashioned a really long extension cord for our old table-top rotary dial phone and put it inside a metal bowl near the garden fence to ensure we'd hear it ring. It worked like a charm.

Pluses and Minuses

      No question but today's smart phones are handy – sometimes life-saving. For example, they can be more helpful than a paper map when you're traveling and can talk you through a new city or neighborhood and help you find restaurants, hotels and businesses. The ability to take photos or record sounds is truly amazing, as is being able to access important information or trivia in seconds. They also store your most often-used numbers, which makes dialing much easier. You can't do that on a rotary dial phone, but then remembering numbers is a good skill to have, especially when using a phone other than your own.

     A drawback to the proliferation of cell phones and the countless games and apps they hold is fewer people make eye-contact in public. One person--or both--has eyes on the little device. Hence, fewer people converse with each other; they're busy with what or whomever is inside the little device. It can be a comfort for extremely shy people to avoid conversations with strangers at parties by thumbing busily through their phones, but they'll never have a chance for surprisingly memorable conversations that way. Sadly, it's impossible to drive, bike or even walk through a campus, especially between classes, without paying rapt attention since most students are lost into the world of the little screen in their hands. Some step into the street without even looking, trusting someone else is paying attention. Heaven forbid the driver or biker isn't...

Time to Upgrade

     A little research reveals that the rotary dial phone was patented in 1892, though not commonly used until the early 1900s. The touch tone phone was introduced at the 1962 World's Fair. Plastic dials replaced metal ones in the 1950s.

     After over a century, it's time, I guess, for phones to be upgraded, and they are with amazing speed. Soon enough our rotary dial phone will no longer be supported by the phone company - and I'll miss it.