Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown…
I will let you google the rest of the song if you wish. It wasn’t really the subject I had planned on reporting.
It is February 5, 2025, today, and my birthday. About 3:15 am, I turned 77! I will never be 76 again and not sure I want to be. Now, if we were talking 50, I would be up for that, if possible! I have been trying to think of the advantages of being 77 and couldn’t come up with a lot, but it definitely beats NOT being 77! I have seen many changes in those years, and let’s talk about one of them: the telephone.
Growing up in Athens, Vermont, population 130, two churches, a one-room schoolhouse teaching grades 1-8 until 1954 when it was reduced to grades 1-6, one teacher until about 1965 when a new school was built and the six classes split between two teachers (three grades each), and this school was closed in the 1990s and children bused to a neighboring town. Our telephone was black, round dial, and sat on a table, one phone for the whole house, and shared with a good share of the town of Athens because it was a “party-line.”
It was rumored that a couple of “ladies” took on the self-appointed job of monitoring the lines for any suspicious activity and seeing to it that all the proper places (or people) were reported to. Their communicational skills would put the Secret Service to shame today.
I think I was about 15 and moved to Cambridgeport, Vermont (neighbor village), that we had a one-party line but still the same black phone with dial. The number had 10 digits as today but you needed only the last 4 to call anyone in your area. Long distance required all ten but was rarely used as it “cost more” to call long distance. If you had people that you needed to use long distance for, you made arrangements with them to call once a week/month, and they called you on the off week/month.
Then, over the years, phones came in different colors and could be hung on the wall. Before cordless phones came into being, you would have 40 feet of cord so you could give the phone to someone in another room or get you to your favorite chair or just get away from the family to talk. Cordless was a fabulous invention (and still is for me with a “landline”).
Cell phones have become so sophisticated today that you (in most cases) don’t need a landline, computer, TV, radio, and with Google, definitely not a set of encyclopedias! I still like my landline, but with all the “robo” calls, it gets annoying, especially now that the spam callers add names and local numbers that show up on my Caller ID. I usually don’t answer any that I don’t know but lately have answered a few that have a name.
The other day Leon Forester from a Derby Line number called. I picked up the phone and quite loudly said, “Hi, Leon, is that you?” Response: Is this Nancy Olney?” Me: “Leon is that you?” They hung up!! Leon probably wanted to know if I got my new Medicare card; that’s what most everyone wants to know. So you don’t have to call and ask. No, I haven’t.
Thankfully, up to this point, only one number from Massachusetts has continually called my cell phone. I won’t give my number to you in this writing in hopes that I can keep it secret from all the nuisance calls that I get on my “landline.” At least for a few more days.
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