Phones through the years

I'm so very sorry to report (Catholic guilt) that I thought of the topic of this blog in church yesterday. When the person's phone was ringing during the homily. At first I thought it was the church phone.

They used to have one downstairs in the Holy Spirit church hall, right by the sinks. I should know, I did dishes there quite a bit through the years. But the reason a phone ringing in church always give me a chuckle takes me back to when Amy was around eight or ten years old. For some reason we were down in the church hall and I asked her to call her daddy on the phone...not remembering it was a dial one. She came running back saying, "How do you do that?" That made me feel old! I kinda miss rotary phones..

It was a dial phone that looked a lot like this. Though I think it was tan.




Amy had never seen a rotary phone before. So Saturday night in church, while remembering Amy and the phone story, I took a lil walk down memory lane - the phones I have had through my life. (yet I still heard the homily - impressive, no?)

We had the flesh colored dial phone on the kitchen counter at our 202 Crombie house. Dad would leave a list of where he was going to be all week right by that phone. In his distinguished daddy writing. Susi and Cindy had their groovy yellow phone in their yellow bedroom, with yellow shag carpet. You could feel like a cool teen talking on that phone - though it did share the phone number 243-1135, with the fam, no special teen number for the kids.

And downstairs in the laundry room, so Pat B. didn't have to make a mad dash up the stairs each time the phone rang, there was a flesh colored wall phone with an extra long cord - so she could talk and use the Iron Rite at the same time (and watch One Life to Live). And eat bon bons - what a life...ha! (I don't know how she stayed sane...oh yeah, bourbon). Later we got upgraded to touchtone phones at home. Woohoo!

In college - our dorm room phone looked just like the one above. It was prolly push button though - it was 1976 after all. Our apartment had a wall phone, again with a long cord - but there were no private conversations on that thing as it was right in the kitchen. Back then I spent more than a few nights staring at it, willing it to ring - for that special someone to call. When I lived in Sioux Falls, he did start calling more!

We got our first cordless phone after we moved to Creston. I think it was after Jud was born, as I recall dragging the baby with me to sit in the corner to talk on the phone with the baby - what a hassle! The first cordless were huge. Just like my first cell - a foldable brick that I had in about 1999. Paul and I shared it. In a couple years I got my own, then I had a slider - loved that! I got my first Smartphone - Blackberry 5 years ago and I'm hooked.

Amen.