It was avocado green. Two pieces. A 10-foot-long, straggly cord connecting them. And it was mounted on the kitchen wall of my childhood home.
That phone was a fixture in our house, and when it rang, we answered it. No caller ID. No screening calls. No asking, “Who is this?” before deciding whether to pick up. We had no idea who was on the other end until we said hello.
There were no robocalls, telemarketers or scams. Or, at least, none that I knew about. I remember the phone, and I remember our home phone number, too. Those digits are cemented in my brain alongside other vital information, such as my junior high gym locker combination. Unfortunately, neither has been particularly useful lately.
If I recall correctly, my parents didn’t even own that phone. It belonged to Ma Bell, and Mom and Dad paid a monthly fee for the privilege of having it. If something broke, a repair person showed up to fix it.
If I dug deep enough into my memory bank, I could probably identify every phone we had over the years. There weren’t that many. The rotary dial gave way to push buttons, which gave way to cordless phones with antennas large enough to pick up radio signals from Mars. Eventually, those were replaced by smaller, rechargeable models.
My personal cellphone history is a different story. I started with one of those Motorola brick phones in the early 1990s. I even had a phone mounted in my car for a while. Then came the flip phones, a BlackBerry or two, a Palm Treo (my favorite) and what seems like a small fortune spent on numerous iPhones.
Think about that. We went from one avocado-green phone for the entire family to carrying a miniature computer that costs hundreds of dollars, tracks our every move and occasionally reminds us that we have spent too much time looking at it.
What if cellphone companies provided these devices as part of our monthly plans, just as Ma Bell did? What if they sent someone to fix them when they broke instead of suggesting we replace them? And what if we could use them without wondering which app was tracking us or whether every notification was another company asking for our money?
We have watched plenty of trends disappear, only to return decades later. Bell-bottoms. Vinyl records. Typewriters. Maybe landlines are next.
I can picture it now. A trendy young couple announces they are going back to basics. They install an avocado-green rotary phone in their kitchen. Their friends marvel at its vintage charm, but nobody can figure out how to dial a number. Of course, they will probably need a landline plan, a vintage-phone restoration specialist and an adapter that costs $89. Still, the idea has appeal. No robocalls. No telemarketing. No scammer pretending to be the IRS. And that 10-foot cord? It might even be a welcome reminder of simpler times.
Just don’t expect me to answer if you call while I am in the bathroom. Some things have not changed.
Have a fantastic Friday and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707