If you haven't read my first 'Retro' blog, and you are so inclined,it's
here.
Last time I mentioned the party line when I took a stroll down memory lane. (What's with that anyways, some lucky people can remember with ease. Me? Not if your life depended on it. Well, maybe if mine did. *wink*)
Ah yes,the party line.
Baby boomers will remember them. Where a person had two, three, five families on one telephone line? You had Nosy Nellie picking up the phone to listen hours on end to everyone's conversations. Unless you were her cousin, in which case you'd pick up the phone and tell her to get the fu*k off. Yeah.. good times if you were lucky enough to hear that sweet exchange.
Push over Nosy Nellie, here's Gossip Gal next. This was, quite surprisingly, a full time job. One she enjoyed to no end. Anything a body wanted to know, she'd be there offering a detailed ( more often embellished ) summary of the event in question.
Then you had Talking Thelma taking over. Yes.. she would hoard the line and talk herself hoarse. Take a five minute break, grab a smoke and get back on to tell you, because
finally you could place a call, to hurry up and finish. She had calls to make.
The party line. The one hubby and co-worker installed at the Highlands many a year ago. His boss, because it was a prime spot to sit and have a conversation, made them install one
in the outhouse. Yes. You read it right. It was the best place, he figured, for the wires to be put in. The least costly, God rest his cheap ass soul. Sure and there stood the phone for a long long time.
You couldn't of PAID me to use it but it was probably better than any reading material. Which , I think, would of been hard to read anyhow. Poor lighting and all.
And how about our state of the art answering machines? You must remember them.. the cassette player.
And FYI, the one we had wasn't as up to date as this beauty pictured above. We would of thought ourselves trendy with one of these.
The anticipation we had gathering around to listen when we had a message. Playing with the fast forward button, distorting the voice,driving our mother batty. And ooops, didn't quite catch the last part, had to rewind it and replay it.Yup, technologically speaking, we had arrived.
Ahh vinyl table and chairs, what I wouldn't give to have one of these now actually. I'll take it one step further, I remember a clear plastic tablecloth covering the place mats on the table along with the plastic flowers in the vase. ;-) Want to know what else I remember? Getting up too fast and finding out too late the back of
your legs had stuck. to. the. chairs.
See that car? A never ending source of embarrassment when I was a teenager. This was similar to the car my mother drove us around in, picked us up from our friends's houses and we went on holidays with.
The car I tried to pass my driver's license with FOUR bloody times. ( Back then we had the pylon cone test to pass and every time I tried to parallel park, I'd run over a cone, effectively 'killing' someone. Finally I borrowed a Honda Civic and bam! I had my driver's license.
Stupid station wagon. lol
What about you,my bloggy pals, wanna Retro with me?
