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?
How could you not remember peeling your legs off the seat of those chairs! Our dining table was that light turquoise so popular in the late 50s and early 60s.
ReplyDeleteI feel so old.
ReplyDeleteLol. I still have that table and chairs at my cottage.
ReplyDeleteSeatbelts, phlplplpp... what are those? I think most people I knew wore the 'other' one that came with every car; mom's arm. Like that was going to work.
ReplyDeleteCrawling up in the back window to see the view -and wishing I had a *ahem* station wagon because of all the extra room! My dad would tap the brakes enough for me to roll out into the back seat. Dad was the polar opposite of mom.
8 track tapes, who the heck invented those stupid have-to-listen-to-the-whole-dang-tape before you could get to your song.
My ex Mother in Law has an answering service that started with cord boards.. think: one ringy dingy... I came to work for her just after they went to computers. She kept one cord board as a historic piece in the office. Pretty cool stuff how all that worked to connect your aforementioned party lines..
Great blog, Jamie. Nowya made my head spin with memories... :) Kudos!
I remember having a Party line when I was a kid. I tortured three old ladies...
ReplyDeleteWe had the same table in Turquoise!
ReplyDeleteAlso had the dreaded party line, we had three families on our line and my Mom made sure we had Polite Phone Manners when we picked up the phone and someone was on the line!