This morning, I put my cell phone down to charge after a lengthy and enjoyable conversation with my sister. Most all our calls last an hour, two, or even longer. It’s a luxury nowadays everyone takes for granted. When I was young, we had dial-up phones, first the rotary, then the push-button wall phone. It was quite common for most people to have party lines which meant that several people shared a local telephone loop circuit that was shared by more than one subscriber. There wasn’t any privacy on a party line; if you were conversing with a friend or relative, anyone on your party line could pick up their telephone and listen in. If someone were on too long, you could tell them politely you needed to make a call. Most people were cooperative and would hang up their receivers, but then again, there were numerous times when someone could be quite belligerent. Then private lines came along, and you didn’t share a line with anyone, unless you had an impatient family member needing to kick you off the line because they needed to call one of their buddies or girlfriends. When you made a long-distance call, the conversations were usually shorter than you wanted them to be because you were being charged big time for every minute by “Ma Bell,” which many people referred to as the phone company.
As a kid, it was a rarity I ever used the phone to call anyone, because anyone I wanted to talk to lived only a few houses away and a knock at their back door was the best way to communicate. But there were times when we liked to pull pranks on people randomly picked from the telephone book. We’d say we were from the electric company and wanted to know if their refrigerator was running, when they said yes, we’d start laughing and say, “Then you better go catch it”, or another question we asked the anonymous recipient of our pranks, “Do you own Prince Albert in a can?” If they said yes, then we would laugh and say, “Then you better go let him out!” Otherwise, we’d just hang up before they chewed us out. For those who do not know what Prince Albert in a can was, it was loose cigarette or pipe tobacco that came in various size metal containers, from a can that would easily fit in your shirt pocket, or a quart sized can you opened with a church-key. In those days, some people still rolled their own cigarettes, so it was common for many households to have that brand of tobacco or other brands. Even brands that doctors recommend most. Also, in those by-gone days, we learned to dial a number without using the rotary dial by tapping out the number in quick succession for each number using the button the receiver was cradled on. In a sense, it was much like using Morse Code.
When I went to public school after spending eight years attending a parochial school, it was when I utilized the phone more often to call girlfriends or cousins who didn’t live close or receive a call from an occasional boy. For me, sitting on the phone for a long time at that time was almost nil. It wasn’t until my parents moved us to Houghton Lake, two-hundred miles north of the city of Taylor, where I was born and raised. We still we had a party line before everything was switched over to private lines. Fortunately for us, it was seldom anyone else was on the line. Our phone was a newer model but was still a rotary phone. Instead of being the common color black, it was a sleek harvest gold and hung on the wall with a matching colored twelve-foot coiled cord that I discovered could be stretched to gain another six feet. It became an ongoing battle with my parents to quit stretching out the cord to the max by taking it into the bathroom off the kitchen to sit on the vanity for hours talking. Stretching it over time caused the coils to stretch out and now that twelve-foot coiled cord became a stringy kinked mess that laid on the floor. After I started waitressing at 15 years old, I was told I needed to replace it, and I did, a couple times.
It’s funny when I think about how it was whenever a long-distanced family member called. After the initial salutation, mom would put her hand over the receiver to mute her calling out to my dad that one of my brothers, or another relative was on the line. Each of us took our turn talking for a few minutes before turning the phone over to the next person. Most conversations in total never lasted more than 15 to 20 minutes as mom watched the clock, making the excuse to the person on the line, “This call is costing you a fortune.”
Then there were the phone booths, where you put in a dime and call someone local. The days of the nickel calls were gone along with the five-cent ice cream cones from Dairy Queen. Every gas station had one, also drug stores and supermarkets at the time. I used to walk up to the North Shore Lounge, a family-oriented bar and use the outdoor phone booth there. To get there one had to cross a very old wooden bridge which connected the North Shore from the West Shore, sadly was barricaded to any vehicle traffic after being deemed unsafe two years after moving up north. The bridge stretched over a part of the waterway that connected the Muskegon River to Houghton Lake. Even walking over the rickety wooden boards before the county ever completely removed the ancient boards was a hair-raising experience if you didn’t watch where you placed your next step. Even more unnerving than just walking over the bridge was when the school bus drove over it twice each day during the school year. I held my breath and hoped it wouldn’t cave in!
As a kid, people would fish off the narrow bridge. I once lost a flip flop when I was about six years old when my foot went between the cracks as I followed my older brother across to get ice cream at the marina called K’s Korner. That particular phone booth at the lounge, was where I walked to make long-distance calls to my friends who lived downstate. I would scrape together my nickels, dimes, and quarters from my tip jar I saved from waiting tables at Richard’s Restaurant because it seemed like every three minutes the operator was telling you to deposit thirty-five cents, fifty cents or more. If you didn’t deposit your money immediately when the nasally operator told you to, your call would be disconnected without the operator accepting any explanation why it was taking you so long to count out your change. I know I wasn’t the only one who was frustrated not being able to say good-bye. It was a real pain.
On the corner of the sidewalk to the main entrance of the Houghton Lake High School where I attended, stood a phone booth. At lunchtime or breaks there was always an impatient line of classmates wanting to use the phone. At football or basketball games, and when there were dances held in the gymnasium, it was almost impossible to use the payphone to call for a ride home, so many of us kids crossed the highway to use the phone at Hunt’s Drug Store or at Hope & Faith’s Restaurant. The first time I used this phone booth on the school premises was on the second day of my sophomore year at the new high school when I was summoned to the principal’s office to call my parents to either bring me longer skirt or dress, or they would have to pick me up and take me home. Miniskirts, let alone fishnet stockings didn’t quite make its popularity to the north country when I started school there. In fact, the dress code back in the late 1960’s had not been updated since 1954. It didn’t include girls wearing pants or any kind, and the skirts or dresses needed to be no more than an inch above the knee. I used the outside phone instead of the one in the main office because of prying ears, and my embarrassment of being classified as the “new girl” already called to the principal’s office. Besides I knew my mother would give me grief about dressing appropriately in the first place. I never did ever find out who turned me in for wearing a short skirt, but I have a suspicion it might have been the prudish Home Economics teacher who was also a pastor’s wife.
Home phones evolved from the rotary dial to push buttons. They were more streamlined, or they were different shapes to appeal to all ages or lifestyles. There were styles made to replicate styles from the 1930’s or 1940’s, or the beautiful French boudoir table phones. Most homes had more than one phone, others had the luxury of a phone in every room of the house. That many phones in a home allowed a sneaky little brother or sister to eavesdrop in on your conversation. Their heavy breathing or a giggle was a sure giveaway. It was also a clever way for parents to listen in and tell you you’ve been on the line long enough, particularly if they didn’t like those to whom you were talking. Oh, the trials of growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s. As my mind takes me back in time as I write, I wish I could go back for a day and live some of those glorious childhood memories with my best childhood friend all over again!
Do you remember what your first phone number was when you grew up? Ours was DU-11821. Leave a comment, it would be fun to see how many people remember!
Peace!