MAN ABOUT TOWN: Time to Hang up the Phone?
By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Falls Church Times Staff
On the subject of phones, there’s a saying: “Nobody over 30 would ever dream of giving up their land line, and nobody under 30 would ever dream of having one.”
That might be changing, because the Man About Town is seriously considering disconnecting the house phone. That technological marvel seems to have run its 100-year course. Roughly around 1900, telephones began to be common, and roughly around the year 2000, people began to stop answering them.
Now most land line telephone calls are completely automated: a telemarketing machine initiates the call, your phone rings, and your answering machine kicks in, recording the sales message.
The run-up to the November elections was especially bad, with candidates and their friends fielding multiple automated calls to every household. And that was only the off-year election; in 2008 it was multiplied. Back then, even Mayor Gardner called to tell me who she was voting for and who I should vote for.
If your friend or business associate wants to reach you, they of course dial your cell.
Still, giving up the land line will be hard. For one thing, land lines are listed in phone books, while cell numbers are not. So what if someone needs to contact me who doesn’t know my cell number? What if I’m the recipient of a million dollar bequest?
Well, there’s Facebook. That, apparently, is how you reconnect with long-lost friends. Facebook is the #3 website in the country, behind only Google and Yahoo. As soon as I signed up for Facebook (a story familiar to regular readers), I got “friended” by people I had not heard from in 40 years.
Thanks to Facebook, there soon may be no Phonebook.
A Yellow Pages phonebook (curiously shrunken) pitched up on our sidewalk just last week. We duly saved the yellow plastic bag for dog walks and dumped the yellow book into the green bin.
Verizon still produces white pages, which may be a requirement under the old tariff system when the phone company was a monopoly. According to the web, “All Verizon landline subscribers are entitled to a free copy of their local directory.” I would imagine they’re trying to wiggle out of that since there’s no money in white pages.
So the only reason I’m resisting canceling our phone service is that I don’t want to lose our number. It’s part of the family – I can’t just throw it out without knowing it will be assigned to a good home.
When my parents moved to Greensboro, NC, in 1945, they received phone number 3619. That was it – four digits. As phone service grew, everybody’s number was expanded by duplicating the first digit, and by the time I was born our number had become 3-3619. When that still wasn’t enough numbers, the phone company assigned exchanges to different parts of town, and our number became BRoadway 3-3619, or BR3-3619 for short.
When you told someone your phone number, it identified where you lived. So as an 11-year-old I was outraged when the phone company announced that expanding service required that everyone be assigned a new number, in our case CYpress 9-9076.
My neighborhood friends and I took a certain pleasure in calling our old numbers out of spite:
“Is your refrigerator running? Well, you’d better go catch it.”
“This is the phone company. Your telephone has been contaminated. You need to put it in a bucket of hot soapy water for 30 minutes.”
And so forth.
What do kids do for fun anymore? I also remember “party lines.” When I was very young, we shared a line with a lady named Mrs. Biggs. When you picked up the phone to make a call, the dreaded Mrs. Biggs was likely to be on the line. Of course you were supposed to hang up immediately, but I remember listening in one time, discovering that nothing in life could be more boring than listening to Mrs. Biggs talk.
But talk about coming full circle – the next generation seems to prefer not to talk on the telephone at all. Now it’s all about texting. For some reason, calling even a friend is becoming gauche – the polite thing is to text.
So the new truism may be: Nobody over 30 would ever dream of sending a text message on a phone, and nobody under 18 would ever dream of doing anything else.
By George Southern
December 14, 2009
I still remember the Falls Church exchanges of Jefferson and Jackson……it was easy to tell where my friends lived based on the phone number exchange.
You could switch your phone number from land line to cell phone so your phone can go where you go 24/7. I have switched, and my cell phone travels with me. The monthly charge was essentially the same.
And, unlike my land line phone, the cell phone came with Caller ID, so I can look at the number of incoming calls and readily ignore those from toll free and the unavailable numbers, and I also can provide for the ready identification of calls from family members and others known to me.
There are numerous other additional features with the cell phone, e.g., The cell phone provides for receiving and sending text messages, taking (and sending) pixs.
The land line rolary phone was technologically primative, but it was notably durable, rarely needing repairs or replacement. Cell phones need perioddic replacement, if only to get a new battery.
George:
I used to be amazed by the text thing, but I get it now. Once you have a teenager, the only way to communicate with them is this way. Simple messages are easiest. Take out the trash. Let out the dog. Empty the dishwasher. Let the dog back in. Teens can get that, accomplish the task, and go back to what they would rather do. And you, the parent, gets no verbal grief.
Texting has other advantages. You can’t make a phone call during a meeting, but you can text. You can send a message like “there are gun rights advocates in City Hall packing heat” without having to leave the room, though you might want to. I have had the hospital nurse text me to call her back rather than leave a message.
Making a phone call takes too long for a short thought – you have to wait for the phone to ring (or worse “please enjoy the music while your party is reached”), exchange pleasantries, get down to business, exchange more pleasantries, say good bye.
What I don’t get is Twitter. I mean, who wants to subscribe to my feed: “just drained a boil, just finished a pelvic exam,” and I certainly don’t want to hear from my CPA: “just helped Bill Gates save another million,” “2+2=4.”
Anyway, gotta go….my wife just texted me to take out the trash.
Many of my friends have given up land lines but I hesitate. I find the quality of the land line connection is better. I also don’t want to be connected at all times (but then, I don’t have to communicate with kids…). But, land lines will probably phase out in the next decade or so.
Land line or cellular – it’s such a drag to have to “dial” so many numbers to reach someone! Going from four to seven was reasonable, but then having to add an area code was hateful. And now there are several local area codes. Ah, the price of progress.
Once telephone numbers were the inspiratons for songs. Here are the numbers, without their alpha codes. Can you name the songs?
234-5789
736-5000
One is fictional, the other has been in use for 90 years.
Back in the 50s the phone company actually had a list of recommended exchange names:
http://www.ourwebhome.com/TENP/Recommended.html
Great contest idea, George B.! I knew the first one immediately, but the second is before my time so I had to rely on Wikipedia. So it wouldn’t be fair for me to name the answers, but if you give up, or already know, here’s the actual music on mp3:
Song 1 http://fallschurchtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/song1.mp3
Song 2 http://fallschurchtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/song-2.mp3
Don’t forget Tommy TuTone’s Jenny at 867-5309. It’s one of those songs that gets stuck in my head
When it came to the downed electric lines during Hurricane Isabell some years back we had no electricity for four days. I had an old fashioned non-electric land line which was the only thing that worked in the house(besides the crank radio), so that is one reason I keep a land line.
Another reason is that the long distance rate is included in the service and not
charged as minutes, so when I am on a long call with my relatives where the conversation can go on for hours, it helps to have the land line.
Lastly, I like the second line so I can get more done, one to call and one to receive. So we will be keeping ours for awhile or at least until I have time to do another economic study of the cost/benefit.