REMEMBERING THE LANDLINE



            Though landline phones may be on the endangered species list, in the 1950s and before, they were the lifeline of communities—and a teenager’s life.  For nearly a hundred years, the landline was the way we talked with someone who wasn’t in the room with us.  The telephone wire plugged into the wall jack, and the phone line ran from our house to the perfectly named telephone pole in front of our house.  From that pole and all its cousins standing along our streets, those wires magically found the people we talked with on what was called the telephone.

          We had only one telephone, a black rotary one, that sat on a built-in phone cubby in the hallway.  There was no digital caller ID, no robocalls or tele-marketers intruding in our lives.  So when the phone rang, we were excited and curious, not knowing who the caller might be.  The caller could’ve been anybody, but in truth the caller couldn’t have been just anybody.  The caller was usually one of four or five people who had our telephone number.  Morning calls were certain people—probably neighbors, and early evening calls were relatives looking to chat.  We didn’t want phone calls before 9 a.m. or after 10 p.m., and we lived in fear of any call after midnight. Father jokingly said we should unplug the phone when we went to bed so that no one would have trouble at night.

          The phone didn’t ring a dozen times a day, and its sound was a kind of minor event.  We kids didn’t pick up the phone and answer it, nor did we make a phone call without first asking permission.  My father, unless he was at home alone, didn’t answer the telephone because answering it fell under the duties of the homemaker.  Mother always answered the ringing telephone, her voice smiling, and simply said “hello.” We all knew in a moment whom she was talking to by the inflection in her voice. We didn’t listen to what she had to say, but we knew by her tone what the world was like.

          After some years we had another phone—not another line, another phone.  When a family achieved two phones, it was thought far and wide to be a sort of luxury, to have a phone in the kitchen and another in the hallway.  By the time we were teenagers, my brothers and I were allowed to make limited telephone calls and answer the telephone. 

There’s a wonderous landline moment that doesn’t exist today. The telephone rang shortly after dinner one spring evening.  My brother rushed to answer the phone and said “hello.” After a moment, he hollered loudly enough to notify the entire household, “Sara, it’s for you”—a phrase long gone because no one shares a phone anymore.  My brother then asked, as he’d been instructed in phone etiquette, “Who’s calling?” Then he yelled at the same terrible volume, “It’s Robert,” a name that had never been said aloud before in our house and the sound of which piqued my parents’ interest.  I sprang from my bed and sprinted to the telephone cubby.  As I turned the slippery corner I heard my brother yell, “Sara, it’s Robert, a boy from school!”  I yanked the phone from him, ignoring his satisfied, smug little grin and said hello to Robert, the dreamiest boy in the 10th grade.  Robert needed to know what time he was picking me up for the sophomore dance.  I was tongue-tied and embarrassed, answering him only in monosyllables: yes, no, okay, sure, yes. Bye. Standing there at the phone cubby in a household with a landline, I knew the news was now public.  I had a crush on Robert, and he was taking me to the dance.  The village had been alerted.

          There are no such shared moments like these in our beautiful houses now when the phone rings and everyone stops and listens to it ring twice, wondering who the caller might be.  Robocalls, caller ID, and tele-marketers have killed our awe and curiosity. Cell phones and instantaneous texting have pretty much ma
de the landline extinct. Yet, I yearn for those days of removing the phone’s handset from the cradle, listening for the dial tone, placing my fingers in the number holes and rotating the dial clockwise and waiting, waiting for that almost magical connection to be made and hearing someone on the other end enthusiastically answer, “Hello,"

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