by Roddy Harris

Created on: September 14, 2008   Last Updated: October 05, 2010

Telephone communications has really changed in the short span of forty to fifty years. I went to my granddaughter's birthday party and was amazed at all the people there who were using cell phones. Most of the cell phone use was text messaging but it got me to wondering.

When I was a young person we had a telephone. The telephone was something that as a young child I was taught not to touch. As I got older I was allowed to use the telephone but only for short calls. We were on a party line and could not tie up the phone all day. I know some of you out there probably do not know what a party line is. It is a phone line that has multiple users on it. You had your own ring so you knew when the call was for you. If you wanted to make a call you had to pick up the receiver and listen to see if anybody was using the line. It was very rude to just start dialing as that would interfere with the call already in progress. It was a system where all the users tried to be courteous to each other so the phone was not tied up. I remember my mother always saying that she would love to have a private line but lamented the cost. The cost was $2.00 more a month and we could not afford it.

My grandparents lived in a small village and their phone system was one where they had to pick up the phone and tell the operator who they wanted to talk to. There was no dial on their phone. My grandmother really hated it when the telephone system was updated and she had to use the dial when making her telephone calls. She considered it an inconvenience to have to use the dial. She also lost her ability to get all the village gossip from the friendly operator.

My wife had a different problem with the telephone at her house. Her father ran a small business and their phone was used also used for his business. They had a private line but she could only make short calls. I can still hear her father telling her to get off the phone as it was a business phone. Back during my youth, phone calls were used for the most basic of communications and were not supposed to be used for chatting. Make your plans and then talk to that person when you got together was the basic rule. I can still hear my father yelling at my sisters, telling them that they had seen their friends at school so they did not need to be on the phone all evening.

One of the biggest differences was that the phone company owned the phones. They came to the house and put the phones where you wanted them. You could not move the phones or

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