Gone is era of landline phones

An era came to an end in the Terry household last week. Actually it died a good while ago we; just hadn’t buried it.

That’s right, we pulled the plug on our landline phone last week. I know we haven’t had a call on it for several months now because I unplugged the thing without my wife’s knowledge to see if we would miss it. Took nearly two months for her to notice.

Prior to that time it had gotten to the point where the only calls we were getting on the thing were tricky telemarketers, poll-takers and an occasional bill collector. All the family, work and friend contacts only called us on the cell phone. They never had to worry if we were home or near the phone because it was in my pocket.

Once I got the wife to using her cell for talk radio the phone was close enough for her to answer and I finally had a reliable way to get her on the phone.

I don’t go back far enough that I cranked the phone and talked to Sarah the operator like Andy Griffith but I did grow up on a party line, which has a completely different meaning these days. Still, one of the best comedy skits in my time was Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine. The snorting operator that always counted down the ringy-dingies.

Yes kiddoes, at one time our phone usage was firmly tethered to a wall or desk. That’s right, it didn’t go with you in the car or follow you to work or school. You sat in one central spot in the house while you talked where your mother could hear every word.

As cordless came into style we didn’t know how we ever lived without pulling out the shiny retractable silver antenna of our phone and wandering all the way out on the patio to chat. Of course those silly CB radios sure played havoc with your conversation when an 18-wheeler rolled down your street.

Sure there are tradeoffs in every new technology. Some days all I’d like to do is drop the thing overboard in the toilet bowl. You can’t escape people anymore and it keeps us working 24-7 in some cases. But dang, it sure is nice not having to deal with untangling that 20-foot receiver cord attached to the kitchen phone.

Some folks have lots of trouble keeping their smartphones charged so I guess I must be doing something wrong — like not playing enough games or listening to enough music. Mine is all good. I can go two or three days without a charge typically and the thing still goes off often enough to keep me annoyed.

I’ll take my communications wireless for now since I can’t do away with it altogether. Some day I hope it falls out of my pocket in a trout stream and I decide it's just not worth replacing it.