At breakfast the radio was on. A lady, the radio personality, spoke. There'd been a question earlier. Name something you remember that kids today wouldn't understand.
A listener had written in, responding that she remembered when telephones had long cords attached that kept them in place, unable to go further afield than the length of the cord. And when you had to make a private phone call, you also needed to take the telephone as far as it could go and shut the door.
To me, it seems like young people today can understand the existence of corded telephones, whether or not they previously knew such a thing existed. What they might have trouble getting their minds around is the concept of a "private phone call." In few places nowadays does such a thing exist.
A listener had written in, responding that she remembered when telephones had long cords attached that kept them in place, unable to go further afield than the length of the cord. And when you had to make a private phone call, you also needed to take the telephone as far as it could go and shut the door.
To me, it seems like young people today can understand the existence of corded telephones, whether or not they previously knew such a thing existed. What they might have trouble getting their minds around is the concept of a "private phone call." In few places nowadays does such a thing exist.
2 comments:
Talk about not being able to have private phone calls our first phone was on a 'party line' - our ring was two longs and a short.
There are so many other things I remember without having to take into account the ones my parents talked about:
Ice boxes - Lake ice would be cut into blocks, stored in underground rooms, and delivered by horse drawn wagon. We had to empty the drip tray regularly.
Milk deliveries.
The television repairman came to your house - eventually. The television had an antenna that had to be adjusted. Almost all tv shows were live productions.
People rarely got divorced.
Nobody had credit cards.
Children got all the childhood diseases. Doctors made house calls.
***
Among the many reminiscences of my dad one I remember was that the wagon driver charged a ha'penny for a ride to the local village, but a full penny to take them back home because it was all uphill and the horse got tired.
I don't think I knew that you had ice deliveries by horse drawn wagon when you were a kid. What this tells me is that where you grew up was much more rural than I remember it. Which I guess stands to reason, since it only became part of Richmond Hill when I was about 10.
House calls. Those do seem to be a thing of the past. Every now and then you hear human interest stories about doctors bringing them back, but at least in this country those MDs are few and far between.
That's a funny story about the ride to and from the village back where grandad came from. I can actually see the logic, though, considering the upkeep on a horse. Of course it was a seller's market too.
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