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Landline
A distant relic of time..
The now romantic-seeming, domestic landline.
With your parents' Filofax of contacts to its side,
in a place of household pride.
Contacts acquired throughout one's 20th Century prime,
home numbers inked on every line...
Sometimes lines crossed through,
updated at a later stage -
always a little room left for
new landlines
on every page.
How it rang throughout the house,
how you ran throughout the house -
how it clicked when you picked up,
or clacked when downed
to make it stop.
How you twirled the curly cord,
when talking if engrossed
- or bored -
and how clear
and close
each caller seemed
elaborating what they'd mean..
Now the days for landline use,
are past us all and seem obtuse
- and you need no longer schedule
and wait
by the landline
at set date.
Few boast a charming 'telephone' -
in quirky colours
in their home,
and maybe, never will again
as the landline
is a foregone trend.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
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I liked it. Nostalgia. Thank you.
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Waiting for the "dial" to return after you forcefully/swiftly "dialed" a number so you could dial the next number (lol).... seemingly took forever when one was in a hurry. Rather soothing when not in a hurry.
Party lines.
Special phone numbers repairmen would give out that did incredible things for a child's imagination... I remember there was a phone number that would start a tone at low frequency and then ramp up to high frequency then start over and over, and another phone number where you would dial then hang up and it would ring back with no one there (lol)...there were others - I just don't remember.
Dialing P•O•P•C•O•R•N for the time (I think just recently discontinued.)
My Mother had to lose her English accent to become an phone operator in California back in the 40's/50's (just dial 0)... (lol) I wonder how that would fly in today's culture.
Oddball Prefixes... Melrose 5-5555 (ME5-5555); Emerson 5-5555 (EM5-5555); Chattanooga 5-5555 (CH5-5555)...
Video of two teenagers asked to "dial" a number on a rotary phone (lol)... https://interestingengineering.com/w...w-do-they-work
Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor
