February Gratitude

I ran across this video of comedian Louis CK’s appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He talked about how everything is amazing now, but nobody is happy. We all take this technologically-advanced world around us for granted.

He mentioned the rotary phone in his house when he was a kid. Ours didn’t have a dial. To place a call, you picked up the receiver and the operator at the other end said, “Number, please.” Our number was only four digits, and since we were on a party line, we had a distinctive ring — one long and two short.

The phone itself was as black and heavy as a bowling ball, with a straight, cloth-covered cord. It sat on top of the radio/phonograph console in the living room. I was instructed to answer, “Hewitt residence, Mary speaking.”

Our line was shared with my grandmother and my father’s insurance office, so we didn’t have anyone interesting to eavesdrop on. But, when I visited my grandmother, I would sit in the corner of the dining room at the little phone table nestled next to the china cabinet, listening to the interesting conversations of all the neighbors.  My grandmother scolded me only after I repeated everything I’d heard.

I was a teenager when we got our first dial phone, but since we still shared a line, I wasn’t allowed to spend any time gabbing with my girlfriends on the phone. In some ways, we missed the cheery voice of the operator when we picked up the receiver, and it took some time to get used to having to dial a number.

We didn’t have exchanges like they did in the city, so our number was still short. My cousin had a phone number that started with TU, which stood for Tuxedo. I still remember her number: TU1-4489. Bloomington still has the same exchange, but of course is now 881.

In 1965, I went to work for Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in Fargo, ND, back when it was referred to a Ma Bell. I worked as a dispatcher, sending the installers out to put princess phones in teenagers’ bedrooms across the area. How different those cute little phones were from the black behemoth that sat in our living room when I was a child.

Today my phone fits easily in my pocket, and I’m in contact daily with my children and grandchildren who live hundreds of miles away. I am amazed by the technology that allows me to communicate so easily with those I love, but I’m also grateful we once had exchanges that put letters, as well as numbers, on our phone dials. How else would we be able to text?