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Communicating in the sixties

By ROSE HOOVER

We’ve sure seen a lot of changes in technology in our lifetime, haven’t we? And one of the things that has changed the most is the way we communicate with each other.

In the world of today, when people need to get information to a friend, they usually send a quick email or text from their phone. Fifty years ago, those methods of communicating weren’t even available.

Back then, if you couldn’t talk in person, telephone calls were the preferred method of communication. Phones were usually clunky black rotary-dial machines, and there was only one in the house.

The phone had a permanent place, usually on a stand in the living room. The telephone was connected to an outlet in the wall, so wherever the phone was located, that is where your conversation was carried out.

You had to hold on to the phone’s receiver to talk and to hear. This hand-held receiver was connected to the stationary phone by a coiled wire covered in plastic. There was no such thing as a “speaker phone,” so you couldn’t put the phone on speaker either to be able to move around while you talked.

When you called someone – the phone either rang, and rang, and rang without stopping – until you decided the person you were trying to reach wasn’t at home, and you hung up. Or, you got a forever beep-beep-beep busy signal, meaning the person was on another call.

No answering machines. No Caller ID. However, house phones were often connected to party lines, and a few families had to share the same line. So, you had to wait until the other parties were done talking before you could make your call. And there was always the chance that somebody up the road, on your party line, was listening in on your conversation.

When I was growing up, I had an ingenious method to try to keep my calls more private. It worked well when the weather was good.

When I received a phone call, I remember answering the phone and then throwing the receiver out the living room window. I would then crawl out the window, closing the window behind me, as much as it could safely go without squashing the cord. Then, I would stretch the coiled line as far away from the house as I could get, and begin my conversation.

It was amazing how far those telephone cords could stretch!

And when you had to dial a call, you always hoped there weren’t too many zeros in the number you were calling, because it took so long for the dial to go all the way around when you had to dial a “zero.” And if your finger slipped, and you didn’t get the circular rotary wheel pushed clear to the bottom when dialing a digit, you had to push down the little black button on the top of the phone to end the process – and then start dialing the phone number all over.

Today, we have cell phones with phone numbers programmed in memory, and calls can be made basically anywhere, any time, and ALL THE TIME. But people, especially younger people, seem almost afraid to use their cell phones to make an actual voice call, opting instead to communicate with impersonal texts of typewritten letters.

Remember actually writing letters, with pen and paper, to communicate? Long-distance telephone calls were extremely rare, so writing letters was the way we communicated with loved ones who were far away. If we were expecting a letter, every day we would anxiously run to the mailbox, or to the post office, to see if “our” letter was there. Then, when we saw the familiar handwriting on the envelope, we would run to a place of solitude to read our letter, savoring every word.

Usually, receiving a letter was great. But, unfortunately, chain letters were the low-tech version, back then, of SPAM. I forget the actual details, but chain letters went something like this.

One day, you would get a letter from a friend, instructing you to send something – maybe a dollar or even a tea towel – to all the addresses listed in the letter. You kind of felt obligated to mail out the letters, replacing the last address listed in the letter with your own address. Then, within a month or so, you were supposed to receive like 100 dollars or 100 tea towels in the mail.

It never happened.

I try to stay up with today’s communication methods and technology. I really do. But I read that they just created a drone that weighs less than a toothpick?? And when my kids have me try out their virtual reality headsets, which take me to an incredible 3-D world, I know that I have fallen woefully behind in my understanding of technology. It all just seems to be getting farther and farther out of my comprehension.

So, at my ripe old age, I have decided to be content to stay at the technology mastery level that I am at now – until the good Lord calls me Home.

I’m sure the wonders that we will see there, and the communication methods we will use, will outdo any of the technology available in this world. And, thankfully, no technology skills will be necessary.

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