Over the course of the history of this blog, the subject has been telephones on a number of occasions. The telephone is an interesting topic, and like a lot (most) things, it’s made tremendous progress, technologically, over the years. It’s hard to remember when a telephone wasn’t taken for granted, but it really hasn’t bee that long ago.
When we first arrived in Manila, in the Philippines — in 1972, we moved into an apartment in the Carmen-Dewey apartment building on Roxas Boulevard — located right on Manila Bay.
The previous tenants had taken the telephone with them when they moved. Because I traveled a lot, it was important for Claire to have access to a phone — obviously there was no such thing as an “Internet” or cell phone in those days.
In 1972, a phone was considered a luxury item in Manila. There was a long waiting list of people waiting for phones to be installed. The embassy pulled some strings and it was a only a few days after moving in that the telephone company showed up at our apartment. The previous residents evidently had the phone in the living room — there was a phone “pigtail” about five or six inches long coming out of the baseboard in that room.
Claire told the phone installer that she wanted the phone in the bedroom — with me traveling, the bedroom location just made more sense. Claire went on about her business and left the installer to do his work. Shortly, he announced that the phone was connected and everything worked fine. When she checked, she found the phone had been attached to short piece of wire coming out of the baseboard — about six inches from the wall. It couldn’t even be put on a table, it had to sit on the floor. Claire once again explained that she wanted the phone in the bedroom — on a nightstand next to the bed. The phone installer insisted that it was much better where he had installed it (on the floor in the living room.)
Well, if you know Claire, there was a long (interesting?) discussion about where the phone should go. The phone installer’s best arguments couldn’t convince Claire that the living room floor location was “better.”
It turned out that the real problem was that the phone company didn’t have any wire. I’ll repeat that — the phone company didn’t have any wire. Claire got in touch with me and I brought a roll of wire from the embassy and the installer gladly installed the phone in the bedroom — on the table. I let the phone guy keep the extra wire and everyone was happy.
Thinking back over the years, if I made a list of the things I’ve taken for granted, it would be a long list — and include telephone wire.
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Truly and enjoyable story! Growing up with only one black wall phone. I remember it was a big deal to get the white rotary movable phone and an even BIGGER deal to get a second phone in the basement! In our apartment we bought a very long phone cord to go everywhere as there was only one phone jack. When we bought our house 13 years ago there was a plethora of hard wired phones and in many colors! In the basement alone there were FOUR…a black one, an olive drab princess phone, one I don’t remember and my favorite was the yellow rotary wall phone that was hung in the basement bathroom. We had phone wire every where! Unfortunately a certain sibling of mine, heard me say I didn’t like the wire hanging in the basement in one spot it hit us in the head…so that hasty sibling, without researching where it went, cut it…as it turned out that was the wire that went all the way to the upstairs and the ONLY wire that went up there. We have quite a collection of telephone history in our old 1937 cape cod… all those phones that came with the house…a working rotary pay phone from St Wendelin’s summer social and that white family rotary phone that sat in my parents kitchen for most of my life… imagine all the conversations on those phones…thru those precious wires!
Yea, we could probably both start an entire blog about phones….