Memory Mixtape #24: A Telephone Call From My Childhood

Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time
I'm living in twilight

Electric Light Orchestra - Telephone Line

I've been re-reading The Shining by Stephen King recently. Two reasons for this. One, the last couple of modern novels I've read have left me underwhelmed and frustrated. Two, Louise keeps saying, "you have all these old books on the shelves that you never read," and I needed a little more evidence to back up my claims that, "I'll read them again someday". Otherwise: charity shop.

Anyway, I like reading books set in the world of my childhood. A pre-internet, pre-covid, pre-modern day bullshit world... simpler times. The Shining was first published in 1977, when I was 5, a world where a telephone in your home was apparently something of a luxury...

Wendy had insisted on a phone in spite of their unraveling finances. She had argued that with a small child - especially a boy like Danny, who sometimes suffered from fainting spells - they couldn't afford not to have one. So Jack had forked over the thirty-dollar installation fee, bad enough, and a ninety-dollar security deposit, which really hurt. And so far the phone had been mute, except for two wrong numbers.

I'm not sure when my parents got their first telephone installed, but it was there on the wall between the kitchen and the living room throughout my childhood. I remember standing there, when I could reach it, and rotary dialling the numbers... then waiting for a friend's mum to answer. "Hi Mrs. Brook. Is Liam in? Can he come to the phone?"

Of course, the alternative was the good old-fashioned phone box, recently celebrated in John's August Photo Challenge.

Now he dialed the operator and she told him that for a dollar eighty-five he could be put in touch with Al two thousand miles away for three minutes. Time is relative, baby, he thought, and stuck in eight quarters. Faintly he could hear the electronic boops and beeps of his connection sniffling its way eastward.

We take so much for granted these days. A lot of people don't even bother with a home phone anymore, and to be honest, the only time I take a call on ours is when Louise has taken Sam out and she's calling to tell me to put the tea on.

I remember explaining to a bunch of phone-addicted students a few years back that we never even had mobiles when I was a kid. A look of genuine panic crept over their faces.

"But what if you were at school and your mum needed to speak to you urgently?"

"Well, I guess she'd call the school office and someone would come down to pass a message on," I replied... but I couldn't think of any occasion when such a thing had been necessary. Nothing was so urgent that it couldn't wait a few hours back then.

"Or what about if you were meeting up with some mates in town?"

"Well, you'd arrange a time and a place and..."

"But what if they were late?"

"Then you'd wait. And if they still didn't show up, I guess you'd go home and call them later."

Here are some more songs about the telephones of our youth...

Billy Fury - Phone Call

Eddie & The Hotrods - Strangers On The Payphone

Foreigner - Love On The Telephone

If you still want more, there's another great mix of Telephone Tunes over at The Dude's Place this month.