Tuesday's Thoughts

Good morning to ya'll and I hope you all are doing fantastic or as a friend of mine says, "Super good and getting better," or as daddy says, "Fine as frog hair split three ways." Not sure where that came from but pretty good I think.

I am having a great time with my Facebook account and now I have a phone that takes calls, sends calls, texts, takes pictures, voice mail, and on and on, a blog, email and will be beginning a new blog soon and I am using a laptop to write and listen to music at the same time. WOW am I techno or what? This brings back memories of a much quieter and less complicated time.

There is an old saying - the 3 ways of communication are telephone, telegraph and tell a woman. Well, that is certainly not true now but I lived in that time and let me tell you I don't want to go back. We didn't have a phone until I was in about the 6th grade, I think and then it was a party line. This means there was more than 1 family on your telephone line and each of us had a certain number of rings to indicate our phone. So, you also heard other people's phones and some people would listen in on other's conversations. Now this was especially agravating if you were repeating gossip or talking to your boyfriend. When we would hear those little clicks indicating that the nosy "mama police" down the road was listening, I would say hello Mrs. ___ and say well we won't talk until you hang up and we would just hold the phone, breathe heavy and giggle until she gave up and hung up. Of course this also took the phone away from everyone on the party line but being a teenager and totally self-centered, we didn't care. Of course she would call mama later and berate us loudly and longly.

For many years all calls were handled by "Miss Ernistine" (although I don't think she had missed anything from what I heard) from the central switchboard in an office at the 1 hotel. You would turn the handle on the side of the phone or if you were real up-to-date you would spin the dial, it would ring on the switchboard, she would answer, you would tell her the number and she would pick up the line, plug it in that number and their phone would ring. Now I know from experience she would listen to phone calls! Isn't that terrible? If you wanted to know who died, who was sick, who was seeing whom, or any other peice of information, just ask Miss Ernistine for she knew everything about everyone.

You didn't even have to know the person's number. You would just say, "Miss Ernistine, can I have Miss Lottie, please" and she would connect for you or say Frances her line is busy or she has gone to buy groceries or she has company or whatever the situation might be. Now that came in mighty handy at times so you wouldn't waste your time, but sometimes it was a little upsetting to know someone knew your every move, who you talked to and when you breathed.

Of course there were some advantages for you didn't have to buy a paper to get the news and you knew your "telephone angel" was taking care of all your business for you.

I think I will keep electronic gadgets although they can be "mind grabbers" so be careful and check your cranium occasionally and see if it is intact.

Nuff said,
The Georgia Peach