The first phone i can remember my family having when i was a kid was the old desk type black rotary phone. I can still remember what it sounded like when the phone number was being dialed. Stick your finger in the hole by the number, drag the wheel around to the “stop" arm on the dial and let go. The ticka-ticka as it circled back to its starting point was all too slow sometimes. Then it was time to do the next number in the phone number. Mind-numbingly slow compared to today's staccato-click, or one-button-press way of calling someone... but just like any new technology we have today, back then that was state-of-the-art, whiz-bang, new-fangled high-tech!! (And it beat the heck out of having to yell across the field to get a message from house to house, haha!)
The phone number itself was different back then, too. There were no area codes, nor did the phone numbers start with numbers at all. Phone numbers were assigned by the phone exchange you were on. Ours was Franklin, followed by 5 numbers. You didn't dial the entire word, just an abbreviation using the letters beside each number on the dial, but the entire word was spoken when sharing your number with someone. If memory serves, the abbreviations were only 2 letters... so Franklin became FR. Everyone in our area was in the same exchange, and had the "FR" for the first part of their number.
When Mom & Dad & I first moved into the house i grew up in, we didn’t even have a telephone. Not many people did. Mom and Dad went to Grandmother's, next door, if they needed to make a call. Phone calls were rare… not the common place way of communication they are today. Long-distance cost a small fortune, and was just not done unless it was critical somehow. Several years later, Mom and Dad got a phone…. and were assigned to a “party line” with three of our close neighbors.
If you've never experienced a party line, it's a very different way of telephone communication. Some of the old sitcoms demonstrate them from time to time. In our case, 4 houses were given one telephone line. All the houses’ phones rang when a call came in. However, each house had 4 digits that were theirs personally, but you had to listen to how many times the phone rang to know if an incoming call was for your house. If it was a call for our house, it rang twice. If it was for Grandmother, next door, it rang once. If it was for Aunt Molly (down the road from us), it rang three times, etc. So you had to listen for how many times it rang in succession before the pause between rings to know if it needed to be answered by you. If you wanted to make a call, the first thing you had to do was to listen. If someone else in your party was using the phone, both ends of the conversation could be heard just by picking up the receiver. There was “Phone Etiquette” in those days, so if, by chance, you needed to make an emergency call, you simply broke in to the conversation politely, and asked to use the phone. This was inevitably followed by questions from those talking such as, “Oh my goodness! What happened?” A quick explanation would follow and the line was cleared for use. It was a given that gossip flowed freely via the party line, and an emergency of any kind was sure to fill the conversations of the busy bodies in the neighborhood for days. It was the “modern” (in those days) version of talking at the fence between neighbors. Gossip was what they excelled in and emergencies were juicy tidbits, destined to be talked about, along with inquiries for anything those with the emergency might need (help, food, etc) in the coming days.
And it’s the gossipers that I really want to talk about for a minute... You see, I come from a long, long, long line of gossipers, busy-bodies, and tongue-waggers. There were also a number of story-wranglers, tale-twisters, and lolly-gaggers, but that’s a tale for another day.
Today, saying that someone is a gossiper is an insult, but those women, back in those days, were the backbone of the community. People were more polite and proper back in those days, so it wasn’t hate-filled gossip… it was more a verbal news service. These were the ladies that always baked a chicken pie when someone had a death in the family. They were the ones that made the best lemon meringue pies for the church socials. Their husbands were the ones that would help out a neighbor in need, just for the asking… and sometimes even without being asked at all. The ladies were the ones that always made crafts and jams and jellies to be sold at the Fall Festival each year. They were the leaders in the church groups, the teachers in Sunday School, Grade Mothers and Grandmothers at the schools, and active in every woman’s group in the area. They knew what everyone in the community was up to, and met the needs as much as was possible. So to say that they gossiped on the phone for a good part of each day, was to say that they spent that time checking on everyone, making sure plans were made, news was shared, and needs were met. They were always quick to “Bless your heart”, and listen if you needed an ear. And they were always just as glad to listen in person, but these “new fangled telephones” made it easier to do that from the comfort of their own home, increasing what they could do without the burden of traveling, or the waiting until the next meeting or the next Sunday at church to plan it out.
God bless those busy bodies… they were the caretakers of every neighborhood. We need more of those kinds of busy-bodies and gossipers in today’s world, and less of the mean-spirited self-serving attitudes that seem to have dominated the world for decades now. We’ve stopped caring so much about community and the people around us!
Years passed quickly, and phone services advanced with the technology. Today everyone has a phone, and we communicate at speeds that would have amazed those dear busy-bodies back in those days. Having had a career in technology, I’m always ready to embrace the “new and better”… but I find myself wondering sometimes what have we lost as a result of “instant everything”. We’ve lost a great deal of the cohesiveness of community, for one thing. IF blame needs placing, technology isn’t to “blame”… people are. We got so caught up in the work-buy-work-buy cycle associated with getting more “stuff”, better “stuff”, faster “stuff”, and cooler “stuff”, that we forgot just why it was that communities worked so well the way they were. Perhaps, one day, we’ll figure out that we need each other more than we need more “stuff”. Until that day….......
Hang on a sec……. Just remembered I need to call Mom and tell her something….
Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” Luke 12:15 NIV
Out here in the country every house has a mailbox. No... Not one of those tiny boxes on the wall by the door... Not one of those metal boxes in the post office with hundreds of others. A real mailbox, usually with a separate compartment for the daily newspaper, sits at the end of every driveway. Here's the thing though. Those mailboxes sometimes become a status symbol of sorts, or a decorative feature at the head of the driveway. They get decorated for the holidays, especially Christmas, and sometimes even "bloom" in the warmer months. The mailbox is your first indication of the type of folks that live in that house.
A sprawling brick house with lavish landscaping might decide to brick in their mailbox, making it look like a mini Fort Knox. A farmer might have a mailbox in the shape of a John Deere tractor, complete with the green and yellow colors that are so famous with the brand. A fisherman might have one shaped like a huge large mouth bass (the door is literally inside the fish's mouth). And a young couple, just starting life together, might have the cheapest one Lowe's sells, on a skinny metal pole, very non-descript, lacking the personality sure to show up in the coming years. There are no Homeowners Associations out here, demanding all mailboxes look the same. The mailbox becomes a symbol of those who live there.
You can tell a lot about the lives of the folks around here by their mailboxes, too. Do they have one of those plastic bulky looking ones? Chances are, they have lost a few mailboxes in their life to drive-by hooligans with a baseball bat (illegal, by the way), or a farm implement on a tractor that stuck out too far to the side, or a roadscraper in the winter time. Those things are made to break apart when they get hit to limit the destruction. Is it mounted on a thick metal pole or a 4x4, or a store-bought pole of some sort? Is it plain or decorative? Does it have a mini flower garden planted around it? All these things mean something to the folks who live there.
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| Photo by Pat Bailey |
And then there are those folks that look at their mailbox as their own special spot to place a sculpture representing their own brand of uniqueness. Some go the humor route while others seemingly use random parts found around the old farm. Lots seem to love wagon wheels and bicycle wheels. Others create sculptures of horses or dragons or even knights in armor which stand at attention at driveway's end in an eternal watch.
<<<<<-- And then there's this guy, with the pot-bellied stove for a mailbox.
And always..... ALWAYS...... there is the inevitable cluster of mailboxes here and there, usually at the end of some winding gravel road. One box for each house, often odd sizes and heights, some different colors from the others, and always at different angles.... reminding me somehow of a field of mechanical wildflowers on the side of the road.
Next time you're driving through the rural countryside, take time to notice the mailboxes. You never know what will peek out of the next curve in the road.... Who knows, it may be better than The Worlds Biggest Ball of String....
