Do you remember how it was back in the 1970’s and earlier? One rotary phone in every house, in any color you wanted as long as it was black. One. A landline. No answering machines. Local calls...were they free or just pennies? I don’t remember which but at most, pennies. Within a limited local range. If you called a different area code the rates jumped significantly and the longer the distance the higher the charge. One phone, one phone line in the entire house of say a typical four-person family, mom and dad and a teenage boy and girl. THAT was a problem. “Jenny, get off the phone, keep the line open!” when Jenny was talking with her boyfriend. “DAD!” “NOW, JENNY!” Slam by Jenny who retreats to bedroom. Some parents put locks on the phones! Long distance calls: Jenny better not have a bf up the road a couple miles. Long distance calls were the only ones tracked by the phone companies and parents could see at a glance the long distance rates eating into the family budget. So could law enforcement. One of the key pieces of evidence I had in a 1994 moider case was a “long distance” call made by subject to victim who lived one-eighth of a mile apart...but in different area codes. It was a toll call and so a record of it and it put the subject within that one-eighth mile of the victim’s residence right before the murder. That was huge. No answering machines, no missed call list. If you didn’t get to the phone in time the call was lost forever. If a phone rings in an empty house and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? NO was the practical answer.
What if you went on vacation? Fucking call home frequently Pilgrim. Which you don’t really want to do when you’re on vacation. There’s an early Woody Allen movie. Every time the main character, it could be the one who moved to California and told the Allen character of “twin sixteen year olds,” moved to a different lolita pad he’d call the office, “I’m now at Predator6969.”
If you went on a long vacation and something untoward happened...Well, let me tell you a true story about what they did in one instance. Ike built the interstate highway system in the late ‘50’s. For the first time people could take cross-country trips. My Uncle Harry was an M.D. who for a novelty usually brought more people into this world than he dispatched to the next but the calculus was close. He delivered me, and my middle name is in his honor but there were some difficulties attendant to my entry into the world, I came out "looking like a boxer" according to my mother, such were Uncle Harry's difficulties in liberating me from the womb.
Anyway, as a doctor Uncle Harry was well off and he and Aunt Velma took a cross, or near-cross country trip along Ike's new interstate in the 'late '50's. From western Pennsylvania they headed West and when they would stop for the night sometimes they'd call home and sometimes they wouldn't but on most stops they'd call. Came that a relative got seriously ill or perhaps died, I don't remember that detail to the story, but it was urgent that Uncle Harry be reached. But how? The local relatives did the natural thing, contacted the Barnesboro Police to which this dilemma was of course a matter of first impression. BPD thought to reach out to the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol and explained. "Is there any way you can think we can reach Dr. Garman?" "Where was he last you heard from him?" Let's say, Illinois, I don't know. "He was going straight acrossed on Ike's new east-west, was he?" "That's right." "When ja last hear from him?" "Night before last," lets' say. Well, the Pennsylvania Smokies pondered that and cogitated upon that and looked at the map of the country and the route of Ike's new interstate and figgered where Uncle Harry prolly would be, one of the Plains states as I remember. They called up one of the Plains state's Smokies and explained the predicament. "You don't know where in Iowa," let's say, "he might be, do you?" "No, we don't." "Well, at a normal drive pace...If we string a banner across the right place on Ike's new east-west mebbe he'll see it." "Alright." We'll string it near the end of the Nebraska-Iowa border 'cause we don't know zactly how far in he is." "That sounds good."
Damn, if that's not what they did. The Plains state Smokies strung a huge banner across Ike's east-west.
DR. HARRY GARMAN, CALL HOME
And Uncle Harry and Aunt Velma did see it and I don't know but I bet that was the most shocking
thing that ever happened in their lives since Uncle Harry accidentally dispatched another relative into the next world and ended up supporting the man's widow and daughter for the rest of their lives if they'd be...discrete about what killed Uncle Carl.
That's the way they got messages to adventurous travelers back then and Uncle Harry with Aunt Velma in tow double-timed it back to Barnesboro-upon-Susquehanna.
In the 1980's pagers somewhat eliminated the need for stringing banners across highways. Pagers were limited in availability to an elite clientele of drug dealers and physicians who you could usually tell apart because the drug dealers had the Rolex presidentials.
At some point after drug dealers and doctors, prosecutors were issued them. When I got mine, I went up and signed for it and put it on my waistband just like a drug dealer and went to lunch with my friend. On the drive to our usual Chinese restaurant it started to rain as only it can rain in Miami. And my beeper went off. "Holy Hell. Bob, we better stop. There! There's a pay phone. FUCK, I have to get out and make a phone call from a fucking pay phone in this weather!" I did. "Ann," the woman who had just issued me the beeper I had signed for. "This is Ben Harris. My beeper just went off to this number." "Just checking to see if it worked, Ben!" "Yes. Yes, it's working, Ann."
So yeah, that is the way things were with telecommunications in America before the introduction of the cellular telephone.
What if you went on vacation? Fucking call home frequently Pilgrim. Which you don’t really want to do when you’re on vacation. There’s an early Woody Allen movie. Every time the main character, it could be the one who moved to California and told the Allen character of “twin sixteen year olds,” moved to a different lolita pad he’d call the office, “I’m now at Predator6969.”
If you went on a long vacation and something untoward happened...Well, let me tell you a true story about what they did in one instance. Ike built the interstate highway system in the late ‘50’s. For the first time people could take cross-country trips. My Uncle Harry was an M.D. who for a novelty usually brought more people into this world than he dispatched to the next but the calculus was close. He delivered me, and my middle name is in his honor but there were some difficulties attendant to my entry into the world, I came out "looking like a boxer" according to my mother, such were Uncle Harry's difficulties in liberating me from the womb.
Anyway, as a doctor Uncle Harry was well off and he and Aunt Velma took a cross, or near-cross country trip along Ike's new interstate in the 'late '50's. From western Pennsylvania they headed West and when they would stop for the night sometimes they'd call home and sometimes they wouldn't but on most stops they'd call. Came that a relative got seriously ill or perhaps died, I don't remember that detail to the story, but it was urgent that Uncle Harry be reached. But how? The local relatives did the natural thing, contacted the Barnesboro Police to which this dilemma was of course a matter of first impression. BPD thought to reach out to the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol and explained. "Is there any way you can think we can reach Dr. Garman?" "Where was he last you heard from him?" Let's say, Illinois, I don't know. "He was going straight acrossed on Ike's new east-west, was he?" "That's right." "When ja last hear from him?" "Night before last," lets' say. Well, the Pennsylvania Smokies pondered that and cogitated upon that and looked at the map of the country and the route of Ike's new interstate and figgered where Uncle Harry prolly would be, one of the Plains states as I remember. They called up one of the Plains state's Smokies and explained the predicament. "You don't know where in Iowa," let's say, "he might be, do you?" "No, we don't." "Well, at a normal drive pace...If we string a banner across the right place on Ike's new east-west mebbe he'll see it." "Alright." We'll string it near the end of the Nebraska-Iowa border 'cause we don't know zactly how far in he is." "That sounds good."
Damn, if that's not what they did. The Plains state Smokies strung a huge banner across Ike's east-west.
DR. HARRY GARMAN, CALL HOME
thing that ever happened in their lives since Uncle Harry accidentally dispatched another relative into the next world and ended up supporting the man's widow and daughter for the rest of their lives if they'd be...discrete about what killed Uncle Carl.
In the 1980's pagers somewhat eliminated the need for stringing banners across highways. Pagers were limited in availability to an elite clientele of drug dealers and physicians who you could usually tell apart because the drug dealers had the Rolex presidentials.
At some point after drug dealers and doctors, prosecutors were issued them. When I got mine, I went up and signed for it and put it on my waistband just like a drug dealer and went to lunch with my friend. On the drive to our usual Chinese restaurant it started to rain as only it can rain in Miami. And my beeper went off. "Holy Hell. Bob, we better stop. There! There's a pay phone. FUCK, I have to get out and make a phone call from a fucking pay phone in this weather!" I did. "Ann," the woman who had just issued me the beeper I had signed for. "This is Ben Harris. My beeper just went off to this number." "Just checking to see if it worked, Ben!" "Yes. Yes, it's working, Ann."
So yeah, that is the way things were with telecommunications in America before the introduction of the cellular telephone.
