I was viewing an old photo recently of someone making a call from a phone booth. As we all know phone booths are pretty scarce these days. I have no idea where Superman goes to change into his working clothes now – perhaps behind a large oak tree. However, there are not too many large oak trees in Metropolis so he may have a real problem. I guess that Batman will let him use the Batcave although it is in Gotham.
Life certainly has changed since I was a small lad just a few years ago. My parents used to send me for a week or so (probably needed the rest) to Sandy Lake, PA to visit my grandmother. For a long time she did not have a phone. When she did get one it was on a party line. That is, you shared your phone line with somebody else in town. The phone company decided who, and quite often if you picked up the phone to make a call, there would be someone yapping away. You would have to wait for what seemed like forever before you got to make your call.
The other party would not surrender the line so your house could burn down before you could raise the fire department. I will admit, however, if your fire emergency was during the day the house would most likely burn down anyhow as most of the volunteer firemen would be off at work. There might be someone. who today would be living in The Villages, and who could crank up the truck, and roll it to your address with the hope that someone might show up. Even if they did, there were not any fire hydrants so once the tank on the truck ran dry, it would be off to the creek to pump in more water and then return to your burning home.
It was exciting for the kids. I recall, one day in another small Pennsylvania town in which we lived a church caught on fire. It was a wooden structure and the fire was doing a good job on it. So I walked up to the Church front door (or at least where it had been) to watch it better. I stood there for some time before one of the volunteers finally shooed me away. In those days, you could have some inexpensive fun without a lot of noise by adults or threats of law suits. Those were the good old days.
To return to telephones, my grandmother eventually did obtain a private line. As a matter of fact, we moved to Sandy Lake and had our own private line. The telephone system in that area was not AT & T by the way. We had a much more sophisticated system that was operated by the Meadville Telephone Company. They had their own operators who would make your long distance calls for you. We did not make many of those as they were pretty expensive. It was also a big deal when someone called you long distance. The calls were always brief so that the tolls did not roll up.
Early on your phone numbers under the Meadville system were only three numbers. Therefore, you did not wear out your fingers using the rotary dial to call someone else in town. Eventually they did make you dial seven times but not all numbers. We would have a number like WA7-3564. The “WA” would stand for something like “Waldorf”. Then, if someone wanted to call you long distance, they would get an operator and tell her that they wanted Waldorf 7-3564. There were not even any area codes.
Life is different now. I just hope Superman has worked out his problem!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com