Did you look up the phone numbers of the boys you had a crush on? The information was all there in the phonebook, their dad’s name, their street and their number. So a group of my girlfriends gathered, and we decided by committee if one of us should call. We used my best friend’s basement phone, providing with us much needed privacy for this all-important call, and a bonus was the long cord, so we could sit in her twirly chairs and spin while we talked. But calling this “talking” was a stretch. I called Bill and said, “hello”…………. and then an awkward silence, and he said, “What are you doing now?”

I can’t answer that what I am doing is “twirling”, so I say, “Nothing”. The witty conversation I had planned is not going so well. We actually are in silence for a while and then he plays me some music from his record player and that becomes my new favorite song.

I have been in love with the telephone forever. I loved dialing numbers; I loved the weight of the big black phone at my grandma’s house in Oak Park. I remember her number started with two letters it was EU6-2008, EU stood for Euclid. Our number was HI7-1578 or Hickory 7-1578. That word created a sense of place. We had a cream-colored phone upstairs and harvest gold in our kitchen.

I liked talking on the phone to my friends and I could not understand that my sister did not feel the same way. I heard her answer the phone once and it was her friend and she said. “What do you want?” I almost fell over; no one really wanted anything they just wanted to talk.

With the ubiquitous cell phone, the phonebook has fallen out of use. I brought all my big Chicago phone books to my classroom when I taught Printmaking, it was perfect to scrape used ink onto the page and then discard it, like a big fat post-it tablet. I realized I needed a phonebook last summer as I sought to connect to some old time residents on Long Lake. Luckily I found my parents 1990’s phonebook. Thank goodness not much has changed up here, as all the people I searched for were listed. In the tiny town of Shell Lake there were two people with the same last name and first initial, but this was not a problem because when I called party number 1 they were the cousin to party number 2 and asked me how I was and what I wanted.

One of the first movies I saw in the theatre was Bye Bye Birdie. I was only in grammar school but something must have stuck because I went on to think I was living in the telephone song.

 

 

If the phone rang in our house when I was in junior high, I would sprint to pick up first, but pause for a moment and then say “hello”.