Ernestine

"One Ringy Dingy, Two Ringy Dingy. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" For those of you who are not old enough to remember Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, this was a line from Ernestine the Telephone Operator. Ernestine was portrayed by Lily Tomlin and she presented an excellent satirical view of how phone calls used to be made. Long before I knew her, my Mom was a telephone operator, but I try not to think of that too much because I keep getting a visual of Ernestine with her snorting laugh and nasally voice.

Telephone Operators and their manual switchboards are now a thing of the past, so far past that few people even think about them anymore. However, every time that I wind up with a partner on a golf course who is constantly taking and making calls on a cell phone, I can't help but think about how far we have come with our ability to communicate and how far removed we are from Ernestine and her switchboard.

As a young child, I remember visiting my grandparents outside of Bicknell and marveling at their telephone. It was one of those wooden boxes mounted on the wall with a separate earphone and a crank on the side that you used to send a signal to the operator's switchboard. Once you got the operator on the phone you could then tell her who you wanted to call. Also, when that phone rang at my grandparent's home, the call wasn't always for them. They were on a party line and that definitely didn't mean pick up the phone and everyone showed up for a party.

When phone lines were first established, it was cheaper for the phone companies to put several homes on one line and they called them, party lines. Consequently, each home had to have a separate ring identity to allow folks to know which house on that party line was being called. It seems like my grandparent's signal was two long rings and a short ring, or as they used to say "2 longs and a short". However, if you were a nosey individual who liked to eavesdrop on private conversations, you could pick up the phone whenever it rang and listen whenever you wanted. There was another bad aspect to this party line and that was created by line hogs. These people hogged the line and just talked and talked and talked. Then when you wanted to make a call or needed to make a call, you had to either wait or interrupt and tell them that it was an emergency and your wife was having a heart attack or something like that. I can just imagine that there were many family feuds initiated by party lines. That's probably what ticked the Hatfields off about the McCoys.

We had a dial phone at home when we were kids and it always took forever to call someone. You'd have to stick your finger in the 6 hole and turn the dial, let it return to the start position and then put your finger in the 6 hole again and turn the dial again, let it return to the start position again and so on until you dialed the seven digit number. Old people would often forget where they were in the dialing sequence and have to start all over again and then they'd smack the phone like it did something wrong. I heard that there were estimates back in the '60s in excess of hundreds of thousands of elderly citizens losing their minds just trying to dial phone numbers.

Finally someone came up with a touch tone phone that eliminated the need to dial, how clever. People everywhere were ecstatic and no longer would you hear of someone getting a disability because of dialer's finger. Within weeks of the first touch tone phones coming into homes, there were people racing to see how quickly they could call someone. Wrong numbers shot up dramatically as flying fingers flopped on the wrong keys and irate voices answered at the other end of the line. Soon after, there were phones with built in memories. These phones had memory buttons, which allowed you to preprogram numbers for all of your friends and family, then all you had to do was to press one button and the phone did the rest. It was about this time that my Mom quit cooking because she knew that by pressing one button she could get pizza delivery. Just kidding, she always had ham salad ready for us.

Back in the day, when you were out on the road on some vacation or just a trip to the city to shop and you had a vehicle problem, you had to find a pay phone to call for assistance. Can't you just visualize an old guy broke down along side the road telling his wife, "That's ok Martha, you stay here with the car and I'll walk 22 miles into town and find a pay phone and call for help." Sure, and then when he gets there, he finds that the phone book at the pay phone has either been stolen or the pages that he needs to find a mechanic or wrecker service have all been ripped out. I'm pretty sure that there were some cases where the old guy just gave up, left Martha in the car and hitched hiked to California and started a new life. Have you noticed lately that there aren't too many pay phones around these days?

At some point in time, someone discovered that mobile phones could be placed in cars, so you could call someone or receive a call while you were driving down the road. What a novel idea. At first only the very wealthy could afford anything like this and there were only two or three stretches of highway within the entire United States where it would actually work, but it was an amazing step forward in our ability to communicate on the move.

I remember back in my early days when I was sitting in a bar somewhere and someone got paged while sipping on a cold Heineken. This little plastic box attached to your belt allowed anyone to find you and get a message to you. The receiver of this message then got up and went to a pay phone at the bar, called home and said "Yes dear, just finishing up this job and I will be home shortly." It wasn't too long after that when people started carrying small cellular phones with them and these phones started ringing in the bars constantly. You couldn't even finish a song anymore. As soon as the phone rang, they'd turn down the jukebox to answer the call. Heck, it was a lot better back when the Missus called the bartender and asked if her hubby was there. "No Ma'am, Willie just left."

Now as I drive home from work, everyone's on the phone while they are driving, probably getting instructions from the Missus on what to pick up for supper or which kid to pick up where. I have one of these cellular phones myself and now and then, I'll even carry it with me. I don't have a Missus, or a girlfriend, or a Significant Other who needs to fill me in on my next move, but occasionally someone will call and want to go play golf.

Now I have OnStar and a little green telephone on my rear view mirror. If I have car problems, I just push the Star and some nice young lady comes on the line wanting to rescue me. I haven't figured out the little green phone deal on my rear view mirror yet (I don't even know the number), but I did get my second call on it last week. A young gal named Becky wanted to know if Carly was there and I told her no, but I would gladly take a message. So Carly if you are out there reading this, Becky wants you to know that she did go out with Jared and you are not going to believe what he did.