Does time march or does technology just relentlessly push us away from the things that once took up some of our time, consigning them to that warehouse we call memory?
I’ve got Google Voice bringing calls to my laptop and the clunky black telephone with its squiggly cable and receiver has gone to the proverbial recycling bin that claimed videotapes, “entertainment centers,” cassettes, and all the other stuff that technology, for good or ill, banished.
If you’re too young to remember the days when a house had one, maybe two phones, and one television, then you missed out on endless parental lectures and sibling battles.
Romantic sallies delivered by rotary-dial phone were immediately subject to eavesdropping and mockery. Those calls were always made on the phone with the longest cord so you could carry the phone or tug the receiver into the laundry room, bathroom, or some other semi-private place.
Even these desperate attempts at privacy were thwarted by siblings shouting, “Guess who’s on the phone again?” or, “Hang up, no way is she going out with you.”
The many instances in which parental intervention tamped down sibling harassment never applied to telephone calls because your parents had only one rule about calls, “Hang up, already, we don’t own Mountain Bell” — a reference to the long-extinct company that provided phone service in Colorado.
The wall space in proximity of the phone was always covered with quickly-scrawled numbers because your mother’s edict about keeping a notepad and pencil next to the phone lasted for about a day before both implements were replaced by the nearest available Crayon or lipstick tube.
My grandparents had a phone so old its number was actually a combination of letters and numbers hearkening back to the “party line” days when first-generation telephone networks allowed anyone and everyone to listen in on calls.
Rules also governed television watching in the prehistoric days before shows “streamed” across laptop screens.
We had a “rumpus room” console TV viewable under limited conditions. Sunday was family night, meaning “Wild Kingdom,” “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color,” and “Bonanza” could be viewed by one and all.
Kids-only watching occurred under specific circumstances: on nights when our parents were out for the evening and on snow days after we had completed mandatory excursions outdoors encompassing snowball fights, galoshes packed with snow, and wet wool mittens followed by hot cocoa.
I remember with the fondest nostalgia sitting nestled in the dark on a snowy afternoon with siblings, cousins and friends, watching Vincent Price movies and luxuriating in the knowledge that chances were good school would get called off tomorrow.
Parental nights out meant we feasted on Swanson TV dinners while watching “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and “Room 222” (Karen Valentine was my first crush).
The television rule underwent a slight revision as we got older with pre-homework viewing of “McHale’s Navy,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Superman,” and “Green Hornet,” allowed.
My favorite times in front of the TV were alone with my dad when he let me watch professional wrestling or World War II documentaries with him while he smoked his pipe and told me about guys who were in the war.
My most memorable viewing moment came during a late November week in 1963. I knew something big had happened as soon as I saw the black-and-white set up on a TV stand in the kitchen. I remember sitting silently with my parents watching the caisson roll down Pennsylvania Avenue followed by the world’s leaders, and John John in his cloth coat raising his little hand in salute.
