I haven’t had a landline since 2000. It just doesn’t make sense when everyone in the household has a cell phone, and you can call everywhere in the US without having to pay extra.
http://www.dilbert.com/2009-12-11/

At some point, something has to give in the increasing cost for more types of connectivity: Phone, cell, internet, cable, …

I’m discovering at Christmas, going through my list of family phone numbers, that I can’t reach those who have only cell phones. What’s that about? A nephew tells me they don’t display caller ID. When I leave a message to call back, it doesn’t happen, which makes some sense, since there needs to be a spirit of connection to spur my outreach, and the relative (in my family) doesn’t feel like fishing for that at some random time, and I’m not sure on my end if I will remember why I had called, or be able to re-invent that spirit.
So we try e-mail, and it falls apart because e-mail is not anywhere close to a head-to-head in-the-moment exchange. It’s more like speaking in public, in a way relevant at any time, relevant to anyone (if I haven’t spoken with the person in question).
I grieve.

I understand that the younger generation wants to be in touch continually with a great number of possible call recipients. My son and his wife have cut the ties to their land line and have set sail by cell phone alone. For myself, however, without this need for constant connection wherever I am, and noting that the quality of service via cell phone is still spotty and often not as clear as the land line, and noting further the health trade-offs that appear to be part of extensive cell phone use, I’ll stick with the land line and use the cell as auxiliary communication device.

The title of this subject “When land lines go away” is a misnomer. Those telephone poles are still going to be there, the lines will still be there, they are not going to disappear. As long as they exist and that is what they were put there for, that is what I will use. Why contribute anymore to the hundreds of thousands of tons of waste to our children’s landfills? Why subject my brain to new Electromagnetic Fields which have already been proven to cause tumors and cancer clusters in come areas?
Telephones already exist and they are not going anywhere.

I think wireless devices are supposed to start showing exactly the level of radiation with a little picture of a child’s brain. By the way, I’m listening to a wireless headset right now, as I do many hours each day, have for decades. I can overhear other people’s cellphone calls like this, but I’ve never gotten brain cancer. Maybe it’s different.

My husband and I are seriously considering getting rid of our landline. My only hesitation is the ability of emergency services to quickly and accurately locate us via 911 should we ever have the need.

would that not mean that all those polls conducted by phone are not actually correct? since many 20’s 30’s 40’s dont have one and use cell phones?

The Vonage phone I have is great, and much cheaper for great services, but it still isn’t as reliable as the old-style Bell/AT&T-style phone.

I don’t feel the need to have constant connectivity to the world. But I worry about what happens if our mobile technology fails. The lack of old-style land lines might reach out and bite us one of these days.

Plenty of people on probation or awaiting trial are living with their aunt or uncle or grandmother because those ankle bracelets require they live by a landline (without caller ID).
Also, I think 911 requires a landline to provide an accurate address. Maybe GPS will fix that. But if someone calls without chance to talk, the landline tells what needs to be told all by itself.

Keeping a landline does have some benefits. I’ll never forget on 9/11 when cellphones went dead (at least they were where I was, at Logan airport, while payphones were working). Also, “landline” options via VOIP, like Lingo and Vonage are solid alternatives to the copper lines.

I spent 12 years consulting with phone companies and I must say, 9/11 proved that these new phone systems are not built to handle the volume of calls an emergency causes. The NYC cells saturated within minutes and calling on your cell was useless.

These services like Vonage and other Voice over IP depend on a network that is not likely to hold up well to an emergency either. How long will the network interface last when the power goes out? There was a time when you could lose power for days and still have dialtone. Not anymore.

It will take a couple more disasters before we realize what we have lost.

Many people suffer effects like headaches and insomnia from cell phone use, not to mention vision loss and brain tumors.

I live in rural Vermont. We have a land line, and cell phones. Although we usually have no problem with cell service at our house, we have been unable to get a signal for several days now. We can’t consider losing the land line until cell service is absolutely reliable, and no doubt others in rural areas are in a similar situation.

I have a cell phone, but I’m keeping my land line for now. I’ll second the comments about spotty coverage, dropped calls, and overall poor sound quality on cell phones. A land line also allows for multiple phones within a house, so you don’t have to carry your phone with you to hear an incoming call. I’ve missed many calls because my cell was set to vibrate (while I was at work) and I forgot to switch back to an audible ringer when I set the phone down on the table at home. You can also have multiple people in one conversation with a landline, something impossible with cells.

I detest cell phones. Why?

First, I feel they have hindered communication between my two 20-something children and me. The connection is usually bad, especially when compared to my land line, plus, calls are dropped regularly. Also, I don’t like the feeling that I am exposing my children to a dose of radiation to the head every time I talk to them. I am pleading with them to get land lines.

Second, I am fed up with sitting behind a car at a green light because the person in front of me is dialing or texting. Cell phones are a huge road hazard. I feel cell phones have created a lot more problems than they have solved.

Cell phones don’t work well for emergencies.
the times I have used it to call police or EMS
I have had INTERMINABLE waits while the 911 operator tries to locate the emergency service provider for the area that I am in. even if you are at HOME you have to go through this as the calls don’t route locally. when you call 911 from your landline they know IMMEDIATELY where you are. I never here this issue raised when this topic is discussed. theresa weir somerville MA

Cell phones have reduced the stress of families exeperiencing separation and divocre by easing and improving communcation between parents and children.

The idea of a landline, or “household telephone” is long gone and now strangely a luxury, which cell phones used to be. You call people, not households. I do kind of miss the perfunctory exchange with my friends’ family as I tried to get a hold of the person I was actually calling. Also, a household phone is more likely to get answered and get that person on the phone.

The only land connection we need is broadband internet. Vonage lines can easily be moved to any location with internet connections. Friends, just moved to Florida and just got the internet there and plugged in their vonage lines. I have two houses, and just bring my vonage lines to the other house and plug it in up and runing. Vonage is cheap and easy. Also I have a Magic Jack for on the road connections which works fine too.

I live in rural Colorado so the only way to get high speed Internet is by DSL, which means I have to have a land line. I consider the roughly $25 a month for the phone as a tax on my DSL. The only time my phone rings it’s usually someone trying to sell me something so I tend to let my voice mail take the call. If someone needs to call me they either have my cell number or my Google Voice number.

We gave up our land line when we moved to Vermont in 2004- but now that we have a toddler we are considering getting one so our child can talk to his grandparents in SC. We don’t like him even being near our cell phones due to radiation being emmited.

There’s also the murky issue of health risks due to cellular radio waves. I was reading an article in Prevention Magazine in the supermarket line a few days ago about a new study with scary indications of cancer risk from heavy cellphone use. Thus I much prefer to use my landline for calls at home

Communicating more and more, but listening less and less.

I agree with the guest who said that cell phones are good for keeping who are close closer. Also the poster who mentions the helpful role in divorces. Those of us with landlines probably like me let a lot of calls roll through to the answering machine, but the phone is considered a way to reach out and be reached out to. If you can keep the world simple enough that you do not consider any unexpected call to be de facto SPAM, you can get something from a landline that apparently people don’t expect on cells.
Reason: for one thing, there is no Phone Book for cell phones. A landline person is, as I am hearing Tom say, “stable.” He is reachable in public through use of the phone directory. It’s quite different. And as I say, certain of my relations (full grown) apparently aren’t used to having the cell phone bring in people they aren’t in contact with virtually nonstop.
The world is so connected that we have to find ways to DISCONNECT. Only call me before 7:00, for instance, because after that I start my four beers, or whatever. Something like that.

another recent New Yorker cartoon: 2 guys walking & talking, one with a cell phone: “I hate calling her, she always picks up.”

Land line? Long gone my blackberry gets news, many video shows
and an internet browser. Stopped internet and cable TV. I get enough news that I will not
renew my newspaper. I can even get NPR
Live. The transformation will not take as long as your guests think.
Dean Glastonbury CT

Our family has had a ‘no cell phones until highschool’ policy. However, recently my husband and I have been discussing getting cell phones for our two middle schoolers…we are not anxious to let them have phones, however, it makes economic sense!

I also believe that with a cell phone there is MORE control, not less. AT&T provides parental controls that allow us to limit who can call as well as who can be called. It also provides a log of what numbers the boys are calling.

One of our highschoolers is allowed unlimited access however, we make extensive use of parental controls with the other, limiting the times of the day the phone can be used and how many texts he an send. After hours, he can always or text one of our cell phones…

There have been a couple times when one or the other of the boys have been ‘missing’ for a period of time and refusing to answer the phones. Using the list of numbers they had recently accessed we were easily able to figure out who they had been talking with and track them down.

No land lines presumably means kids using cell phones at younger ages. Apart from the socio-cultural consequences of such a development, what about the health risks? Cell phones emit much higher rates of electro-magnetic emissions that land lines, and increasingly experts are saying that the risks for the developing brains of kids are significant. For that reason I wouldn’t even consider abandoning my land line at this point.

The next step is to move to Open Source VOIP softphones. On beyond Skype (a proprietary network) is SIP. With a free SIP account and a softphone on my computer or smartphone, I can do everything my old phone did under the restraints of ole Ma Bell.

We can now embrace the genius of worldwide collaboration of the Open Source community. Check out voxalot.com, Fring and WeePhone for iPhone, and Google Voice. It’s an open door.

Your guests keep talking about the privacy of cell phones. However people often use bad judgment and make private information public. I am in clinical psychology and work with children. I don’t like to call a parent back about a clinical matter on a cell phone because on numerous occasions parents have discussed very private information in a public place like the grocery store. I always ask where the person is and if we can talk privately, but that doesn’t deter them. And of course there’s the more general issue of people using cell phones to broadcast their personal lives in public places, a practice we all say we deplore but which it seems the majority of us engage in.

I still have a landline, and I definitely prefer that over my cellphone. The landline handset is more comfortable to use, size-wise, and provides better and more reliable sound. Also, what about the concerns of radiation and cancer? I’ve read an article or two on that being a concern.

Land lines are still needed for alarm and fire systems in the home. Also, how does wireless impact 911 and first responders. On the other hand, the GPS feature of a phone helps emergency and finding your children!

The problem with cell-phone-only communications is that they require an enormous seamless wireless infrastructure, including many more cell towers and antennas hidden wherever possible. From a health and environmental perspective, this is unsafe. Wildlife is known to abandon areas when cell towers are installed. People are reacting badly within 1500′ of cell towers and in adjacent buildings with antenna arrays installed on rooftops. The European Union, the German government, the UK and several other countries are advising citizens not to abandon landlines and to keep cell calls short. They are also advising that children under the age of 16 not be allowed to use cell phones except in cases of emergency. The French government has outlawed wireless computers (wi-fi)throughout the national library system because librarians were being made ill with chronic headaches, flu-like symptons, sleeplessness and other health complaints. If you check comparable sales figures in many European countries, landlines are not only holding steady but there is a network called “Rewire Me” that is addressing this exact issue. Despite being mostly low-power (in comparison to broadcast exposures), cell infrastructure exposures are not biologically benign,despite what the industry would like people to think. Fiberoptic and copper are much safer systems. While many people want cell serice, no one wants to live 24/7 next to the infrasture — a chronic, low-level, non-discretionary exposure to non-ionizing radiation.

B. Blake Levitt
Former New York Times writer, award-winning-author, Electromagnetic Fields, A Consumer’s Guide to the Issues

What about devices such as:

XLink BT Cellular Bluetooth Gateway
Connect THREE cell phones to your regular phones.
http://www.myxlink.com/xlink_bt.aspx

that serves as a compromise and enhancement?

Great topic. Quick Question – what happens to the in-home security systems when people move away from land lines? Companies like Vonage do not support security systems installed in homes with older land line. I’d like your expert’s comment on this issue. Thanks.

I have an old style push button (couldn’t find rotary) phone and I love it. It sits beside our living room couch. No screens to look at and you’re tethered to it by the chord. Wow, I have to actually sit and talk to people without distraction. Plus, we have young girls who we want to know how to use a phone in the case of an emergency.

Modernity kills!

Before the show is over, I hope that Tom addresses the health risks (proven and still under research) associated with cell phone use, especially for young children. This seems to me to trump all other arguments to ditch landlines.
(I hope I didn’t miss hearing this, if it was discussed already.)

Tom: You need a land line at home if you want 911 to work.
Also, long distance calls on my landline are ten cents per minute. On my cell, they’re $1.00 per minute. both are Verizon.

Re: Bandwidth, services, & telecom companies: See Bill Moyers’ PBS programs “Net@Risk”

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html

A few years old, but still very relevant. I show it to various of my IT intro courses as an end-of-semester activity, and it tends to blow students away. Their most common reaction: “I had no idea…”

Note especially the case study they do in Louisana.

j

Last night I definitely felt the pinch of not having a land line. I locked my purse with my keys and cell phone in the trunk of my car outside of my apartment. I had to bother a neighbor to call AAA.
I haven’t had a land line since graduating college in 2004.

What about fax usage vis-a-vis cell-phone only households?

Thx.

Bob

Back to the idea of who is listening to our conversations . . . today, instead of the family listening in the background, until recently, many were worried that the “government” was listening in! During the Bush administration, one worried if you uttered “al quaeda,” etc. — that someone would suddenly begin listening to your conversation!

Was thinking about getting rid of my landline, but the other day, an elderly genlteman collapsed outside our house. I dialed 911 from my mobile, and got as far as saying that an ambulance was needed when the call got dropped. I then made the call from our landline. It won’t be going away soon.

I dropped my landline after moving to a new apartment, started receiving many spam calls on the landline, but years later to this day still rarely receive spam on my cellphone.

People with landlines — to your guest — are not necessarily on the net. People over a certain age tend not to be on the net. I am often trying to get spellings for people’s names. I often have to turn to my collection of phone directories from the Year One.

I’ll check out when IMPLANTABLE cell phones come into vogue, put under skin so folks can be on the phone all the time, even when showering, in court, in class, in church, etc.

Now a quick fill in the blank puzzle for your guest

“will that be person to person or …”

answer: “station to station”. I fine that even people who lived in that era have forgotten till reminded. Times have changed and quickly.

It surprises me that Americans are not bothered by a few things that bug me about the new technologies:

Note:
The companies are being paid by both the caller and the recipient;

In other countries (like the Europeans) consumers and their govt protection agencies have negotiated much better contracts, prices and services;

The quality of voice service in the US has deteriorated, whether over cell or fiber optic delivery to land line.

Re: Bandwidth, services & telecoms – PS

File that under “Who’s Got The Deepest Pockets?” Dept.

j

I don’t like cell phones I prefer my “land line” because the delay when conversing on a cell phone is annoying. Long live the land line!

What about directory assistance. Who do I call or where can I go to find the cell phone number of someone for whom I only have a name for?

Working in a law office I receive calls from prospective clients left on the office answering machine. Calls from cell phones will sometimes cut out, usually when they are leaving their phone number or other important information for the attorneys. It is very frustrating for me, our business and I am sure for them, when I am not be able to return the call.
However, I am now able to text the attorney using my personal cell phone while he is in court.

Telecom and cable companies are advancing the concept of convergence of voice,video and internet via copper or preferably an optical cable to the home. The new land line is this converged media. Hence your cellphone will be able to act through either a wireless connection or, if at home, via WiFi or a femtocell through your internet based land line. Everyone in a household will have their own phone and their own phone number which travels with them.

I wish the radiation question was asked earlier in the show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health

Too many gullible, technophobic people out there. Cell phones cooking an egg? Nope. Carefully manufactured hoax, and admitted as such: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_cook_egg_cell_phones.htm.

What is current state of FAXing??
some professionals need to have a client’s signature on a form or contract – one can email a PDF of the form to client, but once client signs it, not many persons have a scanner. Is FAXing of such forms as legally acceptable as US mail of the orig. signed form.
there is FAX to internet serviced, but my question remains – How much is use of FAXing (of signed forms, contracts, etc.) holding back the extinction of FAXing (which, I presume, relies on landlines)???

We moved from Brooklyn to rural Vermont last summer, where there’s no cell reception, so we had to get a land line again for the first time in years. Unfortunately for us, we also had to get all kinds of countermeasures against autodialers, telemarketers and assorted scam artists.

We’re on the do not call registry, we’ve got caller ID, and we’ve got automatic screening for callers from unknown/private numbers. It’s frustrating to have to pay extra for those features, but it’s necessary because telemarketers and phone scammers basically own the landlines now. As soon as cell coverage comes to our remote hollow, I’ll happily cut our land line again — hopefully forever.

I have a land line, and I recently just got rid of my cell because of radiation concerns. I knew a couple people who have died from brain cancer at relatively young ages who were heavy cell phone users. Istead I signed up for Skype and use my computer as a phone.

What we are going through with cell phones v. landlines collision is typical of what we do when new technologies arrive. Some persons embrace the new world as they see it and imagine that it is the solution to all previous problems. Some persons at the other end of the spectrum reluctantly adopt the new technology or perhaps don’t at all. In between are the rest of us trying to figure out what the new technology is good for and where it doesn’t work, and this discussion shows that process taking place. There are ALWAYS trade-offs to be understood and accepted or rejected. At some point, most of us will work out this balance between usefulness and impediment and determine just what the proper function of the new technology is – neither alysium nor hell, but rather just another tool in the kit to be used appropriately.

Hmmm. well time will tell as it always does, if there are real reasons to be concerned about health issues and cell phones. I don’t have a cell and don’t want one. I had one, I thought the bill was way too high and got rid of it. The other reason I don’t have one is I don’t want to feel like I am on call, and that’s the feeling I associate with them. On another related note, I also don’t own a computer. I use one at work, or the public library, but I don’t want to be using my precious time on a computer. I am a very private person. Lastly, there are few people I really want to hear from, or talk to. The ones I do? I will see them in person.

How about SKYPE for long distance and land line for local service and incoming calls only? Is it possible to save on the phone budget this way? Cable TV is a waste of money but internet is practically essential and cable has a broadband monopoly. (we cant get verizon here)
I like having a land line but I hate being ripped off for long distance (calls to places about 8 miles or more away). We have been abused by the lack of regulation to keep prices reasonable and by tele-marketers too. Generally the phone is reliable, and anything less is not acceptable. I like that my name (family) is in the phone book so my name and number are part of the neighborhood and the town too, it is part of the house, and i share it with the people (family) i share the house with.

Ripped, Verizon started charging me for NOT placing long-distance calls — after calling me more or less every month for many years offering me an all-you-can-use global service, to which I said I almost never place long-distance calls thank you.
So they began charging me about $4.00 a month for the privilege of being able to place long-distance calls had I chosen to. That $4.00 was more than the difference I would pay to get the call-all-you-can coverage. The problem seems to be they don’t like printing out the calls I make on the bill, which I need in order to make the appropriate deductions on my taxes for business calls.
As it is, with the call-all-you-want system, I can’t break out the business calls. It’s sort of like the business deduction for interest on business loans: once the banks began offering “business” cards, I understood you could only deduct that interest on specifically “business” cards. But the rates on “business” cards were much higher.
If I were a larger business, I might hire a lawyer. If I were a larger business a lot would be different.
The communications companies need regulation on all fronts. See the Bill Moyers link above about the threat to content even on the INTERNET, believe it or not. I can’t see how, frankly, except that when I google certain things, some of it seems pre-selected. I see 2,548 finds, and the top 10 are suspiciously similar in certain regards, favoring certain types of sites. I think I will just pay attention to the BBC, I sometimes tell myself, from a nation that liberates some of its media more than we do.
Of the 100,000 “apps” on cell phones, making them minicomputer-bases, the phone companies get more control over content (again), versus the networks, it seems to me.

I just bought a new land line pushbutton desk phone at WalMart for thirty bucks. We pay $1 per domestic long distance call regardless of length.

From what I understand Verizon does offer unlimited long distance on most cell plans. I have never payed for a long distance call on my cell phone.

I was looking into dropping my land line but I now think that the 911 aspect alone or a power outage is a good reason to keep it. The basic rate is about $12 per month.

On another note cable is very expensive and Comcast is a monopoly in my area. Verizon is having some kind of feud with the Mayor Menino of Boston over FIOS.

Not sure what is going on as there are to many stories about it.

Basically there is no real competition in the cable market, kind of similar to the health care market.

911–

no one is considering safety…if you call 911 from a mobile phone, your local PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) maight not be able to locate you via your mobile phone signal. When you’re indoors, the ability to locate you are diminished. The land line offers an exact address correlated via MSAG that an ambulance or fire department can use to find you immediately.

Triangulation and signal strength only have to be accurate %90 percent of the time and only up to 100 meters.

If you have young children or elderly adults in the home, you should really consider this issue before cutting the cord.

I have a two year old granddaughter, and I am sad for her that she will never have a number that connects her to her family. Her mother, my youngest child, proudly learned our land-line number with the help of her big brother and sister when she was three. What number will be Lily’s? How does learning her mommy’s cell and her daddy’s cell give HER a sense of belonging? I use technology daily, but I do fear that we are losing much of the connectivity that we had before we were so connected.

http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp

that bit about cooking eggs with cellphone radiation is nonsense.

I have no choice but to keep my landline, simply because my slightly impaired hearing can’t cope with the poorer quality of cellphones.

For me, conversing when one end is a cellphone is difficult – conversing when both ends are cellphones is impossible.

Whatever’s causing the poor quality, it’s seemingly not inherent in cellphone technology, as cellphone quality in some other countries is a whole lot better than here. Somebody has made what they probably saw as simply an economic decision that moves me into the “handicapped” category.

I’m not a cellphone fan simply because they sound to me like gibberish. Anybody else?

I have a blackberry and unfortunately it has become as for most a necessity in my life and work. And, although I do use the phone for obvious reasons when doing so I am cognizent of its association to radiation. I’m concerned that children use the technology as much as adults and as I listen to the conversation in the back ground this evening (repeat of this morning’s show), I’m surprized no one addresses it as a concern. I’ve learned to pick up a land line or use the speaker/my ear piece more often. Reason being is there have been times when the unit heats up or I’ve felt a bit whoozy afterward. I’m certain others have felt this perhaps?

Great show! I’m enclosing a piece I recorded years ago about our party line, and that’s still played every year on Vermont Public Radio Christmas morning.

A YANKEE NOTEBOOK
Willem Lange
Box 288
Etna, New Hampshire 03750
December 19, 1988

CHRISTMAS ON THE PARTY LINE

I was filling out a Medicare form the other day, and it struck me how much things have changed around me, even though I haven’t. I’ve had the same name now for over 70 years, and I haven’t moved from the house I was born in. And this town has even fewer people in it now than when I was just a boy. But my address has gotten a lot more complicated — Highway Contract number, box number, and zip code. And my telephone number! Judas! Takes half a minute just to dial all the numbers! That’s if you can remember ‘em all, without checking halfway through to see if you’re still headed right.

When I was a younger fellow, between the Great Depression and the Second War, things were a lot simpler. Just your name and the name of your town would get a letter to you. The mailman knew everybody. If you wanted to mail a letter and didn’t have a stamp, you just left the letter and a few pennies in the mailbox. And the telephone numbers didn’t strain your memory, either.

Our party line number was 24, and our phone ring one short, one long. There were 17 families on our line, and we all had a different ring — one short, two longs; two shorts, two longs; like that. We could call each other just by picking up the receiver and, if nobody else was on the line, cranking the handle the right number of rings.

If we wanted to call somebody on another line, or long distance, then we rang one short. That was Central, Elsie Thayer. She was the operator, and had the switchboard in her kitchen. You just told her who you wanted, and she’d get ‘em on the line. If there was trouble anywhere in the neighborhood, everybody’d hear one long, continuous ring. That meant a fire or accident, and that somebody needed help. You’d pick up the receiver to find out who and where.

To me, one of the worst things that’s happened to America in the past 50 years is the private telephone line. The sense of community we shared as a result of that party line is gone now. Of course it wasn’t always convenient. It was kind of like a big family with one bathroom. You had to learn to accommodate one another. And of course we all knew each other’s business. My lord, yes! Whenever the phone rang, no matter whose ring it was, almost everybody’d pick up. You could hear babies crying, clocks chiming, maybe a radio in the background. And the more people there were on the line, the louder you had to holler to make yourself heard. Once in a while one or another of the parties’d get just a bit steamed up.

There was none of this soap opera stuff on the telephone in those days. The phone was for convenience only; and anybody who got a reputation for heavy personal talk could be sure of what they now call a 100% market share whenever his or her ring came over the line.

Well, there was a couple who lived way at the end of the line, where the road dead-ended just under Hubbard Notch. Chisum, their name was. They rented the old Hubbard Place and farmed it, but that was an awful tough place, and they couldn’t have been more than scraping by. No electricity or running water yet. They sold wool every year, and swapped garden truck and syrup for groceries. Not unfriendly, but they kept pretty much to themselves. Just a pair of regular old-time Yankees toughing out the Depression on pure grit and patience.

They raised three kids up there — a couple of boys and a girl — but none of them stayed on. The boys found work in St. Johnsbury, and the daughter married and settled in Lancaster. So the two old folks were alone up there. Their ring was three shorts and a long. The only way I knew it was by the directory card, because Lord knows I never heard it.

Around Christmas the calls on our line always got more interesting. You knew who was coming home for the holidays, and who wasn’t, and if anybody was having a party. And around Christmas of 1939 it turned out that things weren’t too good up at the Hubbard place.

I saw Doc Barton’s car go by several times in a couple of weeks, so I knew that somebody above us on the dirt road was sick. It had to be at the Chisums’. Everybody else up there was on the phone regularly. So my wife and I kind of kept track of the one-ring calls to Central (Doc was on another line), and we found out that the old man was down and pretty bad.

Then one night there was a three-short, one-long ring. It was the Chisums’ daughter in Lancaster. You could hardly hear her. But she was saying that she and her family weren’t going to be able to come up over Christmas. Too busy, too far to travel — you know. “Oh, dear,” the old lady said, “your father’ll be so sad. Ralph and Bert can’t make it, either, and I know how he’d like to see you all again.” It broke my heart to hear it.

So on the day before Christmas, when I was up in the field getting a tree, I cut another little one, besides. My wife had put up a few Mason jars of soup, and a casserole, and an extra apple pie. The kids had painted up some milkweed pods and made strings of popcorn. During the afternoon we threw everything into the old Chevy and headed up the road.

It was snowing, and there was fresh snow on the ground, but there was maybe half a dozen sets of tire tracks in the road. They kept going even beyond Caswells’, which was the last place before the Chisums’. And when we pulled into the dooryard, there were about four or five cars there already. There were lamps in the windows. Smoke was rolling out of the chimney, and you could hear voices inside. Out back by the woodshed, you could hear the thunk of a splitting maul and the rumble of firewood being stacked on the back porch. Joe Caswell and his boy were carrying things into the smokehouse and hanging them up. And — wonder of wonders! — the three Sheehan boys were wheeling barn dressing out to the manure pile. Those birds’d never even clean their own barn unless their old man threatened ‘em with a pistol! All at once we heard Canadian sleigh bells, and here came Theo Corriveau in his pung, with his wife and at least six of their kids, and a couple of hind quarters of ven’son. And all these years he’d been pretending he didn’t understand English!

What a party that was! The women were doing as well inside as the men outside. The kids were trimming the tree. Old Man Chisum was parked in a rocker by the cookstove with a brand-new quilt tucked around him, sipping a cup of ginseng tea and smelling of a fresh mustard plaster. The missus was smiling and looking kind of bewildered, and helping the women to find what they needed to get the dinner on the table.

Even the pastor and his wife were there. When he said grace, he pronounced it with a voice so clear you’d never have suspected him of listening in on a party line. We ate sitting around the table, sitting on the floor, standing by the open door, it was so warm in the room.

Afterwards some of the women wanted to sing, but of course there was no piano. “Ah!” says Corriveau. “Un moment!” And out the door he goes. A few seconds later he popped back in with a squeezebox — a concertina, he called it, or some such thing. All you had to do was hum a little bit of the carol you wanted to sing, and the son of a gun could play it!

During the evening the sky cleared and the moon came out, and we all drove home in a parade by moonlight with our headlights off, and all the kids hanging their faces out the windows looking for the little sleigh in the sky.

No, don’t tell me how wonderful all these new gadgets are. I know I could pick up my phone and call London or Tokyo direct. And nobody could listen in, unless he had a court order. But how I miss being able to just give my old wall phone a nice, long crank, wait for about a dozen clicks, and then wish all my neighbors at once a Merry Christmas!

Ironic that Spencer’s phone quality on the show was almost unintelligible. I assume he was using a cell phone.
More importantly, cell phones are problematic in an emergency. Cell towers overload when they try to handle a large surge of calls. In Katrina, cell phone and portable radio communications failed after just a few hours, and there was no way to recharge the batteries. Land lines continued to work while the wires were underwater.
Cell phones are another of the increasingly “delicate” technologies that only work when all the links in a long chain work perfectly.
Dependence on cell phones and the Internet and other delicate technologies is leading us down the primrose path. A sudden breakdown, whether accidental or intentional, would leave millions of people disconnected and vulnerable.

“A sudden breakdown, whether accidental or intentional” — I bet the defense department is thinking of this. How to bring down the US economy, for dummies. Well, for nerds.

When we moved to Reno, we went wireless. Including our home security system.

I am single 40 something and struggle with this gray area. My cell phone links to my cars bluetooth, when I get home it switches to my house phone blue tooth so that each phone in the house receive my cell phone calls. The phone company finally said $10 a month to keep the land line open and I only do that because of my insecurity of not having easy 911 service to the house.

It’s a lnog the lines of change as I rarely visit a physical bank or buy stamps at the post office anymore.

I have a land line and a cell phone. When there was a flood in the area I live in cell phone use was impossible for days. I was very glad to have a land line available and will continue to keep it. Although I could cut having the land line I do not want to risk in an emergency not having the use of my cell phone.

[...] Click here to listen to the segment. [...]

[...] [...]

I am only able to listen to segments of my local NPR station due to my job. I did get to hear the last caller and was floored by her total ignorance of cellphone technology. Hard boil an egg??? Brain cancer??? Crumbling hip bones??? There was a great article in Skepticle Enquirer that explained the actual power of a cell phone. It was compaired to yellow light and microwave ovens, because of the frequency difference in orders of magnitude. Everyone should check it out. Extrordinary claims requier extrodinary evidence.

I’ve never liked the sound quality of cell phones, even in a good signal area.

When I moved into my house, near the laundry was a Western Electric model 554. (Western Electric was the manufacturing arm of the Bell System). Out of curiosity, I opened the cover. It was dated 1954 inside, and to my knowledge has had no service besides being wiped off. How many cell phones will still be working 5 years from manufacture, much less 56 years later?

I liked it so well I bought a WE 302 for the living room (I have an old house) from this place in Wisconsin, Phonecoinc, who specializes in old phones. It’s from 1939, though it’s had the cord replaced, so not quite as genuine as the 554.

So you can’t navigate a voice menu with them, waiting on the line gets you a person faster than diving six tiers into phone tree hell. I chuckle at the “Property of the Bell System” molded into the inside of the hand sets. I’m not sure we weren’t better off leaving Ma Bell alone.

Oh, yea, each of my WE phones sound far better than any cell phone, despite their age.

“Oh, yea, each of my WE phones sound far better than any cell phone, despite their age.”
Posted by James (Midwest)

Thanks for sharing! I with you 100% on the superior sound quality of the “old school” equipment, as well as the superior quality of the analog era from which they originated. I agree, Ma Bell was one monopoly that should’ve been given a pass; phone service has steadily gone south ever since Ma Bell was dismantled.

In fact, I never realized the 500 came in so many colors (see link). It’s hard to beat the classic black for retro-chic, though.

Hmm, link didn’t show up:

http://www.phonecoinc.com/topic.asp?category=Modern&topic=01018