Telephone

I was thinking about telephones the other day, and the history of the telephone in my lifetime. When we moved to Farmington Falls in 1967 one of the features of the old farmhouse we moved into that my mother really liked was the old-fashioned crank telephone. What she soon learned was that antique was less than one year removed from active service, and that many people in the area still used crank telephones with a real live operator (like in Vienna, Maine). In fact, there were not enough “private” telephone lines in the Farmington Falls area, so we were part of a party line for a few years. The good thing about that was that many of us did not use the telephone to talk to people a lot – it was for emergencies and information. Long distance calls were quite expensive back in the day.

Bryant Pond, Maine was one of the last towns in America to change over from crank telephones in 1982, and many people there didn’t want to change over. One summer I worked going to many schools in the area and stopped by Bryant Pond, so I knew that they still had the “old-fashioned” telephones – this was probably in 1979. I graduated from college in 1981 – so these phones were still being used after I left college – not so long ago (well, maybe it is long ago – 35 years).

Since then, the telephone revolution has exploded. Many people do not have land lines at all, and cell phones now rule the world. We still have a landline – my wife is slow to change (although I don’t think that she ever used a crank phone as I had). I’ve been told that there is more technology in a cell phone than there was on Apollo 11 (1969). I know that I listen to music and podcasts on my phone – if that counts.

Today’s podcast doesn’t touch on telephone technology, but many of the songs were done while Bryant Pond was talking to an operator for an outside line. Remember the past with the Spinners, the Five Stairsteps, Eddie Floyd, Otis Redding, XTC, the Pretty Things, the Move, the Friends of Distinction, the Sisters of Mercy, the Teardrop Explodes, Caterwaul, Wayne County, Cass McCombs, Matthew Sweet, and Hawkwind.

This podcast is available to stream or download at brennick.net. Thank you for taking the time to stream or download this podcast, or any of the other podcasts, all of which are still available at brennick.net. Please leave comments and suggestions at the site (I do read the comments), and share this with other like-minded friends. Thank you.
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