Road Apples by Tim Sanders
July 16, 2012

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Before I begin this column, I would like to point out that I am not just some prehistoric, lizard-like creature, unwilling to accept modern science due to a tiny brain and a primitive digestive system incapable of metabolizing tofu. No, I am a prehistoric lizard-like creature who fully appreciates many of the blessings that modern science has given us, and I would make more use of those blessings if only my brain were a bit larger and I could keep my tongue from darting in and out of my mouth whenever I visit the electronics department at Walmart.

I believe that home computers are marvelous things, and I am very fond of my little GPS device that allows me to type in an address and then drive directly there while that little lady’s voice tells me when to turn, and which way, and where to find the next Cracker Barrel. I’ve learned how to use my computer and my GPS, and as long as nobody gets to fooling around and micromanaging the technology so that I have to learn something else, I’ll be perfectly happy. If a thing works, why change it?

Which brings me to that one particular piece of technology that has changed time and time again over the years, and not necessarily for the better. That’s right, I’m talking about electric undershorts.

No, I’m only kidding. The device I refer to is the telephone.

When I was a kid, telephones were easy to identify and simple to operate. They were black, had rotary dials, and short cords which forced you to remain in one spot and not get to wandering around the house, breaking things, while talking. Mom kept our phone on a small table next to her sewing machine. One day while sewing Mom ran the needle through the majority of her thumb. She made a great deal of noise, and by the time I arrived on the scene she’d managed to unsew herself, but that phone was still off the hook. I made a mental note never to attempt anything dangerous, like eating with chopsticks or bathing the cat, while talking on the phone. Mom loved her phone, and she loved her sewing machine, too. Thankfully, in those days sensible people realized that neither phones nor sewing machines belonged mounted on automobile dashboards, and the world was a safer place.

And there were operators back then, too. Real, live people who actually talked to you and gave you helpful information. In the early 1950s, my Uncle Arlie and Aunt Gladys in Otterbein, Indiana still had an old wooden crank telephone mounted on their wall. They let me crank it and talk to “Central,” a nice lady who asked me if I was Charley Gephart’s grandson from Michigan. She knew my grandfather personally. That impressed me.

We may not have had crank telephones in Middleville, but we did have party lines. Actually, the word “party” was misleading. Ask your parents about party lines.
And of course there were the ubiquitous phone booths. They were not for casual conversation. They were there for important calls only. Or for when your local super hero needed to change into his tights and cape.

It was in the early 1970s when telephone technology took a turn for the worse. Even before Ma Bell’s good old, reliable monopoly was broken, the telephone answering machine had reared its ugly head. And there’s nothing more aggravating than calling someone from a pay phone, only to find you’ve wasted your money on a tape recorded message. I have an excellent true story about a lawnspray company I worked for and the message they received from a lady whose show dog had gone bald due to a heavy dose of nitrogen rich liquid fertilizer he received the previous summer. She said she was suing. I used my very best falsetto Aunt Bea voice. It was my way of taking a stand against the answering machine, and it caused the lawnspray folks extreme consternation for several hours before I let them in on the joke. Some day I’ll tell you the whole story.

Last week Marilyn got sick, and asked me to call and cancel her appointment with the hairdresser. Instead of the regular dial tone, I kept getting an intermittent BRRP-BRRP-BRRP-BRRP dial tone. When I tried it again I got the same result. Drawing on my years of manly technological expertise, I quickly diagnosed the problem. “The phone is broke,” I told her. That was when Marilyn realized that what I was hearing was a voice mail option she’d added to our phone earlier in the week. VOICE MAIL! Who needs voice mail?

Give me the good old days when there was no telephone uncertainty. None of that “Geez, I wonder if they got my voice mail message?” or “Dang, I wonder if they’re actually home and decided not to answer when they saw my name on their caller ID?” Back then there were busy signals when somebody was on the phone, and if it rang fifty or more times with no answer, then if somebody was home ignoring you, at least you’d managed to drive them crazy for awhile.

If you’ve ever waited in line for an available gas pump while the guy ahead of you kept yammering on his cell phone and forgot all about pumping gas, then you may understand why this dinosaur doesn’t really care for cell phones. Generations of Americans survived without them, and the current generation could muddle through, too, if they had to.

“Oh, but they’re so versatile,” you say. “I can tweet, and twitter, and chirp, and text, and access the Internet, and send e-mail, and even take photos and videos with mine.” True, and then again you just might get distracted while driving, run off the road and hit a cow, too.

If you want versatility, just remember that you could always take that old crank telephone’s magneto generator, run a couple of wires to your doorknob, crank that monkey vigorously and give the salesman or political candidate at the door a real surprise. And if you couldn’t noodle up enough worms cranking that little magneto in the backyard, you could still take it to the river and electrify a carp or two. I’d like to see anybody do that with a cell phone.