Party line

Friends and regular readers know that I turned 46 years old a few weeks ago (and to many of you, that's really old!). But thanks to anachronism, sometimes I feel even older. For example, when Barbara and I moved into our first home in 1981, there was a building boom in the area, and the phone company couldn't keep up. So the only phone service we could get was a party line -- a single phone line we shared with our next-door neighbors. Whenever we picked up the phone to call Mom or order a pizza, there was a chance that our neighbor might already be on the line (and of course, we never listened in). Party line technology mostly went out in the '50s, but we lived with it for about 6 months in 1981 until the phone company got around to upgrading us.

Have you experienced any old-timey tech in your lifetime?

Comments

[Chris]

I just setup a real vinyl record player (Technics SL-D303) for the first time ever. Does that count? :)

[Chrome Poet]

I grew up old, old tech. No indoor water until grade-school and only an outhouse until high-school. Our party-line was still active when I graduated in 1969. The bell in my first school was rung by rope and the restrooms were, yuppers, out the back. We made hay with three-tined forks, milked by hand and cooked our food on a wood-fueled stove. Still, I managed to make a living in high-tech, though occasionally, when stuck in traffic and late for a meeting, I miss the simplicity, if not the aching muscles of my early days.

[Stridey]

When I was a child (late 80s. How old does *that* make you feel?) our town was small enough that you only needed to dial the last 4 digits of any in-town phone call, and could leave of the town code.

Also, just today I was using a Steiner Synthesizer (like this but older, and wooden).

[Uli Kusterer]

I have a tube radio here in my room that I'm still using. Does that count?

Apart from that most old stuff is actually owned by my parents or grandparents, and I just got to experience it. E.g. my Grandma had one of those toilets where you pulled a chain so they'd flush (and if you weren't careful, the chain'd come out and fall on your head), and a wood stove in the bathroom.

We also still have a tape recorder (with reels, not cassettes), and my grandparents used to have a small farm cart with wooden wheels with iron bands.

[Uli Kusterer]

Oh: Of course I also got to experience records, but most of them were already plastic (we even had a few "audiobooks" that came in the cat food box and were basically '45 singles made of plastic foil). A friend of mine had a grammophone, that was fun to try out once (crank and all), but I can't claim I ever owned or used it. It was basically an antique they had for display.

My grandparents also had rather ancient light switches. Basically they had a knob that you twisted instead of a switch to flip or a button to hit.

Apart from that, it's also fun to think of 8" floppies, 5 1/4" floppies and the C64 datasette as being antiques. But I guess now I've firmly dated myself as an eighties child...