The first phone

People now a days take for granted the mobile telephony services. It was not like this always. I was born in to a home without a telephone. It was not until I was 8 years old that we got connected. And it was a major event in the household.

The process was long and cumbersome. Apply for a connection. Line man comes home to check feasibility. Comes back another day with adequate tools and material to provide the house with a telephone line. No internal wiring in those days, the line man actually attached wood strips and laid the line on them till the table.

The family discussion was another entertaining activity. Where to place the phone because, once placed it would be difficult to move it around (no cordless phones then). The line man completed his job of laying the line. He then asked the question to my father, “What type of phone would you like?”

“What options do we have?” asked dad

“You can either have the older phone with a rotary dialer or the newer model with push button dial pad”

With this, my father asked the children of the house, including me, “Which one shall we pick?” We were astonished, after some mumble jumble, we knew it was the newer model that we would love to have.

Note: I thought I had lost my first edit of this blog, and wrote up a completely new one. Refer the next post for the conclusion of this post.