Requiem for a Dinosaur

     A couple of weeks ago the phone book pictured above landed on my front sidewalk. I hadn't really thought about how much these were still used, or wondered how many people still used one. I haven’t kept any of the phonebooks I've received the past several years after I got rid of my house phone, so now when I get them they go straight to the recycling bin, except this one for the time being. We are watching the extinction of another piece of Americana fade quietly into the night. 

     Seeing it sitting there on my desk got me thinking about how out of place it is to see a phone book now, because there was a time when there was always one somewhere in the house; now they just seem to be teleported in and dumped from another time. The days of the poor old battered and abused phonebook are numbered; they were often covered with crazy doodles, had a number or two scrawled on the cover when another piece of paper wasn't close at hand, or had the pages containing your usual take-out joints dog-eared for easy access. They served us well for many a year didn't they? Now with the prevalence of cell phones with internet access they have become an object of wonder almost. The fact that I received this one tells me there are still plenty of land line phones out there, though I imagine there may be more businesses with the then homes. This is the Yellow Pages for the East Valley, which is about 1/6^th the size of the first East Valley Yellow pages I encountered when I moved to Arizona in 1994; that one was actually split into two 3” thick volumes because there was so much in it, an added plus due to its weight was it could serve as a weapon in a pinch. I don’t think selling add space in the Yellow Pages would be such a good gig these days.

     Who remembers when you could just call 1-411 for directory assistance and have an operator find it for you? I guess you can still call it since the cell carriers have it available, though from a land line it’s probably 12 bucks a shot now. When I was in college some of us would drunk dial National Directory Assistance at 1-area code- 555-1212 and talk to operators in exotic places like Hawaii, Alaska and North Dakota. Alas, AT&T put a stop to that in 2000, those dirty buggers: 

http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Public_Notices/1999/da992541.html

Over time the phone companies got a little smarter, and started to give you options to connect the call, for a fee of course. If you've ever had a phone you know how those fees manage to sneak their way onto your bill.

     I have been a numbers nut for a long time and there was a time if I wrote a number down, then used it, I would remember it; I still remember the phone number from my first apartment, odd I know. The trusty phone book or books always managed to find a place in the house , whether they were piled next to the phone or stacked up on the floor nearby for those who were phone book rich and furniture poor like me; in a pinch a stack of them made a decent end table. Nowadays, if I write a number down it’s either to just use it once, or to put in my phone under a name and then I don’t have to remember it, I just find the name in my contacts list. The world has moved on.   

     The old days of paying a fee each month to rent your phone as part of your phone bill seems like such a ridiculous idea now with us having the ability to carry our house phone wherever we go. I managed apartments for many years and would find phones left in apartments when folks split in the middle of the night; they usually were owing rent.  At one time I had so many of those ugly princess phones and hang on the wall kitchen phones, in their lovely gag me with a spoon colors, I was giving them away to friends. Of course, I ran extra lines to every room in the house I could to add a phone; when the phone rang it sounded like the donations lines at a Public TV telethon.  

     When long extension cords for phone lines became readily available I was stoked; I never have been one to sit in the same place while talking on the phone.  Of course one the drawbacks to having one of those long cords is that after a few weeks of walking around the house talking on the phone you have something that resembles a rats nest of Christmas lights without the lights sitting on your floor. Unwinding all the twists and kinks was never big fun, though eventually I’d be back in business to start that ridiculous cycle all over again.

      Those original cheap handsets that didn't need a base were a fine example of a product that should have been extinct before it was ever put on the shelf. I had one that would pick up the Spanish station in Hartford, but only at night; it sure made for some interesting conversations.  “Are you listening to the Spanish station?” “No, it’s my phone, only does it at night.” “What, I couldn't hear you the music got kind of loud there for a few seconds.” Ahh, this new technology is great isn't it?

 I grew up in the dark ages, i.e. the 60’s, and we had a wall phone in the kitchen with a short cord. You had to stand there next to it like you were using a payphone in your own house. My dad finally put in an extension in the basement; after breaking the railing on the cellar stairs for the 3^rd time dashing up from his workshop to answer the kitchen phone.  There were no answering machines or Caller ID, which really didn't matter; when the phone rang you wanted to answer it! 

     That thinking changed over time of course. I learned that if I turned the ringer down and my music up loud I didn't hear the phone ring; kind of like Caller ID before it became available and the best part; no extra fee. There was about a 2 year span where I was pretty much subsisting on berries and bark and it wasn't in my budget to have a house phone. I really didn’t miss it much and came to see having a phone as a luxury not a necessity. That was back when you could still find a payphone somewhere besides a grocery store, an airport, or some other mass transit location. Those phonebooks at those pay phones really took a beating didn’t they? How often did you find one that didn’t have a chunk of pages ripped out of it? Who can say they never ripped a page or two out of phonebook at a payphone; if you have never seen one then you can’t count that as a never.

     What’s it all mean? Do I long for the days of phones on the wall, with a stack of phone books standing by at the ready to let my fingers do the walking? Hell no,now I have room for the detritus of my daily existence to fill the space created by the phone books absence. I like that my phone can go in my pocket, I don’t need an alarm clock and it’s a great little flashlight to save my toes from finding malicious furniture in the dark.

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