Beech Tree News Network

For a few years now, my granddaughter, Sabria, has been fascinated by the idea of a telephone with a dial.  She has even asked me to buy her one so she can dial up people and talk to them.  I remembered that Garey’s mom, Aggie, had one in working order, so the last time Sabria and her mom went with us to visit Aggie, I called Sabria out to the sun porch and showed her the old black dial-up phone.

                “Gee,” she says in an almost whisper, “Is it real?”

                The look in her eyes is akin to someone who has stumbled upon the Holy Grail.

                “Yes, it’s real,” I say, “Let me show you how to use it.”

                “You pick up the receiver and make sure you have a dial tone,” I explain.  “It sounds like this.”

I hold the phone to her ear.  “Next, you stick your finger in the hole that’s over the first number you want to dial, and you pull the dial all the way around to this little metal piece then pull your finger out and let the dial return to where it started.  When you release the dial, you will hear a click.  That click means the number registered and you can move on to your next number.”

                Sabria looks at me with the kind of admiration usually reserved for people like Stephen Hawking as he explains quantum physics to first year science students. I haven’t seen that look in a long time, probably not since she learned to play video games and realized I didn’t have a clue how to build a house in Minecraft or how to keep Sonic from crashing his bike into a bridge. 

                As I’m basking in the glow of my granddaughter’s admiration, a voice comes over the black dial-up phone and says, “If you’d like to make a call, hang up and try the number again.”  Ahh…the memories.

                I hang up the receiver and let Sabria try her first call.  Her first attempts are interrupted by the operator saying, “We’re sorry, but the number you have dialed it not a working number.  If you think you have reached this message in error, please hang up and try your number again.”  She keeps trying and finally reaches her mother, who is sitting in Aggie’s living room.

                When Natalie answers her phone, Sabria says, “Hi Mama, what are you doing?  I’m calling you from Aggie’s black telephone.”

                Natalie feigns surprise, “You are!” she says, “How did you know how to work it?”

                “Gee showed me,” Sabria explains.  She is beaming.  It is a small but important interaction, a connecting of generations.

                At dinner that evening, we talk about the technological advances that have been made in our generation.

                “I remember when we got electricity,” Aggie says.

                “I remember when we got color TV,” Garey says.

                “I remember when we got dial-up internet,” Natalie says.

                “I remember when we got Netflix,” Sabria says.

                We all laugh.  For Aggie, things have changed so much, it’s almost like living on another planet.  When her generation passes, there will probably be no more working dial-up phones.  Sabria can tell her children how she used one when she was a little girl to call her mama.  I think I’ll ask Garey and his sister, Charlotte, if I can have the phone after Aggie is gone.  Maybe, we’ll still have phone lines, and I can show Sabria’s children how it works.  Maybe, they will look at me with the admiration reserved for someone who can explain quantum physics.