Pluggers by Rick McKee for July 18, 2020

when everyone had landlines — before mobile phones — right?

You’d think Earl’s bum leg could’ve told him the temperature.

Then there were those telephonic nightmares known as party lines…

That is from the time period when all you did was talk on the phone ;-)

No, the worst was telephone salespeople; without Caller ID, you had to answer every phone call, so you didn’t miss somebody you WANTED to talk to. Seconded only by having to answer the phone and finding out it was the person you did NOT want to talk to! I was waiting for my Mom to call, after my Dad’s surgery and to distract myself, kept a running tab of calls; I got 28 calls from salespeople!

I remember having two landlines at one time with different numbers. One was for the dial up modem. A family member thought having THAT number was an extra way to get a hold me until they realized it was busy most of the time!

Aren’t you also a Plugger if you can remember calling to check the time and temp?

We knew our own phone number, we new our friends and family members phone numbers. We were walking computers.

Had a party line in college and one kid on the line would pick up her phone, not hear a dialtone and scream, “MOMMY THE PHONE IS BROKE.” into the phone. Happened about once a week, maybe more often, but I didn’t use the phone much myself.

Plugger household here! We all still have the same phone number on a corded phone with an answering machine.

Your a plugger if you remember party lines when anyone could join the conversation.. This new “call waiting” thing was just called bad manners and interrupting back in the day.

Nowadays a lot of people don’t even remember their own number.

I remember, but now there’s one person in the house (me) and two phone numbers.

We all had the same phone.

I remember when several different houses had the same number with just different rings.

Two in one, who checks Time & Temp over a landline anymore?