Pluggers by Rick McKee for September 21, 2023

If you ever listened in on the party line……

You’re probably a SENIOR Plugger if you remember that, once upon a time ALL phones were hooked to one spot in the house and had a little dial with numbers 1 through zero on them and you had to dial the right numbers in the right sequence in order to make it through to your party. You are even a MORE Senior Plugger if you remember that, once upon a time, most phones only had ONE number – zero – and when you dialed THAT number, a sweet lady would answer the phone and ask you who you wanted to talk to. And IF you said Joe Doaks in Chicago, Illinois, you could be reasonably certain she would find your party right away because there was probably only one person in Chicago named Joe Doaks who had a telephone.. You are even more senior if you remember the time the telephone company representative came around to your house and asked if you would like to have a telephone and your folks told them that there was no reason for you to have a telephone because you didn’t know anyone who had a telephone, so there would be no one you would need to call. OH – and you took pictures with a little black box called a camera. And, after you had taken a bunch of pictures , you took a little roll of stuff called “film” out of the little black box and took it to the drug store, where they wrapped up the little roll and sent it off to a place called KODAK to get it developed. And you would keep checking back at the drug store until they told you that your pictures had been developed. And you took the pictures home and put little stickers on the corners and put them in a book called an album and 80 years later, you could STILL see those pictures because they had NEVER been on a computer page which crashed and dumped ALL of those pictures out into outerspace!

If you still has that kinda phone yous a ancient plugger.

Ernestine … Laugh – In ;-)

My college roommate always did this when he wanted to talk to his parents. His parents would refuse the charges and then call him right back. That way, the fees would show up on their bill, not ours.

Anybody remember the commercial with “Bob Wehoddababyitsaboy”?

Yup boyfriend told me to put all my pictures on the computer and crashed. all gone.

Used to do that all the time to let my folks know I/we made it home okay.

For the younger generation, the questions is, who or what is a telephone operator. Do they even have a person doing that job or is it all animated now ?

Priour to cellphones and such, this was a very efficient and quite common way to notify loved ones (we traveled and visited face to face more then). Life was cheaper but some things were not. Long distance calls were NOT. This was post Depression era financial management for those that could almost afford it.

I came in at the party line, which my Grandparents had ……. because of my parents store we had a private line …… :)

It means you have a terrible relationship with someone! Would a little communication kill youse guys?

In australia, this was very common and it was called ‘pranking’. You’d say ‘ill prank you when i get to X’ and then, when you got safely to X you’d call them until they hung up. A fun way to avoid charges and let people know they were ok. We were doing this up until the early 00’s so really its not THAT old…right? haha

I sure remember doing this ♥♥ Thanks for the memory-jogger.

I remember the days when we would travel and my step mom would call my dad collect to let him know we made it safe to where ever we were going. He of course always refused the charges.

Hello, I’d like to place a collect call. My name is “Hey Mom, we got home safe, love you, good night.”