Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler for September 05, 2019

Parents say a lot of things about which moderns, who seem to avoid the serious study of history, are unfamiliar.

Um, there’s one right behind you. If the artist has to explain their own comic, it’s not a very successful piece.

There’s still plenty of radio stations around, even though I prefer streaming Pandora.

I lived in a era when telephone signals came from a wire in the wall, and television signals came over the air.

Can’t forget the WJJY cash call.

One of life’s simple pleasures!!

And you got paper tickets too!

You had lucky parents then.. Most did not even have a concert to go to.. free tickets or not.

My sister’s family moved into a new to them house. Her young sons came running into the room carrying a rotary phone. “Mom, look at this weird phone”! “How does it work”?

I was a video of some British teens who had been shown a rotary phone, and told to make a call. They couldn’t do it. They figured out the dialing fairly quickly, but were unable to grasp the concept that you had to pick up the handset, then dial. I think the dial tone confused them, too.

Y’all remember the tri-tone you got if you left the phone off of the hook?

Send me his address. I’ll write him a letter answering his questions. I hope he knows cursive!

Ya know, ya hear of “Rotary” phones, but do ya ever hear of “Kiwana” phones?

Oh look, a designer phone!

My family had a party line when I was a kid. You had to listen to the ring to know if it was for you or one of your neighbors.

A radio station was what you listened to on your transistor radio. Would the person on my party line please hang up!!!

These two aren’t little kids ….. or even teenagers. Seems like they’re both old enough to have at least heard of the words “rotary phone” and “radio station” before and know what they are even if they don’t have any actual experience using them. I’m not sure how many rotary phones are still being used these days but radio stations are definitely still in existence!

Well, kiddies, when I worked in the San Francisco area for Pacific Telephone (remember Garfield 1, Yukon 6, etc.?) all phones were rotary—including our “test sets” that we climbed the poles with and used to make calls with when we were up there—and even harder to believe, there was no such thing as cable TV. If your parents wanted more channels, they had a big roof antenna installed, sometimes more than one.

Hard to believe, now, how long it takes to “dial” a seven digit number on an old rotary dial. Then, it was all we were used to, so no one thought anything about it.

That phone’s not gonna work well…it’s missing 2 numbers.