My childhood home (where I currently live) is 50 years old. Not only is there a phone jack in the kitchen wall, but the master bedroom has a 4-ft phone line coming out of the wall. Like, a literal permanent line. There’s a plastic box on the wood trim next to the floor and the line is spliced and wired into that box. If the line breaks, we need to pull off the box and splice a new cable to the connectors inside.
That line used to be connected to a small rotary dial phone, but the phone was removed years ago.
Also, the kitchen originally had a large rotary dial phone hanging on the wall when I was a kid. I’m a millennial (in my early 40s), but my parents had kids late in their life, so they’re really old (my dad isn’t a boomer; he’s actually from the silent generation!). So they grew up with rotary phones, and thus I grew up with one too.
Also, eventually people got those cordless phones to get around the cord length/tangling problem.
My parents solved this problem by buying a 15-ft phone cord for the kitchen phone. You could wander anywhere in the kitchen, dining room, and a few steps into the living room from the kitchen phone.
I have OCD and was obsessed with untangling the curly phone lines, so my family never had to worry about that.
When touch tone phones came out, the phone companies had this brilliant idea to scam more money out of people and charged extra to use touch tone. So, my parents didn’t want to pay for that and used rotary phones long after they went out of fashion. And even the touch tone phones they bought had a switch to set them to “dial pulse” mode.
I still remember some guests’ looks of astonishment when they went to dial a number and the phone didn’t make the expected noise. Some even had no idea how a rotary phone worked.
The house I’m living in is over 10 years old and has zero phone jacks.
Also, eventually people got those cordless phones to get around the cord length/tangling problem.
My childhood home (where I currently live) is 50 years old. Not only is there a phone jack in the kitchen wall, but the master bedroom has a 4-ft phone line coming out of the wall. Like, a literal permanent line. There’s a plastic box on the wood trim next to the floor and the line is spliced and wired into that box. If the line breaks, we need to pull off the box and splice a new cable to the connectors inside.
That line used to be connected to a small rotary dial phone, but the phone was removed years ago.
Also, the kitchen originally had a large rotary dial phone hanging on the wall when I was a kid. I’m a millennial (in my early 40s), but my parents had kids late in their life, so they’re really old (my dad isn’t a boomer; he’s actually from the silent generation!). So they grew up with rotary phones, and thus I grew up with one too.
My parents solved this problem by buying a 15-ft phone cord for the kitchen phone. You could wander anywhere in the kitchen, dining room, and a few steps into the living room from the kitchen phone.
I have OCD and was obsessed with untangling the curly phone lines, so my family never had to worry about that.
When touch tone phones came out, the phone companies had this brilliant idea to scam more money out of people and charged extra to use touch tone. So, my parents didn’t want to pay for that and used rotary phones long after they went out of fashion. And even the touch tone phones they bought had a switch to set them to “dial pulse” mode.
I still remember some guests’ looks of astonishment when they went to dial a number and the phone didn’t make the expected noise. Some even had no idea how a rotary phone worked.