Just for fun: Pre-Cell Phone Stories

[Anonymous]

When I was 15, in the summer of 1982, I went on a youth group tour of the US. We were 40 high school students, mostly didn't know each other; we all traveled on one bus, with 10 tents, 4 stoves, and 5 chaperones (plus the driver).

We drove for 5 weeks across the US, mostly camping in state and national parks as I recall.

Of course we had no cell phones back then. We mailed letters home every so often, and once or twice, made a collect call from a pay phone. Our parents were given a list of mail stops -- a post office that would collect letters for us and allow us to pick them up. My mom sent a letter every week to me.

Every few days we'd come to a new town. The bus would drive into the downtown area and dump us 40 teens off and they told us to explore, and come back by 4 PM so we had time to get to the campsite and cook dinner! No cell phones -- honestly I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what the plan was if we got injured, lost etc. I think maybe we had an emergency phone number to call the office that was in charge of the trip? We were told to stick with the buddy system. I do remember waiting a couple of hours once for some kids that got lost...

The amount of freedom we had back then, in hindsight, is incredible. But it felt totally normal to me at the time.

It was a great trip. Every three days they handed us $40 or so in our group of 10 "cooking group" and we went to a grocery store and bought meals for three days. It was a tiny amount of money for 10 hungry kids - we were pretty starving all the time!! We had to cook whatever we wanted on the camp stoves. It was a lot of pasta and cereal!

[Anonymous]

Imagine trying to meet a friend at Buckingham fountain during Taste of Chicago. Yep, that was me.

[Anonymous]

If you are a doctor, you know that pagers and fax machines are still a thing. I don’t see them going away anytime soon.

[Anonymous]

At my freshman dorm in 1987, I’d pull the wall phone’s cord across the floor and could then sit down inside the adjacent bathroom with the door closed to take a “private call” - long distance from my boyfriend 200 miles away at another college.

And I learned to have an extra long cord on the wall phone - in the days before cordless phones, it was nice to be able to multi-task or move to a nearby room.

The only time our mom smoked was during her once weekly long distance calls to her parents on the opposite coast. She’d get all comfortable and sit atop a padded kitchen stool with her pack of cigs and her lighter nearby and would talk for about the time it took her to chain smoke two cigarettes.

[Anonymous]

999-1212 would give you the local weather. Good times!

[Anonymous]

The beeper! Remember the beeper! Why do I have to pull of the highway to find a pay hone to call the person that beeped me. Is it really an emergency! Beepers we're just testing patience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of you older dcumers may remember this fun fact: pay phones had their own numbers. I memorized the number on the pay phone at a store up the street from my house. I'd give this number to guys with soecific instructions on when to cakl and to let it ring once, hang up and call back so I'd know it was them. Their was exactly one phone in my house and it was placed on a side table next to my Dad's chair. There was zero expectation of privacy.

Yep, when I was in middle school we had 2 phones, both of them corded. There were so many times I wanted to call a girl but didn’t because I sure as hell didn’t want to have that conversation in front of my whole family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I met a young man at a bar one evening and we exchanged phone numbers, after a few chats we decided to meet up for lunch so made a plan for later that week.

We spoke that morning and agreed to meet on the corner of 17th and I, and then to walk together to grab lunch. We wanted to eat in the park at Farragut Sq. because it was a glorious spring day.

I was in my early 20s at that time, so shared with a few of my work friends that I was going to meet this young man for lunch. So I headed out, stood on the corner for about 15-20 mins, and then decided that I must have been stood up, so I grabbed a sandwich and headed back to the office.

When I got back there were 2 messages from the young man, explaining that he'd waited for me for about 20 mins, then gone back to the office and was told by a work friend that there were two 17th and I's and that I was probably on the other side, so he headed back out and waited another 20 mins.

When I called him back we both had a good chuckle and agreed that we would try again.

A few hours later I got a call from the front desk, I had a flower delivery waiting for me. The young man had sent flowers along with a short note.

Yes, dating was more difficult to coordinate pre-cell phone but I can't help but think that something has been lost in the ease of it all.

In my 20s, I went on a lot of dates, but honestly, most of them were really good ones, nothing like the horror stories you hear about today. Perhaps having to expend effort and energy on something makes you value it more.

What a nice guy! Did it lead to a relationship or no?

Yes he was definitely one of the good ones. We went out for maybe a year, but I was so young and really wasn’t ready to settle down for at least another 5 years or so. Too bad you can’t put the good ones in a bottle and save them for when you are ready for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's say you didn't know what time it was. There was a phone number you could call to give you the accurate time:

"At the tone the time will be [beeep] 8:26 PM"

I think there was maybe another number for the weather. Anyone remember this?

Yes! 936-1212 no area code

[Anonymous]

11:02 C
• Safari
Done
Local
Verizon weather line, 936
1212, is dead
By Jason Samenow
October 20, 2011
The process was drawn out and confusing,
but it's finally over: Verizon has officially
pulled the plug on the local weather line for
good (as the Post's John Kelly reported
yesterday). Call now and, instead of the
voice of D.C. Weather Services' Keith Allen,
you hear "your call cannot be completed as
dialed."
Verizon first announced it would kill the
weather line last spring, effective June 1.
But the line got a stay of execution which
continued service into the fall.
Strangely, even after the service continued
into October, Verizon left on a pre-recorded
message indicating the service would be
terminated June 1. It also quietly cut off
access to the line from Virginia (703) and
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land/ani) amassador
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