It may be difficult for my children to imagine a world without mobile phones, I guess almost impossible to think about a time when not everyone even had a land-line telephone in their home!
I lived in a flat as a child, and the elderly lady upstairs, Aunty Gladys had a phone installed and we were allowed to use it for important calls. That didn’t happen very often, and when I say ‘we’ I mean my parents. So we used public telephones in the iconic red telephone boxes. The first time I remember using one I must have been about ten, and my dad Donald came with me to help me. In those days there were two buttons, A and B which had to be pressed in sequence and when you had inserted the four pennies you needed to make a call. I was overcome with nerves and barely managed to speak to whoever I was calling.
When I was fourteen we moved house and there was a telephone in our new home, but I don’t remember using it very often. In those days there were three postal deliveries a day and you could post something being fairly sure it would arrive in the next day’s post. Moving again when I was sixteen, to a new house, and no phone. I moved away when I was 18 to go to Manchester Polytechnic; and never had a phone in any of the grotty places I lived (no student accommodation for the Poly!)
By the mid seventies, phones were very common, and really, from then on, I always had a land line. I first saw a mobile phone in 1995, I first had one in 2000, now I can’t imagine life without it, and am so glad I can keep in touch with my children now that they are away doing degrees themselves!
Lois Elsden 
I grew up with a pone in the home. However when I went to visit my grandparents on the farm, I had problems. They had a party line as it was known. You had to check to see if it was not in use, before making a call. It was also impolite to listen in while someone else was on the line. The rules of etiquette, were beyond my comprehension, so I usually just ran over to my cousins home, to see what we were going to be up to. The nearest payphone was several blocks passed their house. In the city it seemed the payphone was everywhere, unlike recently when I needed one. My cellphone had died, and I looked for a payphone, that exercise in futility lasted about 20 minutes. Finally gave up and took the mass transit to get hold of the person, I wanted to connect with. Funny part of the whole story, while on the train, I saw, through the windows about 10 payphones.
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I suppose although they are still so useful, so many of them get vandalised. Such a different world, wasn’t it!
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I remember spending hours in the 50s curled up on the floor beside the phone talking to friends. What a shock in my first year teaching in the late 60s to move to a farming district and have to use a party line. I soon got used to which beeps were for our household, but hated the thought that all the other farms on the line knew when you were receiving calls, or even listened in once you received one.
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There were so many films and stories revolving round party lines and overheard conversations, weren’t there!
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Being the new young teacher in the district I’m sure they enjoyed keeping up with who I was seeing 🙂
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There’s a whole new story there!
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