("WHY DO WE NEED...and pay for both CELL PHONES
AND A LAND LINE")
In WWII times in the 1940's, in our
hometown of Clovis, most people
didn't have home phones...even at
$3.95 a month.
(It was strange then that people
who did have telephones located them
in their halls on little built-in shelves..)
When we moved to Albuquerque in
the 60's our phone cost us $6.95 a
month.
Sixty years ago or more, people did
not use phones much at all for long
distance family chit-chat calls. In those
times inter-family LD calls were mostly
for: (1) "Uncle Tom died," or (2) “We're
a comin' ya see ya!" LD calls cost extra.
Somewhere along the way...likely as
people's incomes increased, telephones
became very desired...and acquired.
Cell phones came into importance big
time and the first several years, they
were latched onto as handy and semi-
necessities for wives-out-in-cars who
got stranded with car trouble.…and
such emergencies as that.
One time in the mid-nineties we were
headed out east of town into the
Sandia Mountains for an important
social, and 5 miles out on the freeway
east, our little excellent Dodge just
quit running and we coasted up under
a cross-over bridge in 94 degree
heat. The car's timing chain was broken.
After some thirty minutes, two young
fellows across the big freeway, headed
into town on the opposite highway, saw
us over across the freeway, with our
forlorn and helpless look. They came
running across the lanes carrying what
looked like an old-fashioned lunch box.
It was a portable telephone--one of the
earliest ones. They called a wrecker-guy
for us who delivered our car to a repair
shop...and we got a ride home, missing
the party.
Several years later we got our first small
portable cell phone, with no camera—yet.
That was okay. I who had done professional
work for weddings, banquets, politicians,
rallies, once a Miss America event here--
was used to a Koni-Omega and a
Leica.
A phone on a camera was the silliest
thing I'd ever heard of. Ah, don't ever
be smug! Now, I think the cell camera
idea is brilliant....they take great photos
and are handy. I use the camera more
than the phone itself.
We don't use our landline much. It
costs $58 a month. In fact it drives
us crazy with tele-marketer calls out
of Bangladesh, India, or everywhere.
We get at times 8 or 10 a day. We
got new phones and tried to set them
to block calls...to no avail.
We face what we have heard friends
say: "We just up and cancelled our
land line. Our phone bills were obscene."
We'd do it in a minute but one of us
keeps "their" phone almost fully
charged and the other...usually at
10 %. I don't want to have to add
another worry onto older folks
every night: "Er, do we have a
phone tonight here in the BR and
is it charged?”
Also you've got to think of Uncle
Tom back in East Texas, Aunt Sally
out in Cal., your old college classmates,
doctors and dentists, and all the
usual (forgotten-about-suspects from
olden times) who call every year or
so. They couldn't find you.
So even though our TV streaming,
WiFi, cable, Mil's Place, landline,
cell phone, and such stuff may cost
us as much as we once made per
month, I guess we're not quite ready
to say "goodbye to all that," though
it seems most certainly a luxury.
A strange thing a number of people
have commented on: they have
noted that illegals, street people,
those who live in cars, immigrants-
on-the-road---all seem to have that
one necessity....their cell phones.
--------
MIL
19 OCTOBER 2019
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