I remember my first telephone. It was black of course. Everything in the ’30s was black. Most cars, Fords mostly it seems, were all black. Men’s shoes, except for golf shoes, were black as were umbrellas, which made even weddings and bar mitzvahs look like funerals.
But telephones were black forever it appears, like the Western Electric Model 500. I had to look that up, and it’s still used.
Telephones. That’s what we called them. Nobody ever called it a “phone” until, if I’m not mistaken, in the early ’70s when Marcia of “The Brady Bunch” shouted “Is anyone going to answer that phone?” That caught on.
When I was 9, our black telephone sat on a wooden table next to my father’s big, soft, green chair. It was one of those tall things. I looked it up. It was called the “Roman Column” phone. I know that if you’re 20-something, that sounds strange.
The number was HUdson 8-677. The reason I can still remember that is a bit macabre. One late afternoon as I was standing at the window watching for my father to come home, it rang. I answered it. A man’s voice asked for my mother. She came and took it, and there was this long wait. Suddenly she dropped to her knees. It was about my father.
After that whenever the phone rang, even during the war, nobody wanted to answer it. I would run upstairs to the bathroom and hide until somebody did. You can’t make stuff like that up in your life.
In a summer stock play, there was one like it on stage. I wanted that phone and tried to steal it when we left the show. She, who was always watching me for such behavior, was appalled and, like she did every time I wanted to steal a prop, made me put it back. If not for her, I would now have a garage full of collectibles and would be a rich eBay collector rather than writing for food money.
When my daughters left for college and left their colored Princess phones behind, I kept them for years. My friend, comedian Charles Nelson Reilly, said to hold onto them. “They’ll be worth money someday.” They probably are, but I sold them at a garage sale.
My first funny phone story was in New York. I answered an ad for office work. A big, burly man in an overcoat interviewed me in this one room office on the top floor of an old building with a view of the Statue of Liberty. The sign on the frosted glass door read “James Madison Wax Company.” It was just a desk with a phone.
The big man came by once a week to get the mail, mostly fliers and catalogs. The phone only rang a couple of times when he would call and ask, “Ya doin’ okay, little buddy?” That’s what he called me, little buddy. On Fridays he would come by and pay me $50 in cash. I quit after three weeks. I could write a whole movie about those three weeks.
My first colored phone was in the Air Force at Hamilton Air Field in San Francisco. I was just back from Japan and about to be discharged, and they had to find something for me to do. They put me in a room with magazines and newspapers and a red phone. When I asked my officer how I should answer it, he smiled and said, “If that ever rings, get under the table.” I can’t print his real comment, but it was funnier.
I miss the era of the old model 500 dial phone. Phone numbers in those days had fun, easy to remember names like TRinity, ALexander, BUtterfield, MUrray Hill, ENglewood or CHerry, and my childhood number, HUdson.
I still have some numbers with names in an old phone book of mine. I wish I had the one of the old James Madison Wax Company.
I’d love to call who ever the new guy is sitting there now, and ask “Ya doin okay, little buddy?” and freak him out.
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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