What a relaxing day at work

With the holiday weekend ending, it would appear most of our customers have decided not to have their cars worked on. Normally this would bother me, the lack of work means lack of income. But last week we had full connectivity with the customer base, what wasn't working was the internet or computer report systems. 

So today was real peaceful, no one calling, no pages flying around over the speaker system.

Here's something you can show your kids, 
Show them the phones we grew up with....

No, Not this one, this was the grandparents phone.

Show them these...

Alright the first and third would have been what my parents used,
but the white one and last black one were ours.

You can explain to them that you couldn't take the phone outside and there were no answering machines in the 1960s. If you weren't home, oh well. 

It was amazing when you think back on it, we went out, we went to the stores, we went on trips, we couldn't talk to anybody, no one knew where you were, all they knew is you weren't home. Here's something else, The world didn't END. Myself, I miss those days.

What I don't miss was dialing. Remember the rotary dial? They were fine if the person you were calling had an easy number, 442-1213.  You would dial, put your finger in the 4 hole, rotate the dial to the finger stop, pull out your finger and let the rotary return to its stop, In the ear piece you would hear shik, tic,tic,tic,tic. Then you would dial the second number, the 4, then the 2, then the 1 and so on.  But it never failed, when you were calling long distance or the person had all high numbers, you would get through the entire number and were up to the last digit, 1-860-535-8796 your finger would slip,out of the hole and mess up what you were dialing. You quickly slammed your hand on the hang up button and started again. 

You can explain to your child, who has no clue, all this and tell him or her, "That is why it is called,"Dialing a number"".

Of course in the 1970's they came out with bush button phones

So all you had to do was push the buttons, but even though the push button phones were out and available the phone system servers weren't yet up to date enough to handle them. So you push in the entire number then wait as the relays and such dialed the number. As you hit the buttons your earpiece would give you a beep for each button, so it sounded like beep beep beep -beep,beep,beep,beep. Then you would wait as the phone companies machinery would dial the number, click,click,click,click, click,click,click,click   click,click  click  click,click  click  click,click,click.

Oh yeah, when you finis explaining the phone to them, try telling them how you heated food. 

Microwave? No,

Radar Range? (remember those?) No.

It was called a stove.

Coffee was brewed, hot water was not injected through a plastic cup, it peculated or boiled, once again, you used a stove.

Not everything in life was NOW.  There was a wait for EVERYTHING, and to tell you the truth, I think we appreciated it more. The fastest things out there were TV dinners, they weren't fast, and they weren't good, and oh yeah...you used a stove.

Remember Jiffy Pop? There was nothing Jiffy about it.

It was just as fast as putting oil in the popcorn maker, adding the seeds, and sitting in front of a fire shaking the maker.

By the way, growing up, I used the square one.

Oh yeah, You might want to explain the fireplace...

Oh, that the fireplace, at one time....Was the stove.