How Far We Have Come

I was a youngster, in the early 1960’s, when we moved from North Carolina to Allison Iowa where my father was going to be the pastor to one of the churches there.  As I remember it for a short period of time the telephone was a box mounted on the wall by the front door.  The box had a crank that you turned in order to get the operator’s attention so you could tell her what number you wanted to call.  However shortly after we arrived there that phone box was removed and replace with a rotary dial phone.

Then in March of 1965 Dad accepted a church in western Kansas.  The phone was a black rotary dial phone and we were on a Party Line.  However unlike most rotary phones that had numbers 0 through 9 on the dial this phone had no numbers and you would turn the dial through its entire range in order to reach the operator in Prairie View, Kansas the small western Kansas town.  You would tell the operator what phone number you wanted and she would ring the phone in that person’s house.  If memory serves me corretly phone number was 8F7 and our party line ring was two long rings and one short ring.  Of course being a party line anyone could pick up their phone and listen in to our conversation.

In 1970, I was going to a techincal school in Chicago, when I wanted to call home I would have to dial the operator and have her place the phone call for me.  I would hear the operator ring and route the phone call through Kansas City who would ring and route the phone call through Hays Kansas.  The operator in Hays Kansas would route my phone call to the Prairie View operator who would ring the correct number of rings on the farm party line and someone in our home would answer the phone and now I would be talking to my family.

That was then and this is now.  Now we have satellites making international phone calls in a matter of seconds.  Now there are computers allowing a person to go around the world almost instantly.   Yesterday I was working a Sudoku puzzle on my computer and as I always do, I had my Instant Messaging program running.  All of a sudden, I see Britt-Arnhild of Britt Arnhild’s House in the Woods on Instant Messaging.  I have been reading her Blog for many many years, maybe for as long as she has been Blogging.  I use her Blog as a way for me to get out of my bedroom and experience, through her, some of the world.  She and I had a pleasant conversation, however a short one because my Home Aid came and I had to say bye to Britt-Arnhild.  For a number of years, I have used Instant Messaging to talk to my cousin in the Netherlands and now I feel that I have reached another friend around the world.

Just as the telephone has changed and changed the way we communicate to each other, the Personal Computer has changed how we communicate with each other.  I hope that Britt-Arnhild and I will have many more pleasant times talking to each other.