Memories of Rotary/Dial phones

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You never got on them during a thunderstorm,lightning could come down the line and fry you.Once we were visiting an old couple that lived on the top of the bluff,every time it thundered the phone would ring.Lightning had struck several trees in the yard and once it stuck a line a dog was tied to and the poor dog got shocked..

Several years ago I ran across one at a junk store and bought it. It was one of the really old, heavy black desk phones that had the wired cord and not the modular one. We still had a landline then and my husband fixed it so we could use it with our jack. We put it in the den. I liked it. My kids had trouble with it because not only did they have to stay in one place while on it (the cord wasn't long) but I'll never forget my two younger kids calling me in there and asking me how to dial it once when the cordless battery was dead. They were amazed.

As for the touch tone menus, I think if you just wait a few minutes a live person comes on. Some places still do that while other ones don't.

We don't have a landline anymore.

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Dial tones were higher-pitched than they are today. More irritating to the ear.

I started hearing the lower-pitched dial tones around 1975--which is also about the time when I saw my first touch-tone phone.
Street lights also turned from white to pinkish. The NYC subways started to replace lightbulbs in the tunnels with more substantive lighting.

Anyone remember how irritating the "Emergency Broadcast System" interruptions were?

^^Those were annoying.And the tv channels went off at midnight.One of them always showed a jet with a man reciting the poem High Flight "oh,I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth"and another had some song about a dog named Blue,"here,blue,you a good dog you."