DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Mar 25, 11:26 pm, aemeijers wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Mar 25, 7:39 pm, Terry wrote:
I can remember when I was a kid that you could dial a 4 digit phone
number and hang up and your phone would ring.
I am having trouble with an AT&T cordless phone. My standard phone
works fine, but the cordless won't ring.
I would like to be able to make my phone ring to test it by plugging
it into another phone outlet.
My parents used to hassle me if I wanted to go out but didn't have a
good reason or destination. Sometimes I was just going to find out
where my friends were hanging out. Way before cell phones...
I used to ring my phone back, answer it, and act like I was talking to
a friend. When I hung up, I'd say something like "Going bowling with
Russ" or "Greg needs help on his car" and off I'd go...more or less
with their blessing.
Did anybody else, in the pre-ESS days, ever deliberately call a busy
number (like your own), and then have conversations with other people
doing the same thing? Back then, the busy signal for each switch came
from a common source, and you could, sort of, talk between beeps. We
called it the 'beep line', and their was much mourning when the
electronic switches made it go away. Remember, this was small town, pre
internet, pre chatline, pre-blog, pre-chatroom, pre cellphone, pre CB
radio, etc. If you couldn't drive, and it was too far to walk and too
crappy out to ride a bike, you took your social contact where you could
find it.

Yeah, we were pathetic.

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aem sends...- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

How did you arrange these "beep talk sessions"? Did people just hang
around listening to busy signals hoping someone else joined the party?

"We were pathetic" might be the understatement of the year! g

What can I say? it was a small town, with only 3-4 prefixes at the time.
Most weeknights after supper, there were people on there, as well as
late at night on non-school nights. In many ways, much like anonymous
chat sites are now- voices were pretty garbled, so lots of slamming
people and spreading rumors. I mainly lurked. I wouldn't hang on there
for hours (multiple siblings wanting to make or expecting calls would
have killed me), but phone was in the hall, so on the way back from the
can, I'd pop on there and see if there were any voices, and if the
subject matter was interesting. Kinda like nosy neigbors used to do on
party lines. One time, I was talking to a young lady that lived a ways
out of town, and I used some Bad Words, and caught an earful from her
old neighbor lady that liked to listen in.

--
aem sends...