Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for August 04, 2020

I need to stop thinking of 1986 as recent.

Heh, at least it wasn’t rotary!

I can remember especially on long corded wall phones the really bad cord tangles.

It still feels chilling to realize I’ve lived from when horsepower mean real horses to the extreme technology we’re immersed in today! And it’s happening faster than I can even read about it!

We also had the twelve foot handset cord, and I plugged a twelve foot extension in the back of the phone. My bride could reach anywhere but the back bedroom, and seemed to be always on the phone. Obviously before call waiting, so incoming just got busies.

You can now pinpoint the year any movie was supposed to take place in (over the past 30 years or so) by the cell phones they have.

Husband worked as an installer/repairman for the phone company. Our small house had a phone on the desk where the living room and dining area met and another in our bedroom. He decided he wanted one by his recliner and began drilling into the wall to run the wiring. The drill woke our two year old son from his nap. He wandered into the living room and, seeing the opening, exclaimed vehemently, “Bad, bad Daddy make hole in wall!” A delightful memory for me and the beginning of his interest in wiring that led to his career in Avonics.

Hey, no fair I still have a corded landline.

My uncle worked for Bell Telephone and got me a 60 ft cord! I could literally walk all over my house while I was on the phone! --I would love to go back to those days. I could HEAR so much better on those phones and you could hold it in the crook of your neck and talk for hours while you did stuff around the house. Try that with a stupid cell phone. Yeah, I’m old.

Every single time I use the phrase “turn of the century” people stare at my “Kaiser Bill” mustache and giggle.

Back in the day, my desk phone (we had beige Western Electric desk phones) used to get the cord all twisted and the coils would “flip”… I used to do what Janis does – spin it and take it off and “re-coil” it so there were no unlooped parts.

I eventually did what my mentor (may he R.I.P.) used to do: I got one of those swivel connectors for the handset. Never got all messed up like this again. And yes, it was about the same time as this comic ran ;-)

The cord gets tangled if you walk around the phone like a maniac! You should take a look at my desk phone, it’s in perfect mint condition. When I’m on a call, I don’t use my phone as a fidget spinner… I just press the speaker button and walk around the desk like a caged lion :D

I recall around 1980 or so at a gritty blues club in Chicago where an old bluesman daisy chained several extension cords on his guitar so that he could walk into the the audience while jamming. We little white suburban boys thought “So cool!!!”

Gosh, I must be the only one who never had problems with the old phones.

One of the things I do not miss are those telephone chords. Mine would get so twisted they turned into Gordian knots.

I still have one of those swivel connectors around here somewhere. Might be useful for free drinks in a trivia contest.

Twisted cords were a bane for obsessives like me. 8^ (

When you got a phone way back when, it automatically came in black. If you wanted color, you had to pay more. The Installers used to have sales contests – just like cars.

Back then I had a telephone repair business. Took an old arrow, wound the cord over it, zapped it with a hair dryer and presto, just like new. We have one basic corded phone, just in case.

The good old days. :-)

They had touch tone phones back then. I remember rotary dial phones. Still have an old one.Try getting a teenager to use a rotary phone now. Hilarious.

Ah, the days of dialup!

Wasn’t 1986 like last century?

When dinosaurs roamed the earth … before roaming charges.

Why did Arlo hit himself in the face with the phone? He is firmly holding the phone so a twisted cord could not make the phone smack him in the face.

Yeah me too