The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for October 10, 2022

Subtext

We used the US Post Office for “texting”. Or if we were in a hurry then it was Western Union

Semaphore!! Though those flags tended to be too much to … “handle!!”

/SHMIRK/

Pen, paper, envelope, postage stamp.

We “texted” people back then by handing them a paper note.;-D

You used to be able to teletype and get instant responses, but only businesses had them. It was interesting to do that from an island in the middle of nowhere to someone back in the states in the 60s. Long distance phone calls were $25 for 3 minutes! If pretyped, the teletype message only used a few seconds to send.

Many years ago, our telephone system used letter prefixes for our rotary telephones… For instance, Pasco was Liberty with the letter prefix of “LI” and Kennewick was Justice with the letter prefix of “JU” Wild huh ! I forgot what Richland was … Been too many years…

Ah, the good old text free days.

Remember when you didn’t have to enter the area code to call a local number?

Enjoy these videos. (Oh yeah, that’s something else we didn’t have.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkuirEweZvM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZSZB0z-Nt0

very cleverly. ;)

Smoke signals.

Drums.

You wrote ’em a letter, kid!

Texting was writing a letter…or in my case typing one. My handwriting has always been barely legible, including to myself. If I wanted anyone to understand what I wrote, I typed it.

Smoke signals. We learned it in grade school. Then lads on bicycles carrying messages. Later replaced with the Bat Signal. Technology moves on at a blinding pace.

Well nephew, back in the day we had party lines….he..he..

Poor Wilberforce Thronapple, only a chip off the old Block Head like Brutus would not understand how a rotary phone works.

I hope he was in Uncle Ted’s closet cleaning it out for him to help out and not snooping. Uncle Ted deserves help. He will explain the history of phones to Wilberforce.

It’s called a “letter”.

Good example of how one’s thinking is prejudiced by the environment in which they live.

Tucked away in a drawer is my Sharp calculator/phone dialer from the 1980s. It has a speaker on the back that you held to the mouthpiece of a rotary phone, pushed the button for the stored number and it played the tones for dialing that number. It did sequential numbers too, like pressing ‘1’ for messages, etc. It was about 2" wide and 4 tall, thin, and very convenient. It still works.

Well, Wilbur, back in the day of the rotary phone, we sent letters a lot. Now, we text and email.

We used morse code.

That’s the beauty of it. You really had to talk to people using full sentences. No emojis or no artificial contractions or spelling of words. Verbal communication is becoming a lost skill. Sad. Actually, the funnies/comics might be the last hope of keeping communication skills alive for the masses….

It was called a telegram. Sometimes the delivery person would sing the message or give you candy.

When kindly Uncle Ted gets through answering Wilberforce’s very reasonable question, the kid will understand that we didn’t use our phones to text, stream, or take pictures, not to mention that there was no caller ID, no apps, and no internet. And of course his follow up question will be, “How did you get along without all that?”

This generation, SHEEZ!!!!

If uncle Ted wants to blow his mind, he can tell him about pen, paper, cursive writing, and snail mail! Chip this two days in a row without Brutus. Is he okay??