This is an European wall phone. I do not think we had this particular telephone in the states but it will serve my purpose here because it is old and quiet foreign to anyone under 40 out in cyber land. Just like the telephone I used when I was a girl this one is foreign to the kids of today.

The very first telephone I ever used hung on the wall and looked like a big long wooden box with a funny looking mouth piece that you could move up or down to speak into and a side mounted ear piece. It also had a crank handle on the other side which we used to give the battery juice before making a call. No dial. We had an operator who would connect us to our party. And the operator most often would listen to our conversation and report back to our mothers if she heard something she considered inappropriate. Her name was Mrs. Chamberlain. We were on a six party line with a lot of other people. Each set had it's own ring so you know if the phone call was for you when the phone rang. But, the phone didn't ring very much. No one used it very often back in the 1950's. We were not allowed to stay on for more than five minutes so it was a lot better to visit in person. My two cousins and I would walk down the red clay dirt road two miles in one direction and only half a mile in the other to visit our friends. It's no wonder that we visited the closest neighbor more often. Then we could talk and sing for hours. Now days, of course, kids stay on the phone for as long as we stayed out of the house.

We have become a useless society. Greatly in need of front porches, old telephones limited to five minute calls and face to face conversations.