Did you ever?
I'm pretty sure that I remember this correctly, but maybe not because it's been over 45 years since it happened. One night, I was calling the local top 40 radio station to ask them to play a song. It was probably a Beatles song, and I wonder now why I wanted to hear it on the radio since I had all their records and could easily have just played it myself, but I guess that was just something we did. I probably thought it would be thrilling to talk to the DJ. Well, the line was busy, as it always was, but before I hung up, I realized that I could hear someone yelling, "Hello!" over the busy signal. So, I answered and we started talking, and I found out that there were people who talked over the signal all the time.
Sometimes I would talk to boys and give them my phone number and they would call me. I would never have called them. I don't remember ever meeting any of them though. For a while, I did this fairly frequently, I think, but I'm not sure for how long, or why I stopped. I guess it just lost it's novelty. I'm also not sure if my friends did it, too, but I'm pretty sure they did, and I'm almost positive that my sister did.
I guess that this is a social media that has gone by the wayside. People listen to music in a different way now, and teenagers don't use land lines. Of course, they have Facebook and Twitter and texting and a billion ways to communicate, but this was something different because it was sort of esoteric--something behind the scenes that not everybody knew about.
The radio station I usually called was 680, WMPS.The DJs used to call themselves the WMPS Good Guys and when the Rolling Stones came to town, they had a contest where people made signs that said, "The WMPS Good Guys Welcome the Rolling Stones." A couple of girls from our high school entered and won the contest. Some years later, the T-shirt they made ended up on the front of Sargent Peppers Lonely Heart's Club Band. You've probably seen it.
AMDG
How strange. But who would you talk to over the busy signal? Someone else who was also getting a busy signal?
ReplyDeleteYes, we were all getting busy signals. We were 14-15, you know, stupid.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I remember this happening when I was in college. I don't remember how it happened or who I was calling. All I do remember was that one could hear lots of voices each fighting to be heard. The only clear vice I heard was that of the poor phone repairman saying: "Please hang up...Please hang up."
ReplyDeleteThis would be if you both dialled the same number when it was busy?
ReplyDeleteYes, and sometimes there would be several people because so many people were trying to call the radio station.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I never experienced this interesting phenomenon. I did however experience a party line, which was no party at all. I suppose the term needs explaining to anyone under 50 or so, or maybe 60.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're not kidding about the shirt? Pretty amazing. Wonder how it got to the Beatles, or at least to the art director of that album.
ReplyDeleteNope. That's a true story about the shirt.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother had a party line, so I experienced it, but didn't have to personally put up with the un-partiness of it.
AMDG
"party line" - is that like multi-user skype?
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't have a clue about multi-user skype, but if you had a party line, you shared the line with another household, maybe more. When you picked up the receiver to make a call, somebody at the other house might be having a long conversation with her neighbor about her sister-in-law or something like that. If you shared a line with someone who was inconsiderate and talked on the phone all the time, it could be a problem. And then I suppose the other people might listen in on your calls.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I'm going to guess that multi-user Skype is a group who actually want to talk to each other, so this is different. Both those last two things were very definitely problems for us. You could sorta tell when somebody was listening. And sometimes people would deliberately harass you, because unless you knew their voices you had no way of knowing who they were.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother just used the public phone box standing by her front gate. Getting through to her relied largely on the kindness of passers-by. It wouldn't have worked in Belgium, where public phoneboxes don't take in-coming calls.
ReplyDeleteJanet, you gave your number to random guys? Do you still practice this today? We should talk.
ReplyDeleteNo, I hate talking on the phone.
ReplyDeleteAMDG