The Phone

I have had a black, rotary dial phone in my kitchen for ages.  The phone was from the late sixties.  I've been looking for a reasonably priced older phone from the WW II era for several years.  The refurbished ones are advertised for well over $200 and I won't spend that much.

We spied a nice one for less than a quarter of that, but it didn't work.  Bruce tinkered with it over the weekend and voila...here it is in use!

Oh, oops, here it is in another red head's hands: a Western Electric Model 302, patented in 1939.  In 1941, Western Electric changed the phones from painted metal to plastic for the war effort  Mine is the 1941 version

Years ago on Long Island, New York my Grandmother Dunn had a phone number which was expressed in both letters and numbers.  The letter exchanges stopped before I was born, but Nana continued to say something like this well into my teenage years: "This is Mrs. James Dunn and my phone number is Myrtle-4 5696, that's MY4-5696.  The actual number was 694-5696.

The number on the round dial in the middle of her phone still had the letter exchange,  This fascinated me as a kid for some reason.  I shared this with Bruce who set up the phone like this at our house:

Here's the phone in place on top of a kitchen cabinet:

Those wonderful spice containers were a birthday present from my amazing sister.  It is a little known fact, but she was one of the original Spice Girls.  Kerry was Ironic Spice.  You probably haven't heard about her unless you're a really big fan.  Posh Spice used to stand in front of her all the time.