The middle of the night is usually a quiet friend of mine
It calls me … It calls me sometimes
Tonight it’s a creaking blind and a whisping wind
I go down stairs and think…
Seems strange to own $1,000 phone
And hardly ever receive a call
It seems strange, 50 years ago we had a ‘party’ line
The cheapest phone service of its time
A ‘party’ line….. Odd name
You were not invited to a party….no
It just meant more than one family shared a phone line
You could pick up the phone receiver to make a call and hear someone else’s conversation
Of course you were supposed to hang up and wait, but as a mischievous teen I recall breaking this rule on occasion.
I wanted to be….. At the party I suppose
But the present saga of the quiet thousand-dollar phone is a different loneliness.
I can understand a teen’s loneliness
Such an awkward stage of life
But at 70 years old, loneliness seems to come I’m a lot of different angles
I knew as a teen, calls came to me to play ball, usually to fill a quota I now imagine
Seems I have many more friends now
But oddly…. Even though it’s my own personal line… I get very few calls
I recently purchased a used cell phone for my business
When I discovered it doesn’t receive or make phone calls… I didn’t get it fixed.
It’s a fine little computer however
I miss playing baseball with neighborhood friends way too much