Early phone memories

[Phonesrfun]

Matt:

That parrott story is cool. 

-Bill

[HobieSport]

Thanks Bill from Matt,

I have another funny story about a Cockatoo, but this thread is about telephone memories and I have already strayed about parrots.

My fault. I must constrain my humor.

-Matt

[AET]

I was looking at candlestick phones today and my dad says he remembers the 'haunted house' a house that is nothing but a foundation that ironically sits about 30 yards from where we built our house.  (Dad used to live in Portage in the Summer a mile down the road and we own that house too, and in Milwaukee the rest of the year, but I digress) as a kid, they used to go into the haunted house for a scare and he says he remembers a candlestick phone sitting in the old house whe he went in there.  Unfortunately, they burned the house down, instead of just tearing it down in the early 70's. 

He also said at the first house we lived in on 52nd and bluemound, for those who know Milwaukee.  Had a candlestick type phone sitting in the corner of the basement that was on a wooden wall-type fixture.  He said later he went to go check it out and it was gone, he thinks the landlord came and got it.

[Greg G.]

So my only fun phone story is that we used to have a parrot that lived under the open staircase right next to the phone, and he learned to imitate the tones of our various individual voices from phone conversations. He didn't use words, but he would imitate the sounds and timbers of each of our voices. It was uncanny and a bit scary how well he did it. But he never imitated the sound of the phone ringing. Perhaps it was beyond even his own amazing vocal abilities.

Interesting, a quick google of bird talk reveals that they'll imitate the sounds that get them attention.  And they do it w/o vocal cords.  http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=574

[dsk]

It is a few old phones out there, I can remember the butcher used a "waterpoof" 1930??? telephone about 1980.

But outdoors it was quite different too, and those tough men and women working out there in all kinds of weather had something to struggle with.

I just found these pictures at telemusum:
http://tinyurl.com/yzfppjb
http://tinyurl.com/ykk2eh8
http://tinyurl.com/yfclmwb
http://tinyurl.com/yfghbj3
http://tinyurl.com/ykge2l8

And all those lines are twisted pairs.  eg. if you have 4 wires on on the pole you get:

ac
db
next pole
da
bc
next
bd
ca
etc.etc.

When you have 200 pairs, its easy to be confused.

dsk