Telephone Line

Today, telephones are largely a nuisance. One-hundred percent of my incoming calls interrupt my naps, and ninety percent of these calls are from a Citi-Cards robot who greets me with the phrase “Don’t be alarmed.” The first time I heard it, I got very alarmed.

I also avoid making calls whenever possible, mostly because I have a lousy phone voice. I sound like an old lady calling the cops.

Things were different when I was a kid. If there was nothing good on TV or no one to horse around with, I often turned to the telephone for companionship.

Sometimes I dialed 333-999-333 and listened to Frankenstein’s heartbeat for as long as I liked. One day I invited a friend over and together we called the number. But the connection didn’t take. We got some static and then dead silence. “Hmm,” said my friend, “maybe Frankenstein’s on the pot.”

Sometimes I called the homes of pretty girls and hung up, which caused my own heart to throb as rapidly as Frankenstein’s.

For a time I made a habit of calling Dial-a-Joke, wherein I was treated to an entire joke for free. The joke teller had a voice like that of a nervous cartoon animal, heavily informed by Johnny Carson’s Tea-Time Movie host. I spent much of a summer calling that number, but the joke never changed. I phoned so often that I still remember it, word for word:

Hiya again, Booby. You say you really got troubles? You say your wife threw away the birth-control pills because you told her you bought a condominium?

Then one morning I dialed that same local number, expecting to hear “Hiya again, Booby,” but I was greeted by a different voice—a stern voice, like that of Jack Webb. This sober gentleman thanked me for calling Phone-a-Funny.

Phone-a-Funny? Had the world gone crazy overnight?

The only thing I recall about Phone-a-Funny is that it couldn’t pack Dial-a-Joke’s lunch.

Soon I discovered talk radio and began phoning the local shows. I confess this freely and without shame, for I was just eleven or twelve at the time. Anyone beyond that age who calls talk radio should hang his head and weep.

Anyway, I became a loyal follower of a nightly show on our AM dial that had a no-nonsense name like “Night Line” or maybe “Night Scape.” Each evening the show featured a theme. My memory is dim on the specifics, but it’s fair to guess the themes were variations of this central idea: How to Refrain from Blowing your Stack and Punching a Hippie in this Age of Aquarius.

Though I was young, I had a lot of opinions on stuff. So one evening, when the topic was “The Cohabitation Crisis,” I dialed the number. It rang and rang. Finally the host answered. “Hello, caller. This is Chuck.”

“Uhm, hi. Can you explain tonight’s topic so I could give my opinion and junk?”

Chuck’s laughter echoed tremendously, as if he were alone in a nuclear-fallout shelter. When he finally regained his composure, he said, “Son, maybe you should pay more attention to your Weekly Reader at school.”

Meanwhile, an older sister and some friends were listening to Chuck in her car. She recognized my voice and they all had a great deal of fun with it. The next day, in an effort to nurture my precocity, she explained the topic in a secular, objective manner, much better than my Weekly Reader ever could have.

Those days, if my beloved Kansas City Royals were on the air the talk shows did not stand a chance. When we finally got a talk show that was devoted to sports, I called in often to complain about our crummy players and crummy coaches. Late one summer night, my brothers Joe and Phil and I took part in the kind of incident that will sound entirely made up.

We’d been listening to the sports-talk show after the Royals had clobbered the Angels in Anaheim. Phil, age 13, dialed up and was put on hold. Then he realized he had no question prepared. Our frantic conversation went a lot like this:

Me: Ask if he thinks George Brett will make the all-star team.

Joe: No, ask if he thinks Steve Busby will make the all-star team.

Phil: Wait a minute. Shut up and slow down.

Me: George Brett.

Joe: No, Steve Busby.

Phil: Shut up.

Me: George Brett.

Joe: Steve Busby.

Host: South Kansas City, you’re on.

Phil: Oh. Uh . . . do you think Steve Brett will make the all-star team?

Host: Steve Brett? Steve Brett? I don’t know any Steve Brett.

Needless to say, I took part in my fair share of prank calls back then. I best remember a day at my cousins’ house when a bunch of us took turns asking strangers if their refrigerators were running. We also emitted a lot of unpleasant noises and swear words, such as “crap” and “ding dong.” The capering was cut short, however, when an angry man announced he was calling the cops. In a panic, we all stripped off our shirts and charged outside and jumped into the swimming pool.

The final time I abused my telephone privileges was the day my friends Gilbert and Alan and I called Dodgers’ pitcher Don Drysdale. It turns out he was in the shower, so we waited a long darn time and ran up the phone bill to seven or eight dollars. The Mayfield Gazette even published a feature story on it. Boy, my dad got really sore.

When I was in the sixth grade, the Weekly Reader promised we’d someday have picture phones—telephones with screens attached so you could see the person you were speaking with. That week, five-million sixth-grade boys across our great land were imagining the same thing: calling a lady as she was getting out of the shower. I can still see the artist’s rendering of this space-age invention. In his illustration, the traditional black rotary phone with the dial and the cradle and the dual transparent nipples—the kind of phone Archie Bunker used—had a small, boxy screen attached. Even better, I can also still see my own imaginings of the lady getting out of the shower.

In the seventh grade I changed schools and was soon introduced to a most curious phenomenon. It was called The Interview.

One October day a girl I scarcely knew called and asked if I'd submit to an interview. I had to ask her to define her terms. She said she would recite the names of girls in our class and I was to apply a letter grade to each. A letter grade based on what, I asked. On you know, she said. My first instinct was to strip off my shirt and jump into the swimming pool.

I never quite embraced these interviews. Today I cannot give one good reason why I behaved like Gilligan when these girls called. Certainly there were girls I liked, and some of them I liked madly. Yet, when first confronted with the formality of the interview, I gave every girl—all thirty-five of them—an F.

Undaunted, this young lady and others called regularly for my rankings, and soon I began conferring the grade of C upon them all. Once, one of my brothers pretended to be me, and he gave one classmate an A because he liked the musicality of her name. This led to a lot of excitement and agitation and grief that the girl and I are still sorting out.