One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy *snort* *snort* in my Lily Tomlin snort;)....along with the rotary, we had a party line, so someone else could be talking when you dialed, so you had to listen first;( Right above our phone was the *felix the cat* clock with the tail and eyes that went back and forth lol

And you got the honor of slamming the receiver down too :))

I remember being SO BUMMED if I made a mistake on the 6th or 7th number. Starting over was such a pain!

Long finger nails and rotary phones... ouch!

We had that same green phone. I got in trouble so Mom put a lock on it. It could be answered but I would need a key to unlock it to dial out. I got a call from a friend of a friend asking me to call friend because her mom had locked her phone too. Ours had Woodland 4 written on it and our phone number was WO4-xxxx. I remember I really wanted a princess phone .

Ours was a wall phone and it was black ,that receiver was heavy too .

How about phone booths, remember those?? LOL I think I was 9 or 10 when the last one's were still around.

They were just as popular in their time as mobiles are today I think. People still have the antique ones to go along with the decor in their homes, they are still part of Interior Design, I still see many antique phones as early as the one shown above, some are shaped as high heels even.

Margo, I remember party lines too, when phones were all black...no colors...and people only had one phone per house. Still remember my phone number from childhood...Lehigh 1-6610. ( of course, I don't remember what I had for breakfast). Then colors came in and then Princess phones (we never had one of those). When my children were growing up, we had a dark red wall phone in the kitchen.

Love them . They never gets lost in the house.

I grew up with land lines and rotary phones. What did i notice in a hurricane? We never lost connection even though we lost electrical power (what gives there?) Now we have nothing but cell phones, and i seen 8 years ago that my cell phone lost the connection depending on my position on Earth. With my new cell phone i don't see "Lost connection" so i guess they added more relay towers

In the house I grew up in, my grandmother's glamorous home, there was one telephone in the entry hall near the kitchen ( with a piece of furniture made expressly for that purpose) and one in the Master bedroom. Why did folks not feel the urge to talk and talk and talk then but now, Jeez, everybody is yakking all the time? About what?

When I was growing up, we had one phone in our kitchen. As a teenager wanting privacy, I would stretch the phone cord as far as I could, around a corner, 1/2 way down the basements steps, and pull the door shut behind me. I spent many hours on those basement steps! Never did have the much coveted princess phone!

Yep, nowadays they are always yakking all the time. Very easy to run them over bc they just don't look for traffic before crossing street. They are like totally clueless

Although I commented above, I wanted to add that one of our customers still has rotary dial phones from at least the '60's and perhaps before then. Whatever makes a person happy...

Our first phone didn't have a dial. It was a wood box with 2 bells, an ear piece, mouth piece and a crank. To get the operator you had to crank a sequence assigned to you, then the operator would connect you. I only remember the phone. We were too young to use it and it was too high on the wall. Something like this photo.

And when you said you were "on the phone", you were "ON the phone". Haha!

There was one in the kitchen and one in mom's bedroom. You weren't having any privacy there!!!

@mcbmd3:

They aren't yak-yak-yakking; they are type-type-typing!!! Speaking is too tedious! (I must admit...I'm a typer, not a speaker...oops).

I still had a rotary phone when push buttons came in. I remember my nephew (who was about 6) wanting to phone home and standing in front of my rotary very confused. I think he thought he had to dial each # by going around that many times (e.g., for a 9, you would have to put your finger in the hole and rotate 9 times!). I do remember our phone # before they added words was 91408.

Can we go back to them? Just kidding! Sort of....

I certainly remember them very well. And the party line. Even with cell phones, people still say, "hanging up" now.

I'm not THAT old but I grew up in a relatively small town. There were no rotary dials, just black phones. We would pick up the receiver and an operator would announce herself: "operator" and we would say four digits like "4735" and she would connect us. I was just a child and sometimes an ornery operator would refuse to connect us and ask to speak to an adult.

I remember first being married when you had to pay extra for "touch tone"!

And that was 93!

And gasp, long distance until about 1999! Let our landline go in 2005.

@Curt D'Onofrio It's true, rotary phones can continue to work even during a power outage - they run on only 6-12 volts, or the amount of power supplied to your house through the phone line itself. Happy chatting!

As a youngster (1960's) we kids had to ask for permission to make a call. To this day I refuse to phone anyone after 7pm as "evenings" were for "family time" and it was considered rude unless it was an emergency.

We have an old rotary somewhere in our garage. Not sure why.

@Emily, I hear you on being bummed if you screwed up when dialing one of the last numbers!