Monday memory: nights and weekends

Once upon a time, the magic time was 9 p.m.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

I’m in the generation that came of age before the advent of the cellular phone. Our idea of having a mobile phone growing up was the cordless variety we used to put in our family room as an extension to our main phone in the dining room. That was living large in the 1980s along with having the VCR to tape our shows and an Atari-style game hooked up to the living room TV.

Living in a rural area, we also had to be mindful of which calls were toll calls and which calls were local. For example, for my mom to call my high school would be a toll call since the exchanges, adjacent as they were, weren’t considered local to each other. In fact, people in my area could literally have a neighbor across the road but our 826 exchange couldn’t call their 644 exchange or 822 exchange without racking up long-distance charges. But, on the other hand, even the opposite end of Toledo was a local call to us - good thing, as we were on the outskirts of that calling area. (When we had an actual phone book, one page was devoted to graphically showing which exchanges were local to us and which were toll.)

And Mom calling me at college for an hour might have been a princely $2 or $3 on our phone bill. Hey, this was back in the era I was toiling in the dining hall dish room for $3.35 an hour to help with my expenses, usually those racked up ordering a Gobbler turkey sub from a local dive called Greek’s.

Once cellular technology began to take hold in the 1990s, though, long distance charges became a thing of the past. Instead, the phone companies figured out a way to profit off calling by allotting a certain number of minutes per month. You would get, say, 400 minutes a month for free but once minute 401 began during peak times they would sock you.

As a concession to customers, though, there came a time when nights and weekends became free minutes. Obviously cellular companies were banking on the fact the biggest demand was during the business day (as the go-getter types who needed instant communication were the first to adopt cell phones) so there was less demand at off-peak hours.

Thus, there was a period in our lives when the big family news was oftentimes revealed at about 9:05 p.m. or on a Saturday or Sunday when the call was free. I think we got our first cell phones in the late 1990s so there was a time we had to be mindful of that.

With all the bad news and political stuff around, I needed a light-hearted memory break and was reminded of this period by something I read. But what triggered me to write this was the “advance” in technology that jumped us from having a set number of free texts per month to my cell number somehow being on the text message list for every damn politician out there. And I swear, if you tell them “stop” all that does is prove that the number is valid so some grifter can sell it some more.

I’m writing this on Saturday, as I just got a text from Donald Trump, Jr. Yesterday I was bombarded by AIPAC, who also got me on Thursday. They were joined by Senate candidate Dave McCormick, who isn’t even running in my state (he’s in PA) and Nikki Haley, who buzzes me a lot. Donald Trump “himself” got me Wednesday and Ohio’s Josh Hawley on Tuesday, along with AIPAC once again. And of course you can’t block the originating number because they are all different, probably from a burner phone. In just this month, I count 11 different origination numbers.

It almost makes me pine for the days when we had to make sure no one was on the party line before we dialed out (we had that the first couple years we lived out in rural America.) Usually when the phone rang back then it was someone we wanted to talk to, but now it’s just plain annoying. I don’t even get nights and weekends free of unwanted texts anymore.

Until next time, also remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.