In which Piroshki demonstrates an understanding of Curmudgeons

I have a fondness for old technologies.  I like having old Things that still do the job they were meant to do, even though they’re thirty or fifty or a hundred and fifty years old.

Piroshki understands this, and paid attention the other month when I was grumbling about how I wished I still had an old-style rotary phone.  She remembered it when, some weeks ago, she came across a working rotary phone in an estate sale, and she latched onto it with the intention of sending to me so I would have a rotary phone.

And yesterday it arrived.  It’s a Western Electric Model 500 desk set, built under licence by ITT-Kellogg, chocolate brown and probably late-Sixties, since it has a round wall cord with a modern RJ-11 connector on it, but the handset cord isn’t modular (that innovation came in the Seventies).  I plugged it into the wall, and got a dial tone right off.  I used my cell phone to call it, and it rang exactly as it should and sounded exactly as it should—loud and authoritative.  I used it to call my mother, who is quite deaf and has trouble hearing phonecons, and she heard everything I said without any trouble, and I could hear her just as clearly.

Piroshki, I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have this.  It’s exactly what I wanted, and I hope and expect I’ll get another fifty years of service out of it, seeing that Western Electric phones were made to be almost maintenance-free.  Thank you again.