Sepia Saturday Please, Answer the Phone!

Is that the telephone ringing?

announcing....

SEPIA SATURDAY

 

 

 

AND MUCH MORE

(along those lines)

AT

SEPIA SATURDAY

 

 

 

Murder? Or is this post climbing a telephone pole instead?

 

 

 

UNDER A TELEPHONE POLE

 

I am a copper wire slung in the air,

Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.

Night and day I keep singing--humming and thrumming:

It is love and war and money: it is the fighting and the tears, the work

and want,

Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of

your speech,

In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying,

A copper wire.

by

Carl Sandburg

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome back Alan- we've missed you- but Kat has kept everything ship-shape

while you were sailing about the world!

 

 

Alan's theme photo this week is all about

 

 

Ladies holding down excellent jobs as switch-board operators.

 

What connected callers to one another were "switches" at a switchboard.

 

THE TELEPHONE GIRL'S PRAYER

 

O Lord, for all I done to-day

To cause annoyance and delay

To make a person rant and rave,

For all wrong numbers I have gave,

And gave and gave when I'd be cryin'

For five three seven, thrrree seven, ni-yun,

For all the needless irritation

When I cut off a conversation,

The cusses--calls for information

Because of me--the slaps and slams,

The smashed receivers--darns and damns

I've caused this day--O Lord, for these

And all my sins,

Excuse it. Please!

Amen

by

Oliver Herford

 

 

 

Amazing how grammar played so little a part in many poems back then.

 

"When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal." - From Murphy's Law Book Two-

 

Believe me there were countless openings for this position.

 

 

 

 

This is Helen, (very intent on doing the most effective job she can) while managing the telephones at Many Glacier Hotel -

June 26, 1925.

 

 

 

 

 

This engineer is plowing under some rural wires in Dallas County and it's the first time this device was used in Iowa for putting the wires underground.

 1936

Northwestern Bell Telephone

Company Engineer in Iowa.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course once the wires have all been laid or telephone poles pounded into the ground and another skilled lineman mounts another pole, those lengthened strands he strings so steadily upright in the sky-next comes the installation inside private houses or companies.

 

 "Oh, I can hardly wait to dial my new telephone. Please do hurry. I have so many calls to make."

 

 

Onward towards the many places you could pick up a telephone.

 

 

 First up the Beatles

 

 

Waitin' for a call from you!

 

 

 

Mr. Physician making a major and possibly life threatening decision, or not.

 

 

Well, there certainly weren't any pizza delivery places back then.

 

 

 

 

Just another hot afternoon by the sea...... 

 

 

"Listen darling, do run along now while your mother makes a call.

 

One must be respectful while using a party line."

 

 

 

From the trenches on all sides of war.....

 Telephones were used on the fields during wars, when they were lucky enough to have them.

 

 

 

 

 

 This lady is taking advantage of the new turn-of-the-century telephone off the wall and into her hand, known as the Candlestick and the Upright. 

 

"My, my Isabella, this is Genevieve, speaking over my new telephone device which is just heaven to use."

 

 

 

Snort, snort, "Oh I heard that, oh my goodness gracious!"  If Ernestine wasn't eavesdropping on other people's conversations she might try calling her boyfriend, Vito a telephone repair man, or perhaps switching over to her best friend, Phoenicia another operator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Is that you darling?" Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder"

featuring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings.

and

there was "Sorry Wrong Number" or "Who's Calling" and "Speak no Evil."

 

All apart tangled wires....whispering of murder and into tangle lives fighting to escape.

 

 

 

 

Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "In the tangled networks of a great city the telephone is the unseen line between a million lives. It is the servant of our common needs--the confidante of our inmost secrets....life and happiness wait upon its ring....and horror....and loneliness.....and death!" --opening crawl from Paramount's Sorry, Wrong Number, 1948.

 

 

Now why doesn't she appear a bit happier here? 

 

 

Once Upon A Honeymoon 1956

 

 

 "Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?"

James Thurber-

 

You never ever get the wrong number when you check in on other Sepia Saturday posts.

So why not ring them up

go here 

 

 http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2012/11/sepia-saturday-151-10-november-2012.html