The first thing that comes to my mind when I think back to a rotary telephone in my life as a youth was probably in the mid 1960’s. My family lived in Huntsville, Alabama–I was about ten years old. I came from a large family with six girls and three boys.� When I was about age ten four of my sisters were teenagers. You know how that could tie up a telephone. There was no call waiting, no caller I.D., no phone answering devices. We had a beige wall phone that hung in the hallway of our relatively small three bedroom brick ranch home. It was a common sight to see the telephone cord stretched like a piano wire down the hallway and into the bathroom. At the other end of the cord was one of my older sisters, more than likely talking to a boy. It would be impossible for any other callers to get through to our house as the phone always seemed to be in use. Read the rest of this post »

This is a model 500 manufactured by Western Electric in June of 1955. An Ivory cord was installed the same year the phone was  manufactured as the process for matching colored cords was not available. Cords may have been Ivory, gray or black. This cord is dated ‘55 and is a “fat” cord as is the line cord which is gray colored with an original 4-pronged plug on the end. A converter is available to allow the phone to be plugged into today’s modern jack for immediate use. Read the rest of this post »