NOTEBOOK: A miracle of old technology
My 1968 East Side co-op has one glaring reminder of the Mayor Lindsay era: a rotary kitchen phone. I use it to call for maintenance, or the doorman, or the other services in a multistory apartment building. Who knew it would also build a bridge between generations?My 11-year-old grandson recently came to visit. It was a treasured time, for he and his mom and dad and sister have moved to England. I was hoping to recapture the kinds of moments we shared before he left with his family - moments that warmed our house, when we lived in Roslyn.
He was a city kid come to visit the suburbs. I remember once someone rang the doorbell and Corey called out, "It must be the Chinese food delivery." Who else rings doorbells in the city?
Now, Corey would just as soon hang out with friends as his grandparents.
I look at Corey and remember growing up in my grandfather's house: how wonderful and old-fashioned he was. How he never made a telephone call (did he not know how to dial, or was his hearing aid never in place?). How he marveled at our first television.
On Corey's return to our apartment, he brought with him the trappings of his age. And, at a moment when he wasn't manipulating his various X-Boxes, iPod and other electronic paraphernalia - of which I have only a minimum comprehension - he was astounded when he saw me using the rotary phone.
I had dialed the garage. You would think I had used analog technology to send a man to the moon.
"What did you just do?" he asked. I told him I had made a phone call. He picked up the buttonless, corded phone and examined it. "You put your finger here. Then what?" he asked. Gingerly, he moved the dial clockwise. "Like this?" he asked, with the same trepidation I would have using one of his touch-screen gizmos. Miraculously, the dial clicked and moved.
"Can I do that again?" he asked. "Did you actually speak to someone?"
I had become, in his high-tech world, a sort of savant. I understood an ancient technology that, in this era of tetherless telephones, brought a glow of wonder to my grandson. His grandpa knows what's what. Boy, did I feel smart.
Although I sent in the first story ever mailed by computer to The New York Times, transmitted from Oakdale in the early 1970s, I grudgingly admit to being mystified by the electronic wizardry of today, especially as practiced by Corey on those blinking, screeching hand-held gadgets, with AC cords tangled with one another like a 21st century Medusa. All of it seemingly designed to keep a child insulated from his grandparents.
But then came the moment he walked into the kitchen, got to dial "2-2-2" and was open-mouthed when someone answered "Garage." "Grandpa," he must have been thinking, "that was awesome."
The moment reminded me of the time my wife asked one of her students, who wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home, what his grandmother's phone number was. He replied, "One" - the speed-dial number his mother used to press on their digital phone.
Technologically speaking, my building has few wonders for Corey. There are no mysteries for him in our elevators or motion-sensitive front doors.
But in our apartment, in the kitchen, tucked away from the doormen, insulated from the piercing whistles for taxis, the beeping of the garbage trucks backing up, or the furious honking of drivers who just can't wait to get to the 59th Street Bridge, is that arcane contraption with 10 holes and a tangled, coiled cord attached to its bottom - a machine that lets you feel like you're calling back in time. And that, I like to think, gives Corey one more reason to believe he's got a fabulous grandpa.
I am going to fight to save this phone - since Bobby, our ubiquitous and often-amused super, has just told me that when the last one dies, it will not be replaced. That time is coming. We'll have to call for services via a regular phone. And somehow, I think I will lose some of my fabulousness if Corey sees me using speed-dial to call for the car.
No, I'll keep this relic from "Father Knows Best" days. They'll need a special meeting of the co-op board to wrest it from me.