Fone Man can haz fone

Our non-cell telephones at the house have been gradually wearing out for some time.  The one in the bedroom, with the volume control I could turn up so I could hear better—well, the volume control really didn’t control anything any more, and the receiver contacts were bad, so you had to rap one end of the cradle on the desk as soon as you answered to make the receiver work.  The living-room phone, a red 1970s-vintage Western Electric desk set, was a little better, but the cord from the receiver to the phone wouldn’t make a good connection, so if you moved the cord at ALL you got tons of static.  Trying to sit Very Still throughout a phone call isn’t easy.

So this morning L said, “Would you please go over to Radio Shack and at least look at new phones even if you don’t buy one today?” (She knows I detest Radio Shack and refuse to buy anything there; any business that insists they have to create a complete customer profile of you, including full mailing address and SSN, for a three-dollar CASH transaction, right there in person, in the store, doesn’t get MY money.)  She said we ought to have a cordless phone with two handsets, one for the living room and one for the sewing room, and some kind of phone for our bedroom.

So instead of going to Radio Shack, I went to Target.  (I also go to Target in preference to Wally-World.  I feel no need to add to the estate of Sam Walton.  Besides, going into Wally-World always leaves me with the faint, decaying aroma of White Trash.)  I asked if they carried telephones and was pointed to Aisle 27A, where I found phones.  I stood and weighed the merits of cordless phones using the 2.4GHz band versus those that use the 5.8GHz band and those that are on the new digital-only 6GHz band, considered the sheer variety of cordless phone sets available today (anything up to six handsets!  What does anybody want with six cordless phones??), and ended up with a lower-end 5.8GHz Uniden two-set model that didn’t have an answering machine, which we don’t need, and didn’t have a speakerphone feature, which I wouldn’t have if you gave it away with a pound of tea, and generally didn’t succumb to Feeping Creaturism.

And then I bought myself a phone, for me.  And this was what I got:

It’s a Crosley PI-62 “Kettle” desk phone, and looks the right age to go with the house.  I’m not totally in love with it having buttons instead of a dial, but finding and rewiring a real 1946 Western Electric is right out for now.  Also, while it does have a bell and not a beeper or warbler or some other infernal noise-making method, Crosley chose to put in one of those prissy little European bells that go “brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring” instead of the authoritative, clanging annunciator bells in my childhood’s phones.

L is happy with having phones that she doesn’t have to treat just so to answer a call, and I’m happier than I was with my Retro Phone.  Now, to find one of those bolt-on shoulder receiver rests . . . .