Saturday, January 17, 2009

Telephones and photographs

Here I sit with a blank mind. I agreed to start a music chatroom group, I decided to scan my old Instamatic and Brownie pictures into digital form, I decided to fix the leaks in my boat before I bottom-fished from the bottom of the lake, we finally finished with grandchildren-based travels for the season and my hand is shaking like a leaf. My wife is coughing like crazy and my son is due sometime this morning.

Maybe he can fix my 70's model Stromberg-Carlson phone. It can be answered, it just won't dial anymore. I discovered it is an antique now and worth $10 (if it worked), but no one has parts for a chartreuse phone anymore. The truth be told (shhh, no one knows this but me) it is really the case of the old chartreuse phone moved to the old red phone. The old red phone cratered on the outside and the chartreuse one cratered on the inside. Why keep it at all? Because it goes ringgggggggg loud enough to wake the dead. I can't hear those cricket-chirping newfangled things. I may have to resurrect the Bart Simpson phone because while he chirps like a cricket, his eyes light up too. Then I would answer one of the real phones so I wouldn't have to talk to his butt.

I put in a bid on eBay on a replacement for the Stromberg-Carlson to at least use for parts. Another phone died too. It is an old 70's phone too and now you can only hear on it, you can't be heard.

The scanning has been fun though. Those blurry, speckled, pixilated,, faded and splotched photos really come alive with a few well-chosen clicks. They go WAY back to when my 40 yr old daughter was born and a haircut I once had that was so good it lasted for six months. Stay tuned.