THE FRINGE

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General call

Isn’t it amazing how the technology of telephoning has changed our lives?

Recently I dialed a friend and, when there was no response, I hung up. Ten minutes later he phoned me back to find out what I was phoning about.

He had one of these functions that shows the name of the person who called.

A surprising number of people in the rural west now have recording devices on their phones so messages can be left.

The party line we had on the farm half a century ago didn’t have these functions but it did have a feature modern telephone designers haven’t been able to offer us – the general call.

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Everybody on our line had their own series of long and short rings to indicate who was being called. There was one series that was reserved for the general call.

This general call was usually about a matter of universal community concern, a holdup, a fire, the funeral of a prominent citizen, a school cancellation due to weather, an auction sale or the arrival of a car of coal.

Unless you regularly listen to the radio you may miss out on timely messages today.

Get at it, you inventive tinkerers. Design an early warning system that will let us know that the Martians have landed, or the bridge over the gully has washed out, or there’s a howling blizzard so you can switch the alarm to snooze.

A gentle beep-beep should be adequate to get our attention for the message. We don’t want any raucous smoke alarm type encouragement to listen.

Anything that sends the cat up the curtain or gives a guy palpitations is too darned loud.