Hi, Liz!!!
I just called my dear friend Liz, who lives in a suburb of Sydney, Australia. She is by far my oldest friend who I'm still in touch with (thanks to her warm heart and generous spirit). We got to know each other as pen pals at the age of 12, and we've been friends ever since ... almost 45 years!
When I was in my teens I called her on the phone for her birthday. Long distance calls were horrendously expensive in those days, so it was a real treat -- the first time we ever heard each other's voices! In those days, calls were billed at n dollars for the first three minutes and then so much per minute after that, so most long distance calls were kept to three minutes. You could ask the operator to break in and let you know when the time was up, and of course we did that.
Overseas call were A Big Deal back then, and I'll never forget the excitement! "Direct Distance Dialing" was far from complete even within the US in the early 60s, and of course international calls could only be placed through an operator. Calls to far-off places didn't go through immediately, either -- the operator had to set them up in multiple hops.
We called the operator and said we wanted to make a call to Australia, and she took the information and said she'd call us back when she had gotten through. Then our operator in New York called an operator in France, who called an operator somewhere further east, and so on until the call reached Sydney. I remember some difficulty between the New York operator and the Paris operator. who were having trouble understanding each other.
But finally, after an endless half hour, the phone rang and the operator said "This is the New York operator. I have your party on the line." I was so excited I could hardly talk -- and when Liz heard who it was, she was equally thrilled. We were both so speechless that we wasted pretty much the entire three minutes squealing and expressing astonishment at each other's accents! Remember, in the early 1960s the world was a lot bigger than it is today. We didn't have the kind of international communication we have today through worldwide media, easy plane travel and cheap phone calls. I had never heard an Australian accent, and Liz had never heard an American one.
Phone calls are so different now ... I just picked up the phone and pushed 14 buttons and after about twenty seconds I heard the ringing signal more than 9,700 miles away, and then Liz was there! And it only costs 5.7 cents a minute. I talked to her for nearly an hour for a paltry $3 ... much less than that all-too-brief 3-minute call forty-some years ago (and that's without even taking inflation into account)!
When we were in our mid-20's Liz came to the US. What fun that was! I was still living on Long Island then, and she stayed with me for two weeks. I remember that we went into the city and I showed her the sights, and I may have taken her to some other places but I can't remember where. I do remember that she was cold the day we went to Manhattan, and was saying how cold it was. I thought it was a gorgeous day, with the temperature around 65ºF. But Sydney has a subtropical climate like Florida's, so she wasn't used to such "chilly" weather!
My brother and his wife were living in a suburb of Los Angeles in those days, and I arranged for Liz to spend a week with them so she could do some sightseeing out there. They had to work so they couldn't show her around except on the weekend, but she took public transportation and got to see the sights of Hollywood and LA.
Liz and I haven't seen each other since because Liz isn't comfortable flying. Her husband is dying to take a family trip to the States, but Liz hates traveling on both airplanes and ships. She knows that statistically, she's far safer in either one than driving, but of course reasoning doesn't help a phobia. As Tom always said, you can't apply logic to an emotional problem. So unless they find a way to put a track across the Pacific, she's not going to be coming to the US.
But one of these days I'm going to plan a trip to Australia and visit her! I told her I'm going on a cruise with Meredith and A in May 2007, so I'm going to start planning a trip to Australia in 2008 or 2009! I think that was a little too far away for her to think about right now -- I know it would be for me if the situation were reversed! -- but I'm going to start thinking about it, and maybe it will actually happen!
Liz is a very traditional type of person, and has never become comfortable with computers. But her husband Peter is, so I can email her now, and he'll print it out and give it to her. I've already sent him a link my photos and this blog, so she'll be able to keep up with my life even when I'm too down in the dumps to write -- which has happened all too much in the past couple of years, with my life falling down around my ears the way it did.
I used to send birthday cards to everyone in her family -- as she did for me -- but as I became more depressed through the increasingly painful events of the last several years I petered out, and eventually stopped sending them even to her. (If it makes you feel any better, Liz, I haven't managed to send any cards at all in the last couple of years. I didn't even send Christmas cards out in 2004 or 2005. So it hasn't been just you!)
But through it all she has been steadfastly loyal, never missing my birthday or Christmas, with a chatty letter to at least let me know what was going on in her life, even though she didn't know what was going on in mine. She's a wonderful person and one of my dearest friends, and I'm so delighted that we happened to find each other in some pen-pal exchange all those years ago!
When I was in my teens I called her on the phone for her birthday. Long distance calls were horrendously expensive in those days, so it was a real treat -- the first time we ever heard each other's voices! In those days, calls were billed at n dollars for the first three minutes and then so much per minute after that, so most long distance calls were kept to three minutes. You could ask the operator to break in and let you know when the time was up, and of course we did that.
Overseas call were A Big Deal back then, and I'll never forget the excitement! "Direct Distance Dialing" was far from complete even within the US in the early 60s, and of course international calls could only be placed through an operator. Calls to far-off places didn't go through immediately, either -- the operator had to set them up in multiple hops.
We called the operator and said we wanted to make a call to Australia, and she took the information and said she'd call us back when she had gotten through. Then our operator in New York called an operator in France, who called an operator somewhere further east, and so on until the call reached Sydney. I remember some difficulty between the New York operator and the Paris operator. who were having trouble understanding each other.
But finally, after an endless half hour, the phone rang and the operator said "This is the New York operator. I have your party on the line." I was so excited I could hardly talk -- and when Liz heard who it was, she was equally thrilled. We were both so speechless that we wasted pretty much the entire three minutes squealing and expressing astonishment at each other's accents! Remember, in the early 1960s the world was a lot bigger than it is today. We didn't have the kind of international communication we have today through worldwide media, easy plane travel and cheap phone calls. I had never heard an Australian accent, and Liz had never heard an American one.
Phone calls are so different now ... I just picked up the phone and pushed 14 buttons and after about twenty seconds I heard the ringing signal more than 9,700 miles away, and then Liz was there! And it only costs 5.7 cents a minute. I talked to her for nearly an hour for a paltry $3 ... much less than that all-too-brief 3-minute call forty-some years ago (and that's without even taking inflation into account)!
When we were in our mid-20's Liz came to the US. What fun that was! I was still living on Long Island then, and she stayed with me for two weeks. I remember that we went into the city and I showed her the sights, and I may have taken her to some other places but I can't remember where. I do remember that she was cold the day we went to Manhattan, and was saying how cold it was. I thought it was a gorgeous day, with the temperature around 65ºF. But Sydney has a subtropical climate like Florida's, so she wasn't used to such "chilly" weather!
My brother and his wife were living in a suburb of Los Angeles in those days, and I arranged for Liz to spend a week with them so she could do some sightseeing out there. They had to work so they couldn't show her around except on the weekend, but she took public transportation and got to see the sights of Hollywood and LA.
Liz and I haven't seen each other since because Liz isn't comfortable flying. Her husband is dying to take a family trip to the States, but Liz hates traveling on both airplanes and ships. She knows that statistically, she's far safer in either one than driving, but of course reasoning doesn't help a phobia. As Tom always said, you can't apply logic to an emotional problem. So unless they find a way to put a track across the Pacific, she's not going to be coming to the US.
But one of these days I'm going to plan a trip to Australia and visit her! I told her I'm going on a cruise with Meredith and A in May 2007, so I'm going to start planning a trip to Australia in 2008 or 2009! I think that was a little too far away for her to think about right now -- I know it would be for me if the situation were reversed! -- but I'm going to start thinking about it, and maybe it will actually happen!
Liz is a very traditional type of person, and has never become comfortable with computers. But her husband Peter is, so I can email her now, and he'll print it out and give it to her. I've already sent him a link my photos and this blog, so she'll be able to keep up with my life even when I'm too down in the dumps to write -- which has happened all too much in the past couple of years, with my life falling down around my ears the way it did.
I used to send birthday cards to everyone in her family -- as she did for me -- but as I became more depressed through the increasingly painful events of the last several years I petered out, and eventually stopped sending them even to her. (If it makes you feel any better, Liz, I haven't managed to send any cards at all in the last couple of years. I didn't even send Christmas cards out in 2004 or 2005. So it hasn't been just you!)
But through it all she has been steadfastly loyal, never missing my birthday or Christmas, with a chatty letter to at least let me know what was going on in her life, even though she didn't know what was going on in mine. She's a wonderful person and one of my dearest friends, and I'm so delighted that we happened to find each other in some pen-pal exchange all those years ago!