Dialing up memories of what we don’t hear
- Larry Persily
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
By Larry Persily
This column is for people who remember — or who heard stories from their parents or grandparents — that staticky, buzzing melody of beeps when someone would dial in for a connection to the internet, and an equally static-sounding machine at the other end would answer.
It was called a “handshake.” It sounded a bit like a joy buzzer, without the practical joke.
It was a comforting sound of success. And anticipation. Like the air-escaping hiss from opening a vacuum can of coffee. Or the confidence of a click of a retractable ballpoint pen. Or the quiet of changing from first to second in a stick-shift car without mashing the gears.
Sounds are a big part of our memories.
The dial-up modem was not an instant connection to the internet like we have now. You would click on your computer, back when mice had tails, and it would dial a preset phone number — yes, you had to have a phone line — to connect to the world. Or at least some of the world.
If you had enough money, you had two phone lines: One for your phone and one for your computer. If you didn’t have enough money, your family members would hear a lot of static if they picked up the phone while you were dialed into the internet.
Though it may sound archaic today, it was revolutionary in 1989 when American Online, later known as AOL, introduced its dial-up service for getting onto the web. But that was 36 years ago — almost as old as the average American today.
And like many things in life, it’s gone. AOL on Sept. 30 shut down its last dial-up internet connection. It made good business sense to get out of the business.
As I dwell on nostalgia, the departure of AOL from the low-tech world got me thinking: What other sounds were such a big part of life for so long that we could never have imagined life without them — but we learned to live without them after all.
There is a long list of lost beeps and bells.
The beeps you heard when you got home and the answering machine signaled you had a message waiting.
Or the beeps you heard when you were on a call (on a corded phone) and another call came in. They called it the “call waiting” feature, and it usually cost extra.
And while we’re on the phone, the clicking sound you heard when dialing, watching the numbers as the wheel turned.
The rings you would hear after dropping coins into a collection basket at the toll booth.
The bells that went off when you pulled into a gas station, driving over a cord on the ground, summoning an attendant to come out and fill up the tank, clean your windshield and check your oil.
The pounding of dot-matrix printers that literally smacked the paper hard, one dot for one letter at a time, and the ripping sound when you tore off the perforated edges from the form-fed sheets.
It’s all been replaced by technology and different beeps, like the ones I get from my refrigerator when I leave the door open too long. I was used to mom telling me to close the fridge door, but I resent a machine pretending to be mom.
But my hearing is starting to fade, along with my eyesight, and I remember the past better than I hear and see the present.
• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, where this column first appeared.
