Back up a few years to the golden age prior to cell phones, at least prior to affordable and accessible cell phone coverage. It may seem like ancient history to some, but it was only about 15 years ago that cell phones were creating nightmare phone bills for users who dared to travel outside of their home area.
 |
| VHF is the boating equivalent of a party line |
On Wild Goose, we didn’t have a cell phone. Actually, we had no phone at all. We had two radios. One was a Very High Frequency (VHF) radio that has a useful range of about 25 miles. It’s the most common radio among boaters, easy to use, and it’s monitored by the Coast Guard. If you’re within range, the VHF is the radio used to chat with other boaters or call “mayday” for help if you’re in trouble.
 |
| Beastly little guy, isn't he? |
The other radio was a beastly little guy called a Single Side Band (SSB) radio. If it was clear, the gods were aligned and you were patient, you could communicate with someone who also has a SSB on the other side of the world. We listened to BBC and Voice of America on the SSB, often our only means of getting the latest news. We learned a lot about world events in Europe and Africa, but very little about American events. Not a bad option.
The Dreaded Telephone Booth
 |
| The dreaded telephone booth |
In order to communicate with family, friends, business people or vendors, we used the ubiquitous pay phone. It’s a dinosaur in today’s technological age (have you tried to find one lately?), but it was an effective and necessary means of communication back then. Pay phones were usually located on a busy street corner attached to a telephone pole. If you were really lucky, the phone might be housed in small structure big enough for one skinny person and had a bi-fold door that blocked out maybe 10% of the traffic noise. They were called telephone booths. Either way, you were never guaranteed to reach the person you were calling. In fact, most of the time we desperately tried to call our kids from the dreaded telephone booth and check on their well-being only to get the dreaded answering machine. Over the years, I bonded with their answering machines (remember those?) since I communicated often with them and threatened to buy the inanimate box a Christmas gift.
Where Are You??
The worst part of using a pay phone was trying to order something. Whether it was a much-needed boat part, a new pair of shoes or a book, the situation usually went like this:
 |
| Ride 'Em Cowboy thru the wind & waves |
- Inflate the dinghy and putt-putt through wind, waves, rain or baking sunshine to shore
- Inquire about the nearest pay phone and walk there to stand in the wind, rain or baking sun trying to hear over the diesel truck just passing
- Hold a phone book (remember those?), manual or pad of paper while dialing, then dial your 56-digit (seemed like it at the time) phone card number. Get it wrong and repeat process.
- Operator (remember those?) answers and puts you on hold or redirects the call so you wait in above mentioned conditions
- “Can I help you?”
- “Yes, I’d like to order …..”
- “What is your home address?”
- “I don’t have a home address, just a PO box.”
- “I must have a home address. Where do you live?”
- “I live on a boat.”
- “Where do you keep the boat?”
- “Right now I’m in ….. but I’ll be leaving in four days, so I need this shipped ASAP.”
- “OK, I’ll see what I can do. What is your phone number?”
- “I don’t have a phone.”
- “Let me get this straight. You don’t have a home address, you live on a boat that has no home address, you have no phone and you want this in two days because you’re going, uh, away. And I’m supposed to ship this where?”
- “Well, general delivery at the post office usually works. Can you get it here by day after tomorrow?”
- Click----they just didn’t buy my story. I’m sure they thought I was homeless, using a stolen credit card and wanted, for some ungodly reason, to buy a bilge pump.
No home, no phone, no service-at least not easily.
