Saturday, August 28, 2010

New arrival

Many years ago, before e-mail, there was something called a "telegram". When I was born in North Dakota in 1940, my father sent a telegram to his brother in San Francisco to make the announcement. Like with another long past mode of communication . . "cablegrams" . . apparently the price of the "gram" was based on the number of words in it. Therefore, brevity was valued.

I was going through a file today and ran across the telegram my father sent about my birth. Brevity, yes, but wit too.

12 comments:

  1. A fantastic telegraphic message.

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  2. Love it!
    Do you remember when telephones were only used in dire emergencies? If it rang no-one dared answer it! And then we bacame bolder and my mother would nag us not to use it for too long just in case someone was trying to get through with an emergency.

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  3. mb - I DO remember those times. And when telephone numbers were only 1 or 2 digits. My home had one of the longer ones: 63J.

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  4. That's a keeper. Do you have someone to pass it on to that might appreciate it?

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  5. Steve - Regrettably, my offspring seem to have little or no interest. C'est la vie

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  6. That is so cool!
    Your father had a great sense of humor :)

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  7. What a gem to treasure!
    I remember when we had a 'party line' number, & we listened out for our ring, which was D in Morse Code.

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  8. Oh, that is truly priceless! Father's fixtures, indeed! Love it. LOVE it!!

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  9. That is a treasure. I saw someone who had a letter scanned, blown up to giant sized and framed. It made a really neat photo.

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