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The photo above is my cell phone, basic, no-contract and cheap and this is where my tale begins for my phone’s battery isn’t holding a charge for long or doesn’t always charge when I plug it in.

So I decided it was time for a new battery and went off to the store to look for one. In the cell phone department of the store I asked the tech person where I could find batteries, showed him my phone whereas he just shook his head and suggested it was time for me to enter the 21th century and proceeded to show a dizzying array of modern technology with unlimited talk, texting, data plans with built in cameras that I can post pictures to a whole host of sites. It can be your internet, watch movies and check your e-mails the moment they enter your in-box and of course there are Apps.

I finally just asked him do these phones for come with friends that I can talk, text too,for I don’t have that many friends to make it worth while. I mainly use my phone for emergencies or to contact a customer when I might be late or for family or friends need to contact me right away. Do I really want to always be checking my e-mails or do I always want to be connected? I don’t like talking on the phone that much or when I’m working at a customers’ house do I want to be talking to another customer about some project of theirs. In the end the young man suggested another place or the internet where I might to find my obsolete battery for my dumb old phone and sent me on my way.

So this got me thinking about phones, technology and how we use them for I’m of an age when I can remember my family having a big black phone in the parlor that might be used once a day, if that. In fact early on we were on a party line where a few of our neighbors and us had to share that one line and had phone operators who contacted the calls.

Before my time phone numbers were 3 digits and then advanced to two letters and 5 digits such as Gibraltar 5-1234 or ORegon9-5500

Yet technology advances so by the time I was a teenager what excitement there was in my house when we got our new white princess phone along with our first color TV

And progress didn’t stop there by the 70’s all new telephones were touch-tone.

By the 90’s the world changed again with the introduction of the cordless phone, now you weren’t tethered by a cord and cell phones were making their appearance as colored bricks that folks could talk into for a price.

A personal bliss is the creation of the digital camera, for years before I had used 35mm cameras, but the frustration of having to wait until the complete roll of film had to be exposed and developed to find out to find out the a picture I really was hoping would come out, didn’t and the ongoing expense of developing and having a lot of prints of objects I didn’t need or want to save. The pleasure of picture-taking came back to me with my first digital camera.

But as always woes set in, for a while back I went into a camera store, well not really a camera store for there aren’t any camera stores around this neck of the woods any more. What I noticed was that there are less cameras available and when I asked, I was told that with cameras now in cell phones there isn’t the demand for cameras as there once was and was told it might be time to get on the smart phone bandwagon for that is the future.

It’s the young and the old going thru life with their cell phones in their hands, always checking for that next important text or call.

I did a “Walk & Talk on The Natural Wonders Big and Small” thru the woods a few weeks ago for a local conservation group and I started out with 12 walkers and 5 cell phone calls later I was walking by myself.

Or have you ever been in the middle of a conversation with someone when suddenly it’s ended for that person just had to answer that call?

For now I’ll try to stay put with my dumb phone (still looking for its’ battery) and my camera , but realizing that at some point I might have to succumb to the future for public pay phones don’t exist anymore.

And when I do I will send you my number so maybe you can text me or call me and I’ll not feel I haven’t wasted all that unlimited time.