Can you hear me now?

The house I own was built in the 1980’s.  The same time I was busy coming back from life overseas as a expat and trying to reinvent myself.  Strange to think that while I was struggling to build a life, someone was building this house.

When I bought it in 2005 if was in need of extensive rehabilitation.  Oddly enough, one of the original features  endured – the intercom system – in every room.  It is slowly going away room by room.

Wood – Plastic, you weren’t fooled were you?

This technological marvel was centered around a “base station” of sorts in the kitchen.  Roughly the size of a small TV, Walnut, wood-grained plastic with silver knobs, it took up space under the microwave.  With this unit you could dial up music from a huge variety of AM or FM stations and pipe it through the house.  Everyone, everywhere, will listen to Christmas music, damn it!

The wall mounted box below appeared in every room, including the bathrooms and gave you four options: Talk, Door, Monitor and volume control.  I love to think of whoever put this system in place pushing the Talk button and shouting through the house  “Bring a new roll of toilet paper, stat!”

The Door button refers to a console outside the front door.  I guess if you were too lazy to get up and see who was ringing the door bell, you could inquire as to who was there.  This door unit also sported the classy Walnut wood-grained plastic motif; I seriously doubt anyone was fooled.

There are just three units remaining in service, if you could call it that.  Since the main unit in the kitchen no longer exists they serve only to catch flies and dust.   I have one in my bedroom and one in the master bath.  The third holds odd pieces of tack in my mud room.

I keep them around to remind me of a simpler time, a time before the Internet and cell phones or texting.  I also keep them around because I haven’t painted those particular walls yet…

Camouflaged?  I think not…