Not Even Not Zen 414: Biomythography - Note 128: The House Intercom

The House Intercom

Our house on Black Rock road had an intercom when we moved in. Our neighbors, the Ganleys, put it in with a 1960s style of wiring. At the time, it must have been very modern. Even so, I suspect there was something retro about it even when it gleamed. The control knob and the metal speaker grate were both putty colored. Intercom systems had been around in offices, after all, for thirty years. The Ganleys liked theirs well enough but they decided to build another house for themselves, moved next door, and sold off our place. Eventually, we moved in and inherited the intercom.

My mother caught on right away. She started pressing the intercom button to summon me.

"It's time for chores," she said. "Come to the kitchen."

My father didn't seem to like the system but the rest of us got used it. We kids loved it, at times. My little brother and I pretended to be spies via the intercom. We sent each other coded (ha, ha) messages over the radio. Never mind it didn’t make much sense. We were playing. The intercom was an ever-present walkie-talkie to us. Sometimes we were genuinely spies, too.

"Go up there," I hissed from my bed.

"Why me?"

"Because I've already gone a bunch of times. Mom is getting suspicious."

I would send my brother upstairs to report on what our parents were doing. This was partly to find out dumb things we could have simply asked about, like when dinner might be ready, but partly to slip out of the house without my parents seeing. Then my brother would give me his secret report via the intercom.

“You know I can hear you sending messages about me, right?" my mom told me one time.

“Oh, yeah.” I sat up straight. I had been caught!

As a spy system, the intercom had its drawbacks.

One day, I woke up to music coming over the intercom. It was a 1920s jazz band number with a lot of clarinets. I remember thinking, this is not a bad way to start the morning. I assumed my father had snuck a radio into my room. I tracked the sound to the intercom speaker and felt confused for a few minutes. When I got upstairs, things made more sense.

My father was standing between the dining room and kitchen. On the counter next to the kitchen intercom, he had placed one of his smaller radios. He had found a morning jazz broadcast on it. Normally, big band era music bothered me. The tunes seemed slow, overly simple, and even the lyrics got boring. Sometimes, though, the same broadcasts would insert a hot jazz age number in the playlist. This was one of those.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"It's nice," I admitted. It was dangerous to admit I liked anything. My father would use it as permission to repeat it endlessly, sometimes in the worst variations possible. (I admitted liking 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down' and it resulted in four years of 'Three Little Fishies' on my father's theory they were basically the same thing.) That came true this time, too, as for five days running we woke up to radio broadcasts on the intercom. Eventually, my mother spoke to my father about it.

A few months later, my father got interested in the intercom one more time. He heard me and my brothers playing. When he took the session over, he insisted I do an Abbot and Costello routine with him.

Me, prompted by my father: "Nicknames, nicknames. I’m supposed to say nicknames. Now, on the team we have Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third."

My dad, gleefully : "That's what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the team."

Me: "I'm telling you. Who’s on …"

My dad, interrupting to say my lines, which are Abbot's lines: "Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third."

My dad as Costello again: "You know the fellows' names?"

Me: "Yes, I know this, dad."

Dad as Costello again: "Well, then who's playing first?

Me: "Who. I mean, Yes."

Dad: "The fellow's name on first base."

Me: "Who is on first."

Dad: "Yeah, who is the fellow playing first base?"

Me, getting tired and trying to sound like an owl: "Hoo. Hoo."

Dad: "Hah!"

He had heard the routine hundreds of times and memorized most of it. Heck, he'd subjected me to it so much I'd memorized most of it against my will. And yet it still made him laugh. We could never go more than halfway through the routine without him stopping it with his laughter or him wanting to redo some part of our sketch to make it better. It was the most fun he ever got out of the intercom.

A few years after we moved in, static started to appear on the line. The power started to fade. Eventually, the system didn't work at all. Finally, during a remodeling effort, my parents covered up most the intercom speakers with paneling or backsplash tiles.