OWJ talks with Rod the owner of T and B Pub and Pete I the Tech guy stops by with another Saturday Morning Diner Review

You can listen live at am 950 WROL and streaming at www.wrolradio.com

Had a great meal at the 5 and Diner.. home made Bread Pudding made from scratch and the wait staff is wonderful and friendly.  New cook onboard. The best shakes around,  tried the Orange Cream shake.. wow!

You can hear more about the 5 and Diner on the Pod Cast page.. check it out.

Today’s Diner is the 5th Street Diner a longtime hangout of mine right next to Romano’s Market.

5th Street Diner and Romano's Market

Tina and Ed opened up 3 years ago during the Ice Storm and have been making a go of it ever since

Ed with his triple layer fudge

It’s one of the smallest of the Diners in the area, seating only about 22 people but the food is first rate.

They are known for their photos of customers for their first visit

They’ve had at least one blogger you might know in the house

I'm seen that Alabama shirt somewhere before

The one hiccup you might run into is the street name. On one side of the bridge the street is Harvard Street, on the other is John T. Centrino Memorial Drive (renamed from 5th street after Mr. Centrino was killed fighting a fire at the old Sabino’s bakery at the corner of 5th and water.)

But the best move is to just look for the sign.

When did the way we handle phone calls change?  I’m talking about the introduction of the cell phone into our everyday life.  I remember when the cell phone first hit the scene.  It was in the mid-eighties.  My first cell was from Cellular One of Norwood MA and it was a project, they had to bolt a transceiver in my trunk.  They ripped up the seats and carpet to bolt a pedestal arms reach while driving.

It was late 1984 and cost over two thousand dollars, then installation.  I had just turned 19 and was at the beginning of a promising Real Estate career and reached pretty far for some great justification for such an extravagant and totally unnecessary purchase.

There was no such thing as a “Cell Plan” in those days, you paid for every minute, and oh did you pay!  It was well over a dollar a minute and I thought it was so cool to call my buddies from their driveways to tell them I was “there”… yeah calling from the car.  This was cool until the first cell bill arrived in excess of $500.

The years passed and the phones got smaller, cheaper, smarter and so common place we may leave our homes without our wallets or watch before we’d leave without our cells.   Now that we are never without being “plugged in” or without the ability to communicate with anyone in the world in a matter of seconds, what does that mean to the phone etiquette that we (at least myself and most of those my age or older) grew up with?

When my sisters and I were growing up we had the “Kitchen Phone”.  This was a fire engine red wall phone with the rotary dial face and a cord that could reach the sink, bathroom, washing machine and of course the chair my Mom ruled the house from.  For privacy you would make your call or get your call and bring the handset into bathroom and with the cord under the door, shut it and hope no one needed to use that particular room anytime soon.  When I got a little older I claimed the basement for my room and being a Ham Radio Operator and knowing my way around electronics somewhat, I got a hold of what they called a Princess phone and tapped it into the phone wires in the basement.  This gave me my own phone slightly before my sisters got an extension upstairs… inevitable once they realized I had a phone in my room.

But the rules were simple.  Our parents calls took precedent, you answered polity and never gave any information to callers.  Our Dad was a Police Detective and we may have been taught to be slightly more skeptical about callers than most.  And the etiquette was even more basic.  When we sat for dinner all calls were over and if the phone rang during dinner it was answered only by my Dad, and it better have been important.  You just didn’t call peoples house during dinner time.  That of course when in the days families had dinner times and ate together.  This meant it was easy for one of our friends to get on the naughty list of my parents; they just simply called during supper.

Other etiquette, you took messages and wrote them down.  When you called someone and no one answered, you simply called back a little later. This also went for when you called and got that annoying busy signal.  Then the machines come along and you left a message, speaking louder than required for some reason.  When you called and your party wasn’t home, you asked that they call you back, and you waited for them to call.  You did not call them every two minutes until they picked up.

I think the beginning of the change in Phone Etiquette was the invent of Call Waiting, Caller ID, Star 69 and Voice Mail.  We began expecting immediately results when we made a call and we began to expect our calls returned sooner than later.

No here we are back to the our cells being part of our being, it seems.  The cell phone also means that everyone now has their own number, direct access to that person.  We no longer have to call the household or deal with anyone else other than the intended party to whom we wish to speak.  Although I use my smartphone as my only phone and would never leave the house without it, I do not walk around my house with it.  It seems the generation right after me never has their phone further than their arms will reach.

All of this seems to have erased the need for all that Etiquette.  After all what time is dinner time?  You have no idea where the person your calling could be or doing, you knew where you were calling when you called a landline.  And who has a landline anymore?  Families have done away with the “House” phone and it seems kids get their own cell and number as soon as they have the finger dexterity.

So what now seems acceptable Phone Etiquette is calling anytime and when does not answer, keep calling till the do.  It is now okay to answer the phone while eating, talking with someone, in the bank line, checkout line or any line for that matter.  I recently held a meeting at restaurant for business and one of the participants not only took a call but made a call at the table, during the meeting.  And they had the audacity to speak louder and louder to drown the meeting chatter out.

When you add the “checking my phone” activity to all this, you have to wonder how did this behavior get to be acceptable?

I will attempt to use the best of the Phone Etiquette we used as a child.  I will not answer my phone when you’re in mid-sentence, I will not break eye contact to check email or text in the middle of a conversation.  I’ll continue to ask if it’s a good time talk when I call you.  I place my phone on silent or leave it in the car when I sit for a meal with you a restaurant or your home… or my home for that matter.

We have all this wonderful technology to make our lives better, easier and more efficient.  Don’t allow it to erode the basic curtsies and politeness we were taught.  There is no law that requires us to answer the phone when it rings, we can let it go to VM, we can return the call.  And we certainly can wait to make a call till we are no longer engaged in conversations, dinner or a meeting.

If you take nothing from this little tirade, take this: A ringing phone does not have to be answered.

Hey, Give a me a call when you can…

The Princess Phone, was the first phone hooked up in my room

4.21 SEG 4  Brian Jackson of Jackson Mixology talks about Bourbon on the Out With Joe Dining and Entertainment Review show with Joe Mangiacotti

We broadcast from the 5 and Diner in Worcester MA this week.  We were joined by Bob Watson the owner of the 5 and Diner Company and local franchise, Shawn Fallon the GM and Lon Hall the Director of Culinary.

We hd a drive in as well… vintage cars from all over come by to really add tot he thyme and Marilyn showed up in a 50′s taxi.  You can listen to the Pod Cast on the Pod Cast page here and you can listen live to the show at 7 am on WROL am 950 or listen live streaming at www.WROLradio.com