I still have my dear MIL's old (about 1915 or so, maybe a little older) rotary phone and it still works. When I have company, I plug it in and then go in another room and call it on my cell phone, and yell at someone to "get the phone". It really gives them a blast to use it, and several have wanted to dial their own homes, just to say they had used one.
I learned to drive in an old 1930s Ford, someone had to get out front and turn a crank while I turned things on the wheel to make the contact, but that old car was like a tank, it would go anywhere. Once when Dad was feeling his drinks he didn't get in the swing with the crank and it flew up and broke his arm. It was a huge thing like a hub cap turner...something else we've gotten away from. Sometimes we could park it on a hill and let it go downhill fast enough to get it started, that was always fun to do!!
As a child, when we finely got a phone, it had a little button under the hand set that you had to pull out to be able to be heard. Which really did make it marvelous for overhearing lots of interesting conversations!!! Everyone would, of course, tell everyone to get off the line, they wanted to talk privately. Which of course made it necessary for everyone to glue the phone to their ear!!! I found out more about boys than my Grandma wanted me to know by listening to teens talking up and down the hollows.