telephone, manufacturer unknown

This is another junk appliance liberated from Grandma's trash. This particular piece is remarkable (I think so, anyway) in how unremarkable it is. It's definitely one of the most generic devices I've seen in a while.

It's a phone, a black phone. That's pretty much all I could determine about it. If I had to guess, I'd say it's from the early 90s, before cordless became the standard. Presumably, the manufacturer's name was on the cradle, which we never did find.

It took a lot of effort to get to the guts. I got one screw out, the only one I could find, but the case still wouldn't budge. I couldn't get a screwdriver tip under it either. Once again, when hand tools fail, you have to use the floor. I grabbed the phone by the cord and swung it like a flail at the concrete floor. It took about five minutes of smashing before the case split, at which point I noticed two cracked posts with screws in them.

Sure enough, I peeled off a little sticker above the keypad, and there were two screws, staring back like little mocking eyes. Hiding fasteners behind stickers or stick-on rubber feet is an old trick, and I usually catch it. Not this time, I guess.

There's not much worth saving out of a phone like this. I pretty much just took the buttons.