I've got an old telephone , the dial type and it's in excellent shape. Now I'm wondering how to connect it to the jack by myself. It just has wires that connect to the jack somehow, nothing there to plug in just the wires coming from the telephone. I've got a feeling that they just wrap around the screws in the jack but maybe someone can tell me just what to do.

Take the cover off the jack. If it is a newer one, it has incoming wires and wires from the jack itself wrapped around screws. Just loosen the screws and add the green and red wires in the phone cord to the green and red wires in the box. I think most phone systems still accept dial pulse dialing.

I am on Vonage, VOIP, and can't use a dial phone.

No sense replacing things that you can make work.

Thanks guys. I'll try it later and let you know how it turned out.