Most of you are far too young to remember the days when most telephones were part of what was called a party line.?ÿ At my boyhood home we were on a party line with about 8 or 9 other houses.?ÿ Anyone on the party line would pick up the phone quietly and then determine if someone else was already using the party line by listening for conversation.?ÿ The polite thing to do in non-emergency situations was to return the phone to the cradle.?ÿ That made a little click noise that those currently using the phone could hear which alerted them that someone else was wanting to use their phone.?ÿ The polite thing to do was to quickly wrap up whatever discussion was underway and hang up.?ÿ If no conversation was heard, you would dial your party and have a standard conversation, subject, of course, to the possibility of having someone on your party line pick up their phone while you were having your conversation.
A fairly common practice was that the person picking up the phone would simply listen in to whatever conversation was underway, unknown to the ones having the chat.?ÿ Oh, my.?ÿ The things one might learn that were not intended for their ears.?ÿ By waiting until the first two people hung up their phones they never knew you were listening in.?ÿ Then you would momentarily hang up the phone to disconnect then pick it up again to start over your intended phone call.
That is similar to what happens here when two or more posters get into serious discussion on some thread.?ÿ Those of us who "lurk" or simply make no comment compare to the old time practice of listening in to your neighbors' conversations.?ÿ The only difference being that posters here are assuming everyone in the world may be "listening in".?ÿ With the party line situation wise people kept their conversation as safe as possible because the neighbors might be listening the whole time.
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Back in those party line days most people kept their conversations short.?ÿ However, there were always the exceptions to the rule.?ÿ Some friends of mine had an old widow on their party line who had a small circle of friends who were also elderly widows.?ÿ They could chat for hours.?ÿ Others on the same party line had to make it a practice to simply say, "Elsie!?ÿ This is Don.?ÿ I need the phone for the next five minutes.?ÿ Hang up now."?ÿ Then Elsie and whomever would immediately stop, hang up, wait five minutes or so and then one would call the other back to pick up where they stopped off.
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Somewhere around 1988 or so is when I finally had a private line for my house phone.?ÿ That was on a Southwestern Bell system, too.
Wow, 1988!
Raised my boys out in the woods east of here in the '70s and '80s.?ÿ We had a 'party line' until 1985 due to the prohibitive cost of a 'private line' back then.?ÿ I finally got a private line due to necessity.
While party service meant there was a possibility of there being 3 other folks on the same line, I was lucky I just shared the line with the closest neighbor.?ÿ But he had 4 daughters that were all older than my boys.?ÿ And those girls were ALWAYS on the phone, especially the oldest.?ÿ I use to pick up the phone and when I didn't hear a dial tone I would just say, "Diane, can I use the phone for a second?"?ÿ If she didn't comply I would usually mention it to her father.?ÿ That always got results.
I was 13 miles from the closest little hamlet, population 350.?ÿ It had a post office and a grocery store that delivered.?ÿ Back then we didn't have to dial the prefix if we were calling a number in the same dialing area, just the last 4 numbers.?ÿ My number was 2274.?ÿ The grocery store's number was 2247.?ÿ I got so many calls from old folks wanting groceries I got to know their names;?ÿ "Mrs. Schmidt, this isn't the grocery store.?ÿ You dialed the wrong number again."
I'm so old all of my childhood pictures are B&W.?ÿ If there's color pics in my family album they're of my kids.
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all the numbers in my hometown were 556-3*** .... I think we finally got to the "4"'s a few years ago.?ÿ?ÿ Still can't get cable tv at the farm!?ÿ
Those were the days.?ÿ Four digits was enough.?ÿ Believe it or not, we only dial seven digits now if calling someone served by the same telephone company, sometimes over an hour away.?ÿ Had that happen just last night when calling back a client.?ÿ I did not realize his prefix was on the same telephone company as my prefix.?ÿ When that happens you get a recorded message telling you to hang up, try again, but do not dial the area code.?ÿ Poor fellow told me he had sent me a text message.?ÿ I never got one.?ÿ Then it hit me.?ÿ All he knew was my landline phone number.?ÿ No text on that one.
"Dial your party?" Excuse me, there was no dial on our phones. We did have a private line "Nazareth 604" for my father's business. We had phones in the house, in the office of my father's business and at the sales counter. If it was neccessary to communicate from house to business you picked up the phone and waited for the operator to respond, then said "ring this number please" and hung up. When someone answered on the other end you again picked up the phone and had a conversation. We had an outside bell which was almsot the size of a bank alarm. Nazareth had only three digits worth of phone numbers but Easton had 5 digits worth.
When dial phones began to be installed we became PLaza 9-1580. Easton had BLackburn 2, 5 or 8 as prefixes. My parents had that same phone number for 60 plus years. After the first year of marriage we got an Easton Phone number 252-**** and have had it for 50 years. We had a dial phone for years because I refused to pay the phone company the extra dial tone fee that actually saved them money. It was a hoot when kids visiting our house wanted to call their parents and they would stare at the dial for quite some time in bewilderment before they would ask for instructions. I had been using ten key adding machines since youth and really disliked having to rethink the key pad on a touch tone phones. I was not as adept at a 100 key adding machine, but my wife who worked in a bank was a whiz.
Paul in PA
We had a Party Line until about 1960 or so.
On a [somewhat] related note:
I was working on a Uranium Project (Control & Mining Claim stuff) down in Southeastern Utah back in 1976/77. One of "towns" that we worked out of was Hanksville Utah. We stayed at the Poor Boy Motel (only one in town), and it was managed by a gorgeous little blond "chick," named Trudy. The Local switchboard (like in the old movies) was also at the Poor Boy, and run by Trudy as well. When you wanted to call ANYBODY in town from anywhere else in the world, you had to get Trudy on the telephone (Hanksville 41), and give her the 2 digit number for whoever you wanted to talk to (of course Trudy knew everyone in town, so you could just ask for them by name.
One of our favorite cassettes in the FJ40 was Fire on the Mountain by Charlie Daniels, everytime I hear this song, I think of Trudy...
It was fun growing up on the cusp of technology.
- My Kindergarten teacher told us a story about using a pay phone to call her husband; she said, honey, I had to push buttons to call you!
- I got to watch the moon landing on TV (black and white).
- I went from black and white to color TV. Although my old man waited a few years, until they worked out the bugs.
- The first company I went to work for, had just purchased an HP 3800 EDM, circa 1975.
- I went from vinyl records, to reel to reel, to 8 track tapes, to cassettes, to CD's, and now, everything is digital!
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I could go on and on; isn't technology amazing!
Totally old enough. I often wonder today if my party line taught me to be concise and respectful when speaking, so that I can't fathom how, or WHY people walk around talking on their phone all day long?? When I was limited by party lines and land line extension cords, it never occurred to me that someday technology would allow me to go through all my daily life while also talking to my friends or whomever? Where is the joy?
I remember a party line. We must have gotten a private line mid 50's.
In the mid 80's when I saw the first cell phone, I said, " if you hooked it up to an answering machine your message would be "I'm home and can't talk now, I'll call you back when I go out". People thought that was funny.?ÿ
I'm "only" 39 and I remember we had a party line.?ÿ My grandmother (lived across the road) and the old lady down the road eavesdropped on everybody!?ÿ LOL Funny thing is I think I saw my first bag phone in a truck only 5 years after we lost our party line.?ÿ?ÿ
Truth is we didn't have anything but a crank-style telephone until about 1961.?ÿ Something like two longs and two shorts was our specific ring for our party line.?ÿ If you heard the phone doing some different pattern, you knew the call was for some other house.?ÿ The "Operator" was at the switchboard about three miles from our house.?ÿ You made an exceptionally long crank to let her know she was needed.?ÿ When she cabled in to the switchboard on our party line she would then ask how she could help.?ÿ Usually it was to be connected to a different party line so we could reach someone a bit further from home.?ÿ On exceptionally rare occasions it was to have her start the series of connections to contact someone far, far away.?ÿ Part of the time it was simply to ask her a question.?ÿ She was about dead center of the short main street in the little town so could see almost everything that might be going on.?ÿ The question might be, "Have they brought up the mail bag from the railroad depot yet??ÿ We need to make a little trip today and want to get our mail directly from the post office this morning instead of waiting until afternoon when the carrier normally gets here."
BTW, observing the threads/comments here is great fun and educational too.?ÿ Much like listening in to the neighbors on our party line all those many years ago.?ÿ Sometimes one of them would slip up and reveal something about themselves or their family that they really didn't want anyone else to know.?ÿ Sometimes that happens here just the same way.
