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Down here the party line numbers went 82A, 82B, 82C etc
The letter was the morse code for the ring:?ÿ short long, long short short short, long short long short and so forth
In about 1985 - 86 the price of a call from a pay phone jumped from a dime to a quarter. I think that was a significant event.
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Somewhere in about that same time I had a magic number I could use to call long distance and charge the call to my home phone.?ÿ A standard call for me was to call my office number to see if I had any messages on my answering machine.?ÿ I believe if the machine picked up and there was one very short message the charge for the call was a little over one dollar.?ÿ Having the "toll saver" feature on the answering machine saved a ton of money as if it rang a third time I knew there were no messages and hung up quickly so as to not be charged for the call.
Stuff no one worries about these days.
Years ago, when I was working on the road I use to call myself collect to my home phone.?ÿ When my wife would answer the operator would ask if she would accept a collect call from me.?ÿ She would answer "no" and the operator would inform me the call could not be completed.?ÿ
It was just a way of letting my wife know I had had made it to my destination and everything was OK...without being charged for a long distance collect call.
This is me circa 1955 most likely talking to my grandpa Bill who lived in Wahoo, NE. Of course, we were on a party line, but I don't recall how many families were on our line. My dad made extra money by being the telephone exchange's serviceman.?ÿ
The telephone came before IREA reached out to our isolated ranch. We first had to crank the magneto and wait for the operator to respond before getting connected.
I have no idea about what Holy Cow is talking about "dialing" a phone number in the OP.
If no conversation was heard, you would dial your party and have a standard conversation, subject....
Yup, Gene.?ÿ The phone looks just like the one we had when I was the same size as you in the photo.?ÿ There was a stool similar to the one you are standing on below the phone.?ÿ Adults would pull it out a bit to sit on for longer conversations.?ÿ It was the only way for me to use the darn thing.
The OP was in reference to our dial phone and our party line that appeared after I had started going to school.?ÿ My first push-button phone was in an apartment during my college days.?ÿ My three-digit prefix was the only one of several in town that could be used with a push-button phone.?ÿ All the others had to be dial phones as the telephone system for them had not been upgraded.?ÿ Turned out to be the same situation in the city where I had my first job after college.?ÿ At home I could push the buttons, but at work things went round and round.