Party Line

I was a youngster, but can remember, as far back as the early WWII period which of course was the first half of the 1940s decade.  Undoubtedly there are others who can stake a claim to far earlier memories than that, but I can only tell you what I recall.  Our telephone at the time looked like the one in this photograph.  It stood on a shelf about three feet from the floor between our living and dining rooms.  While using it, which my mother dearly loved to do, she sat on a nearby chair in the dining room.

There were four family phones on our party line, but only two party rings could be heard, our own, and one of our closest neighbors the Mayne’s.  If our own ring was heard, my mother of course picked the speaker part off of its hook which opened the phone line to the calling party.  Gladys Mayne also heard our phone ring, so in order to keep up with the neighborhood news she would also pick up her receiver and listen to the conversation between mother and the calling person.  It follows that my mother never passed up an opportunity to listen in on Gladys and her friends.  Common manners said you only listened, but once in a great while possibly mother or Gladys might join the conversation if it was a mutual friend.  It was easy to explain that mother thought it was her ring rather than Gladys’.

Beneath the phone shelf, mounted to the wall was a black metal box about 6” wide and 8” high.  It had a small crank protruding from its side.  If mother wanted to place a call she picked the receiver from its hook, listened to determine if anyone else was using the phone, if not she turned the little crank a few revolutions, and waited for the operator to say, “Number please?”  She then told the operator the number she wished to call and the operator made a manual connection between the two phones.  If perchance any of the other three parties were on the line, then of course she had to listen in to know when they were done with their conversation.

As we had no electric power, hence no TV, and only used the battery powered radio sparingly due to expensive batteries, the party line was mother’s sole entertainment source.  It was in the next decade before our family obtained that great advertising nightmare device, the television.