Calling on the Party Line

Mental Misstep

MY FATHER loved a good joke and often told funny stories about the old party line. There was one neighbor named Roddie who had more time on his hands than the working farmers and was known for listening in on conversations. He vehemently denied this, so Dad decided to try to catch him.

My dad began a very excited conversation about a huge happening in the area; however, he really wasn’t talking to any one person and was making pauses when the other party normally would have replied.

After a bit of this, poor Roddie couldn’t take it anymore. My dad heard him say, “Come here, Christina. Something’s wrong with Whittie’s phone—I can’t hear right.

At this moment, Dad asked, “Roddie, what time is it?”

“Let me see there, Whittie … it’s 12 o’clock.”

Oops!

Suddenly the line went dead, and many a chuckle could be heard, as Roddie wasn’t the only eavesdropper.

I suppose this wouldn’t amuse the young generation with their iPods and videos, but to the new telephone owners so long ago, this was a great pastime.

— Joan Mac Dougall, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts

So, Why Did We Change?

OUR party line of the 1930s and ’40s was unique in the sense that we could access operators in two towns—one long ring for one operator and three short rings for the other.

There was some interaction of the wrong operator saying, “Number, please,” but the system worked very well until the dial system came to town.

The dial system was unable to handle two towns on the same line, so the line was cut midway between the towns. This caused two neighbors less than a mile apart to pay long-distance charges to talk to each other.

Most of the subscribers on the line were unhappy, but slowly the change had to be accepted until improvements were made.

— Ralph Look, Wichita, Kansas

It’s For Your Own Good!

WE LIVED on the outskirts of a large city in southern Wisconsin, and there were five parties on our telephone line.

One lady seemingly spent over half of each day to “visit” her friends on the phone. She would become very irate if someone would continue to get the line.

One day, I kept trying to call out on an emergency. I picked up the phone eight to 10 times, and she scolded me each time for being so impatient.

I finally said in reply, “Mary, look out your window. Your chicken coop is on fire.” BANG went the phone. I didn’t have to make the call after all. She did it for me.

— Delphene Lohmeier, Tomahawk, Wisconsin

Gotcha!

BACK IN THE 1940s, when our family moved to a small farm of about 65 acres near Batavia, New York, our first phone quickly became an important part of our lives. Like all phones then, it was on a party line, so the neighbors on our road were on the same line but had different rings.

Our mother was one of those ladies who ran for the phone when it rang, even if it wasn’t our ring. She would give the people time to say hello, then quietly pick up the receiver and listen in. All seven of us kids had to be very quiet around the phone. Sometimes when the other people heard someone pick up, they would get really quiet, and the would-be eavesdropper would think no one had answered and hang up. (Sneaky!) There were five or six families on our line, so Ma got caught up on a lot of gossip.

One day our phone kept ringing, but when we answered, there was nothing.

After several rounds of answering and finding nobody there, Ma thought someone was fooling around, so she got silly. She’d pick up the phone and say:

“VAT? NO ANSWER? DOUBLE ‘A’, DOUBLE ‘O’, DOUBLE ‘U’, DOUBLE ‘I’–NO ANSWER? VEN I GET HOME TONIGHT, I VILL PULL THE TELEPHONE OUT BY THE ROOTS!”

She did this a few times, until one of the neighbors informed her that they could hear her, even though she couldn't hear them!

Ma had the telephone repairman out right away, and he discovered that the problem was frayed lines.

It turned out that our big white pet rabbit, Thumper, whom we kids named after the bunny in Bambi, had gotten loose in the house and chewed halfway through the phone line.

Poor Ma was so embarrassed—and Thumper was never allowed in the house again.

— Joanne Mazur, Attica, New York