Rural Party Line Remembered

Our phone lines are bad -- but they could be worse.

I get pretty disgusted about our telephone line sometimes. I wish AT&T (new owners of the former BellSouth) would lay fiber-optic cable in this part of Christian County, KY. Then we could get a broadband internet connection, which would speed up our uploads and downloads tremendously .

Isaac recently showed me a Newsweek article about the lack of access to high speed internet service in America. Compared with many parts of the world, including places you wouldn't think of as rich or advanced, America is lagging behind on the information superhighway. For example, Estonia has passed us by and is leaving us in the dust.

Even though our telephone lines are inadequate by modern standards, I do remember when telephone lines were much, much worse. Fifty years ago, when I was growing up in Rock County in northern Nebraska, we'd have been amazed at the telephone service I'm complaining about tonight.

In those days, every little community had their own telephone company and everyone was on one big party line. In the Duff Valley where we lived, twenty or more homes were on the line. Every phone call rang in every home.

To call someone on the telephone, the receiver was taken off its cradle and the handle was cranked to make it ring. Our family's "ring", the signal for us to pick up the phone, was a short ring followed by a long ring. The Anders' ring was a long and a short. Duff Valley School's ring was two longs and a short. My Saar cousins' ring was a short, two longs, and a short. It may sound complicated, but everyone knew everyone else's ring by heart.

An emergency (such as a prairie fire) or a community announcement was signaled with an extremely long ring. That was the one time that everyone was supposed to pick up the telephone and listen! Some of the neighbors liked to "rubberneck" every time the phone rang. When my parents needed to make private business calls, they made them from a telephone booth in town.

The phone line itself was strung on poles that were a little taller than fence posts, but not nearly as tall as electric poles. Glass insulators -- the ones that you now see in antique stores -- kept the wires from touching the posts and grounding out. It was not uncommon for the telephone lines to go down in a bad winter storm.

When you wanted to call somewhere beyond the neighborhood, you cranked out a long ring for "Central", the switchboard at the telephone office in Bassett . When she answered, she said , "Number, please," or "Operator," and then connected you to whatever lines you needed.

My mother's Aunt Letha Blair was the night operator at the Bassett telephone office for many years. My mother often called her late in the evening and visited with her between the incoming calls at the telephone office.

Shorty and Garneta Schubert were on two telephone lines--both the Duff line and the Sybrant line. I think the telephone office charged whenever a call went through Central, because people often called the Schuberts and asked them to get on their other telephone to relay a message.

We all thought we were pretty up-to-date when we finally got dial telephones in the mid-1960's. The telephone only rang when the call was for us. I think we still had a party line, but it was just a couple other people. It was quite a change.

Irregardless, I still want DSL!

Technorati tags: bad telephone service, bad telephone lines, party lines, telephone operator, old time telephones