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Remembering Old-Time Telephone Service 

By Elton Camp

Only a few decades ago, the wireless telephones that have become so much a part of our lives were inconceivable and remained so until the advent of Star Trek in the 1960s.  Seeing the crew of the Enteprise in easy, constant contact struck a responsive cord in the public mind.  Nevertheless, few of us even imagined that similar technology would become readily available to individuals in our lifetimes.  

Outside of towns, telephones were not at all common in private homes.  When I was a child in the 1940s, not a house in our immediate community had a telephone.  We all used the one at the crossroads grocery store.  It paid the phone company to run a line only because Gilley’s Store was on the main road between two fair-sized cities.  The more scattered rural areas had no phone lines and thus service was unavailable.  

In 1951, when I was in the sixth grade, we finally got a telephone. It was on an eight party line with all eight homes receiving the ring whenever any house in the group got a call.  The rings were coded: one through four long rings and one through four short rings. All calls “rang in” at every house, even if it was midnight or early morning.  

Zero privacy could be expected on calls.  Distinct clicks announced pick-ups by multiple eavesdroppers.   The practice was called “listening in.”  Actually, nobody seemed to particularly mind as long as the listeners refrained from commenting on the conversation.  

Many of our neighbors didn’t have a phone at all. They came to ask to use ours.  Even worse, their incoming calls sometimes came to us.  “Can I speak to Ronald,” the caller asked.  Ronald lived three houses away.  Yet, we were expected to go get him while the caller waited.  By current standards, that sounds like an outrageous imposition, but nobody objected.  People were more inclined to help each other in those days.  

Older folks tend to long for the “good old days,” but I think few would want to go back to that type of telephone service.
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