Remember When - 40s and 50s: Telephones - 1 dingaling, 2 dingaling

Switchboard - somewhat newer model

Our Town and surrounding area had 3 party lines. At 7 every night the central switchboard would shut down until 8 the next morning and you could only phone people on your same party line. In an emergency, if you needed to phone someone on anther Party Line, you had to go through the switchboard. Our switchboard was located in the operator’s home and those living close enough could go to the home and he could open another party line for you. Our party line was number 2; I assume that the others were 1 and 3. We had around 12 people on our line, and you could be sure that any time you got a phone call, someone else (often a few) would be “listening in”. At times it would be funny, as if you were talking about something that another person may know the answer, you would actually ask that person if they were listening in, and they would answer you! It was not a mode of communication that you would discuss anything that you wanted to remain private. When you phoned someone on your party line, you would crank your phone yourself, with their ‘ring code’ but if they were on another party line, you would crank one long ring and the switchboard would answer and connect you to the other person. The codes seemed to be that the last numbers were dialed first – number ‘5’ being a long, so our number was 2007 – 2 was the party line, 7 is greater than 5, so it ended in a ‘long ring’ and 7 minus the 5 was 2 shorts, therefore our ring was 2 shorts and 1 long. My Grandfathers (who was on the same party line) was 2015 – again, 2 was the party line, 15 being 5 three times = 3 longs. If a person had the number 2012 it would be two shorts and two longs, and 2515 would be a long a short and a long. The phones were the type that mounted on the wall, with the mouth piece that would move up and down to allow for people of different heights, and the ear piece had a cord on it, to reach the persons ear. When you lifted the ear piece it opened the line. They were powered by 9 volt batteries that sat inside the wooden case. It was not advisable to use the phone during a thunder storm for fear of lightning hitting the phone line, and traveling to the phone (drawn by the current of the battery). My Aunt used to cover her phone with a towel during a storm – not sure if that would stop lightning, but made her feel safer. I am not sure there were dial phones in the forties, but remember, I grew up in the’ boonies’. With the rotary phones, phone numbers would begin with a word. Arbutus 224 as an example would be AR224; they would use the first two letters of the word as part of the number. In old movies you will hear them ask the operator for Sycamore 297, etc. I always thought it must have been difficult for some people who could not spell very well, using Sycamore for instance… am sure many would dial SI, and not SY! In this era, if you ever had to dial long distance, it would take a bit of doing, with the switch board having to dial a ‘central’ located city, who would dial the city closest to the number you wanted, who would then dial the number, etc. When you did this you can visualize four different switch boards connecting cables to allow a line from you to the person you were phoning. And now – you take a little gadget out of your pocket, take a picture, push a speed dial, and another button, and someone across the world sees the picture – (by the way, I do not know how to do the little gadget thingy) and I kind of miss ‘listening in’ on the party line.