The Buckets by Greg Cravens for November 24, 2014

Party line: You jump into the middle of a lot of gabble, hear a bunch of stuff you didn’t expect, see if anyone was talking about you. Say some random stuff, possibly regret a couple of comments, tick off some people accidentally (or otherwise). Look up two hours later than you meant to be on. Boom. Sound familiar, Facebookers?

Now I know why I don’t do Facebook or Tweet; I was discouraged to socialize on the phone.

I remember using a dial-less phone you picked the receiver up and if no one was on the line the operator answered. You told her who you wished to speak to. If you knew the number you told her and if it were a party line it had a number of time she rang the phone such as 2173-ring 3. My grandparents had a 3 digit number such as 163. Their phone office was one of the first ones to upgrade to dial phones in the Pittsburgh area.

When I was a little boy, and first learned to use a telephone, we had a party line. I wish I remembered more about how it worked; the etiquette as well as the mechanics. I do know that trans-oceanic calls were a BIG DEAL that had to be scheduled and coordinated with the other people on that line.

I remember party lines too. When I was a child I used to listen in sometimes. You would know if the call was for you by how the phone rang. I think ours was 3 quick ring-rings.

We didn’t have a party line, but all the kids knew you could dial your own number to get a busy signal, and if you talked real loud, the other kids could hear you behind the busy signal. Worked best if only a few people were on. If there were more than a few, it became meaningless gibberish – Facebook, in other words.

You couldn’t check up on anyone that didn’t live in your neck of the woods, which would have been an issue if transportation hadn’t been so difficult that you didn’t know anyone who didn’t live in your neck of the woods anyway. And, there was nothing that could be played back in court.

I remember having a party line for a few months. My stepdad was a lawyer, though , and decided ( much against his core principles) that he needed to have the line open at all times so his clients could reach him in an emergency. Of course, this was pretty expensive…I suspect he found some way to write it off as a business expense.

I see now.

My college dorm in the mid-80s still had party lines — 4 rooms shared a line. Etiquette-wise, if you wanted to use the phone and you picked it up and heard someone else talking, you were expected to hang up and try again later. It was considered totally not-cool to just eavesdrop on someone else’s call.And if you were the one talking, and you heard someone else pick-up/hang-up the phone, the polite thing to do was to wrap up your call soonish, b/c someone else wanted the phone. When someone did not do that, the check-hangups began to get increasingly insistent, eventually more like check-SLAM-the-receiver-down!! If someone still kept yakking, you could holler into the phone, but it was considered extra-rude to verbally break into someone’s call. I was more likely to just go next door to their room door and ask them “get off the phone already!” At least I could do that, since our line was the four rooms at the end of a hall. Some people’s lines were four rooms that ran vertically through the 4 floors. That was a tougher situation for maintaining manners; since you probably didn’t even know the people who lived above or below you, on a completely different floor.

I remember one trick with party lines, you pick up the phone, dial your own number, and then hang up right away. If you did it right your phone would start ringing and so would someone elses on the line. The best part of the trick was if someone else in the family picked up the phone and then they and the other person would start argueing about who called whom.

Well put, Frank!

xxx

That TV in the back ground is about as old as party lines. Is that black and white or one of the new expensive living color models?

The party line we had gave a distinct click whenever another party picked up their handset. Quite advanced.My grandparents were able to afford a private line, primarily because of their business.

We had a party line at home back in the 50’s for a few years. But even after private lines became the norm there was a way to talk to random people in the neighborhood (mostly other kids) on a make-shift party line.

If you dialed your own number you would get a busy signal. Someone discovered that the busy signal generator was a device common to a certain number of private lines – probably determined by a section of the cross-bar switches at the phone office. So everyone who got a valid busy signal was temporarily connected together, and by carefully pacing your words you could talk and ask questions over the signal to whomever was also hearing a busy signal at that time.“Hi beep who beep are beep you beep?” “Ginny beep Stewart beep who beep are beep you?” And so on. Sometimes three or four kids would be tied together playing this game. I wonder if it still works today.

We had a party line for a few years when I was a kid. There were a couple of long winded talkers on our line. A few times mom had to break in to the conversation – as we were waiting for a call from dad. anyone remember when calling long distance – having to call the operator and the area code was a name? Like “Mutual 555-5555 or Ingersoll 555-5555?”I still air dial to help remember some numbers. Even if I never dialed the number on an old rotary phone.

We had a party line until the late 60s or so. Didn’t get rid of the rotary wall phone until the 80s. Finally had to do it since everything went to tones and the clicks didn’t work any more.