Modern Hill Woman

Party Line

Imagine picking up the phone to call a friend and you hear a voice on the line. You must wait for them to end the call before yours can be placed. Today we hardly think about the privacy and ease of placing a call with a cell phone.

I was around seven living in rural Ripley County when we got our first phone. We were on a party line.

Party lines provided service to remote homes using less wiring and two to 10 households would share the line.

Party lines could be a blessing or an annoyance. If you had friends that were on the same line, you could talk to more than one of them at the same time. But if some long-winded neighbor got to gossiping on the phone, you might wait for hours to make a call. They’d hear each click as you picked the receiver up every few minutes to see if they were still yakking. You could also tell if a nosy neighbor was listening in on your conversations. You’d hear the click when they picked up, but no hangup click. By law you were not supposed to ask someone to get off the line unless it was an absolute emergency. Even then they didn’t always comply.

My friends and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone when we weren’t at school. Ours was a rotary phone with a dial on the front with finger holes, and a number inside each hole. The dial was spun with your finger, selecting each digit of the number you were calling. If their number had the same prefix all you had to dial was the last four digits.

If you were lucky, your phone had a long cord so you were slightly mobile. Most cords were short, so you sat right next to it or on the floor beside it. Today, texting and snap chatting have replaced real conversations.

One time we were at a school function in our granddaughter’s classroom. Her young teacher needed to call the office but had no cell service. I showed her how to use the corded phone hanging on the wall.