I am so old...

[DURHAM D]

I was just asked to explain the following to a young cousin. Maybe you might find it interesting.

I grew up in a small town (less than 500 people) a long time ago. To make a phone call from the large wooden telephone on our wall I would first have to pull up a chair to climb up to reach it and crank it.

I would crank the handle until Mable (the operator) picked up. The switch board was in her home so she could be anywhere in the house. Sometimes when we made a call we would say the phone number and sometimes we just said the name. Usually, I was calling my grandmother so I would just say - Grandma please.

We tried not to make any calls after 9:00 pm because Mabel went to bed early. On Wednesday night we usually did not make calls after 7:00 because she was up at the church playing the piano for choir practice. On Sunday mornings we could not make calls at all.

I don't remember what year we moved on to making our own phone calls.

I just remembered - our post office box number was 24 and our phone number was 240. This was by design for everyone in town. Not sure how they assigned phone numbers to people who received their mail by rural delivery so they had no post office box.

Note: We had to go to the post office to get our mail as there was no home delivery if you lived in town.

We moved to the city when I was in junior high.

Now we all have those mobile phones that constantly invade our lives. I think I would rather talk to Mable.

[Sogo]

1. In rural America, we had the wall crank phones and were on party lines.

Everyone had a unique ring tone: Ours was short-long-short, and the number was 151R23, meaning short-long-short on rural party line #23. Whenever anyone got a call, you would hear their specific ring. It was not uncommon for several other people to be listening in on someone else's calls. So, there was no privacy. That was good in cases of emergency, but otherwise, pretty annoying. There was one woman who listened in on everyone else's calls, and everyone knew it. If I recall correctly, we didn't get dedicated dial phones until I was in high school, which would have been in the '60s.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I hear you, my dear DURHAM D!

Talking to Mabel sounds like a lovely idea!

[thought crime]

3. What, you don't like Siri?

[DURHAM D]

4. No, but

I do talk to Alexa a lot.

[thought crime]

10. Here is a true story.

I mentioned to my wife that I posted a snarky comment about Siri. My wife replied that I shouldn't have done that snarky Siri thing. Then Siri (from my wife's computer) just said "I don't understand".

[DURHAM D]

11. LOL

[murielm99]

5. I know the feeling.

I still live in the country. I remember a lot of those changes.

Until a few years ago, we did not have 911. We had a lady in town named MaryLou. MaryLou had the fire phones and ambulance phones in the front part of her apartment. MaryLou knew everyone in the area, whether they lived in town or the country. She knew me from the library. She knew every member of my family.

One evening after I came home from the library MaryLou called. She asked me if my husband was home. He was not. She asked, "He works with animals, doesn't he?" I said yes. We still farmed then, and we had cattle. He was familiar with all sorts of farm critters. MaryLou told me that my neighbor to the south had had a mishap with her horse. Something had spooked her horse and she had been injured by the frightened animal. A passerby had called an ambulance for her, but was unable to do much with the horse other than shoo it into the barn. MaryLou asked if my husband could go down there and take care of the horse. Of course he did that easily.

My husband came home and sat down at the kitchen table. Our dog sniffed his boots and pants so vigorously that she almost inhaled them. My husband said, "Yes, dog. Now you know what a horse smells like."

My husband has a gift with animals. MaryLou had a gift for solving almost any local human emergency, whether it required an ambulance, law enforcement or neighborly cooperation. We have 911 now. Sometimes I wish we still had MaryLou.

[DURHAM D]

6. Thanks for sharing.

Anyone who thinks country living is not interesting just needs to get out more.

[pansypoo53219]

7. i 'collect' phone numbers. i have many ice picks. ooh, letters + numbers. oooh THREE. but it was an old lumber store

aprone my great-aunt had. PHONE 2! on yard sticks i hoard too. and my rotary phones. stupid digital landline.

[Figarosmom]

8. And we had to count the number of rings

Before answering because that's how you could tell who the call was for.

At my grandma's in West Virginia that's how it was.

[BurnDoubt]

9. I've told my Wife more than once I'd like to move to Mayberry.

Some days, the World is turning too fast, and everything is too wrapped up in complexity.

[Ping Tung]

12. I'm 81 and I remember party lines and human operators that spoke to customers.

Now, I'm thinking about consulting some 8 year old to help me navigate a cell phone.

To hell with Smart. give me Simple.

[Joinfortmill]

13. Very cool

[KY_EnviroGuy]

14. Thank you for this post, you brought back a flood of memories.

My great uncle ran a country phone exchange out of his house for many years in a small crossroads farming town in middle Tennessee throughout much of my youth in the 40s and 50s. My great aunt and cousin operated the switchboard from one of their bedrooms and uncle Alvis maintained the entire system, climbing poles the old-fashioned way - replacing broken wires and glass insulators as needed. All the home phones I recall in his Bell system were wall-mounted wood-cased crank types just as you described.

In my little country town not far away, we were in tall cotton with Bell System rotary dial phones after sometime in the 50s, although many subscribers had to be on party lines. I remember my dad habitually answering the phone saying "our ring?"

I wound up going into electrical engineering and my great uncle and his strong curiosity about electricity was one of my early inspirations. I really miss the old Bell System because it was probably the most reliable major system America has ever had, including military and industrial equipment. Far more so than all the disposable junk we're saddled with now!

KY..........

[DURHAM D]

15. Thank you for more memories.

I have a candle holder my uncle made using two of those glass insulators.

I forgot all about it.