TELEPHONE PARTY LINE

I've writtten one every year since the one about my tooth.   TELEPHONE PARTY LINE by Mrs. Jerry (Connie) LaGrow Rt. #1 Box 61 Cherokee, Oklahoma 73728  2007 I don’t know how many people today recall the old telephone party line but this is an experience that my husband and family had with the party line back in the mid ‘60's when our two children were small and in grade school at Jet-Nash. We did not yet have individual telephone systems but we did have the beginning of a dial system.  It no longer was the old rectangle wooden cabinet telephone when the ONE telephone hung on the wall and the telephone had an crank on the right side of the wooden box that you would twist around and around to call the operator or someone else on your line and the mouth piece that you spoke into or sometimes yelled into, was usually black and stuck out in front from the wooden case with a small wooden slanted tray on the front to take notes if need be.  On the opposite side of the crank was a black pear shaped apparatus that you put to your ear to hear the voice on the other end of the line.  The reason the little tray was attached to the front of the telephone was because the cord that attached to the receiver was only about 18 inches long.  I recall when I was a child at home that our telephone identification ring was one long ring and a short ring.  Our nearest neighbors ring was two long rings. And if the telephone rang and rang and rang, it was called a general ring and everyone on the party line listened for there was either an announcement or something happening in the community or else an emergency like a fire or an accident in the area and someone needed help RIGHT NOW! There were usually four different families on one line but the night I’m going to tell about, there were six on our one line, three being close neighbors and three in the Lambert area about eight miles away.  In other words we heard our identifying ring and one other person’s ring but if we lifted the phone to use it there might be one of five other family residents that might be talking on the telephone line.   The proper and courtesy thing was to hang up the receiver and go back a little later to see if they were still talking or not, but sometimes one would just listen to their conversation and catch the latest news or gossip as some called it.  That was called eave-dropping!  Well, that particular winter night this is what happened on a telephone party line.   We lived in a very sparsely populated farm area and Southwestern Bell wanted to get the most for their money so they added these other residents on our line.  I hoped I’ve explained this plain enough but here goes. Our children, Penny and Jeffery were in grade school at Jet-Nash, and we didn’t go to the highschool basketball games very often and NEVER to an away game.  But this particular night, the F.F.A. instructor and his wife, Nolan and Bobbie Arthur, called us on the phone and wanted to know if we wouldn’t like to go with them to the game at Aline.  Their phone was out of Jet, which was an independently owned telephone system that was owned by the residents of the community that owned stock in the telephone company.  It was even more primitive than ours in that there was one of three local operators who sat at a switch board twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and placed the local calls from one party line to another or to someone in town.  Even a long distance phone call would have to go through the operator and Mrs. Alexander was the one on duty that night.  (There were three older (we would call them senior citizens today) women that manned the telephone board and were on duty even at night.)   Our telephone was out of Cherokee even though we only lived six miles from Jet and were in the Jet Community and ten from Cherokee.  Our telephone service was provided by Southwestern Bell and was trying out the dial system but with still party lines.  Off-times the Jet telephone operator was known to listen in on conversations to pass the time at the switch board. Well, we consented to go with Nolan and Bobbie because Jerry and I both had relatives on both sides of the family that lived in the Aline area and it might give us a chance to see and visit with some of them.  So off we went in their car to a highschool basketball game, Jet-Nash versus Aline.  Well in the meantime Eunice, Jerry’s mother tried to call us.  We had neglected to tell her that the telephone company had added three other homes to our line and that someone else heard our telephone ring on the party-line.  Well, the other person opposite us would pickup her telephone receiver to see who was calling us and it would stop the ringing.  (This was called eavesdropping on your neighbors.)  Eunice would hear the ringing stop and she would call all our names and no one would answer.  This really bothered her and she would hang up and try again!  The same thing would happen!  After doing this several times her imagination began to run wild!  Especially when the other person on the party line got tired of listening and finally just let it ring numerous times without anyone lifting a receiver.   So Eunice’s next step was to call my parents on the Jet line to see if they knew where we were that evening.  My mother said, “No!” that she hadn’t talked to me that day and had no idea where we had gone.  So Eunice calls our number again!  Still no answer from us.  So she calls our closest neighbors, the Reinharts’, to see if they knew anything about where we might be.  Cecil Reinhart said he would go over to our house and check and make sure we were okay.  Before Cecil got to our house Eunice had contacted the sheriff and told him about the telephone ringing and then stopping when a receiver would be lifted.  So he said he would send a Highway Patrolman in the area to check things out at our house.  (Eunice had visions of someone holding us hostage and not allowing us to talk to her.)   Well, the Highway Patrolman and the neighbor arrived at our farm home about the same time.  Mind you it is very dark at night!  And our white wood-framed house is surrounded with Chinese Elm trees and faces the east with a long porch along the entire front.   The highway patrolman had parked his car in the road and was approaching the house cautiously running from one tree to the next for protection.  When our neighbor arrived he drove his pickup part way up the steep driveway and got out to check and see if our car was in the garage south of the house.  He left his pickup running and left it in neutral.  As he went to peer in the door of the garage to see if our car was there, his pickup started to roll back down the steep driveway.  At the same time the patrol was shining his flashlight in the windows of the house from the porch.  From the porch you could see in windows of the living, dining, kitchen, and bedrooms.  Well, when the pickup went to roll back down the drive both the patrol and the neighbor were really spooked, thinking someone had got in the pickup and was escaping. After the patrol and the neighbor, got over the scare of the rolling pickup they went together to check the rest of the out buildings to see what vehicles were missing and found none were gone.  So the patrol called the sheriff and the sheriff called Eunice back and told her they could find nothing that was suspicious except that no one was home and all our ways of transportation, car, pickup, and truck were all still at home.   So Eunice then calls my parents back at Jet and tells them the findings of the neighbor and the law and wonder where we could be.  That is when the operator, Mrs. Alexander, comes on the line and says, “Are you looking for Connie and Jerry?”  When both mothers of ours say together, “Yes!”  Mrs. Alexander answers, “Oh, I know where they are!  They went to the basketball game at Aline with Nolan and Bobbie Arthur!”   Well, the mystery was solved!   It was several days before either one of our mother’s got up enough nerve to tell us about all the excitement that occurred that night.  We then informed both of our mothers’ that we had another party or home that heard our telephone ring and she was a widow lady that lived alone near Lambert but we didn’t know her.  We also requested that Southwestern Bell not put anyone else on our line except our neighbors that we knew in OUR area. So that is how it was back in the good ole’ days when there was only ONE telephone in the house and you could listen in on your neighbors conversations.