Using the Telephone - Monday Memory

I'm writing of rotary dial home telephones here, vintage 1950s-1960s.

I knew that if the phone rang once (one ring, break, one ring, break, etc.) then it was for our house.  If there were two rings (ring-ring, break, ring-ring, break, etc.) then it was for someone else's house.  What I didn't understand as a five or six-year-old was what to do if there were people already talking when I picked up the phone to make a call.  One time I picked up the phone and heard two women talking.  And then I heard, "The phone's already in use.  Hang up."  Oh!  That was a surprise.  I later learned that if I hard voices when I picked up the phone, I should very quietly hang up as quickly as possible.

Another time when I was about the same age or just a little older, I asked my mom if I could go downstreet to visit Gramma.  (She lived one large yard away from us, a short walk by the street.)  Mom told me to call her to see if she was home.  I picked up the phone, dialed Gramma's number, and listened.  She said hello and I hung up.  I knew she was home because she answered the phone and saw no need to have a conversation because I would be seeing her in a few minutes.  Mom asked if she was home and I said yes.  And down the street I went.  When I arrived at Gramma's we greeted each other, and then a few minutes later she asked, "Did you call just a bit ago."  I said that I had and that was the end of that conversation.  But when I got home, I received instruction that when I called someone on the phone I needed to talk to the person who answered.  Mom explained that I might have alarmed or worried Gramma by not talking to her since she didn't know who was calling.  It's all a learning experience for kids, right?

When I was young we had two telephones in our house.  The older of the two, similar in shape to the one at right, was on a little stand in our upstairs hallway close to my parents' bedroom.  It was rarely used but was helpful to my mom if the phone rang while she was upstairs cleaning.  By the time I was ten or so, that phone had been removed and we were a one-telephone household.

The second phone was on the first floor, on a counter in the kitchen near the wall.  It was a newer model, similar to the one at right, though ours may have been a little older.  Without the upstairs phone, that phone was used for everything:  to make doctors' appointments, for conversations with relatives and friends, to answers questions from callers about clock and watch repair, etc.  In those days there were no private conversations. Anyone else at home within hearing distance knew at least half the conversation. This didn't matter to me until I became a teenager, but I suppose my older sister and brother might have appreciated some privacy on occasion.  This was the phone I used to call my grandmother and to listen to others' conversations in the two memories above.

We heard others on our phone because we had a party line.  I suppose the word party, in this case, is similar to the legal use of the word, meaning an individual or entity.  A party line meant that individuals or families in several homes shared the same line.  It was more economical to have a party line than a private line.  For the most part we ignored the phone unless we heard our own ring (one, two, maybe more) or unless we intended to make a call.  There were times when someone was long-winded, in which case another party who needed to use the phone might interrupt those in conversation and ask them to finish.  That seemed to work out well, for the most part.  I was probably too young to remember if there were people who hogged the line.  Of course, with a party line, the lack of privacy extended beyond listeners at home to whoever else might pick up the line and listen in.

Another aspect of telephones in the times before cell phones was the cords.  The phone cord was connected to an outlet in the wall, installed by someone from the telephone company, in our case Ohio Bell.  There was no do-it-yourself in those days when it came to telephones.  Phone cords could be varying lengths but the shorter the cord, the less movement the person on the phone had.  I believe our cord in the kitchen was about 6' long.  The other cord on the phone was the one that was coiled and connected the receiver (with earpiece and mouthpiece) to the telephone.  Those could also vary in length.  And ours, was, again, probably about 6' long.  All this to say that when on the phone, we were physically tethered to it if we wanted to talk to the person on the other end of the phone.  The cords on our phones were not long enough to reach to the sink so someone could do dishes while talking.

At the center of the dial on the telephones of those days was a piece of cardboard covered with plastic.  I think there was a ring of plastic around that which screwed onto the center of the  phone.  The cardboard was a place to write your phone number.  Our number was OLympic 2-7979.  Sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s the phone company switched over to seven numbers and no letters.  I don't know how the phone, or the operator, could tell the difference between OL (which was 65) and the numbers 65.  It didn't make sense to me but we all switched to numbers.

In those days, in our family, taking photos of adults on the telephone would have been thought a waste of film, considering the cost of buying the film plus developing it and having prints made.  But taking photos of cute children playing on the phone?  Who wouldn't want to preserve this memory?  At right are my brother and my cousin at our grandmother's house.  The occasion was not recorded but by the clothing of my brother, it was not a special event.  The phone was probably 1930s-1940s vintage, newer than the oldest and older than the newest in the images above.

To you readers who remember the era of home phones, what did I forget to include about them that's important to remember?  What were some of your experiences with telephones?

Oh, and just to add a little humor, watch this youtube video of young people trying to figure out how to use rotary dial phones that were the standard of my childhood and youth.

I love cell phones and all they can do but I have to say, I also occasionally miss the old rotary dial phones.

—Nancy.

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