|
Country Phone Party Lines in the Good
old Days
All of the phones in our rural community
were the old wooden wall crank phones. They were most all similar in style
with a hand crank ringer on the right side of the phone cabinet with two
metal bells on the top front portion with a striker that struck one side
to the other making a bell sound that sometimes woke the dead. The receiver
with an attached cord was on a cradle on the
left side of the cabinet and when you lifted the black celluoid receiver
from the cradle it set the phone in use. The end of the receiver screwed
off like a jar lid with a loose listening device inside. The cabinet opened
and you could see the phone works inside. Some of the ornery boys
used to dismantle an old phone and hook a wire to the Magneta works,
then have you grab their hand and crank the phone. It would really give
a hearty shock .
I can still remember the phone # we had
from 1947 to the late 50's. It was 151-F47. We all had the wooden crank
phones. The F47 was our line number. 151 was our personal number. The 1
stood for a short ring and the 5 was for a long ring, so that made
ours 1 short ring, the next a long one and the last another short ring.
Sometimes I would start for the phone and there would be another short
ring on the end. It is surprising how many 3-4 combination numbers
you can get from those The longest number you had here on the Byron line
was four numbers. We were on the same line as
Mom and Dad Guffy and their number was 515. Uncle Rufus and Aunt
Merel's was 115 and the Gransbury's was 1151 The Cutrights, Cloyds, Browns,
Stoabs, Parkers, another Gransbury, and a few others were on our
line too. We always had a bunch of eavesdroppers and it would cut the volumn
down a lot. You soon learned by the way one would ring the phone was calling
who. Aunt Merel would ring the longest ring for the short ring and a much
longer ring for the long one. I wish I had kept an old phone book with
the numbers. For long distance you rang one long ring for the local
operator ( Mrs.Maggie Deveney at Byron) and she connected you to the long
distance operator and then on to another one until you
reached your #. I also wish I had kept
our old crank telephone too. After we got on our new line, we had
a 5 party line and the busiest line around as we had Coleta Hein who called
her mom, Mary Greenwood at Byron often, Dorine Cutright who called her
sister, Neva Jean Loeser nearby a lot, and we used the phone a lot
too. to Guffys. The George Smiths and Audrey Nutter used the line
very seldom. . I was very happy to get a private line much later. I used
to wonder why someone seemed to always know when we were on the line as
you could hear the drain and a click when they picked up the receiver.
It was Cutrights. I knew it, but could not understand how they knew we
were on the phone. I found out later by a slip of the tongue that
when someone called us, their phone made a sound. They sat near the phone
most of the time and could hear it and eavesdropped on most of our conversations.
I really hated that. I was not one that cared about listening to
phone calls and rarely ever listened in unless it was for the Guffys.We
recently had our area code changed from 405 to 580 and I have had a time
remembering to use the right one. How time changes things !
Lois Caywood Guffy
Byron Oklahoma.
THE
GUFFY FAMILY WEB PAGE
cmark@socencom.net |
