But Do You Remember The Partyline?
And no, it had nothing to do with politics.
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I couldn’t for the life of me find an image that captured the function of a good old-fashioned party-line. I had even forgotten that they existed. That is until I read Can You Remember When You Were Always Happy to Answer Your Landline?. Penned by none other than Barbara Radisavljevic, it flashed me back to a much simpler time.
As kids of the 70s, my sisters and I would fight to answer the phone. There was no call waiting, call blocking, return call, or voicemail. You answered and spoke; it rang incessantly, or it rang until you picked it up and hung up to make it stop ringing. Those were your options back then.
Then there was picking up the extension to listen in on other people’s calls. Mom was great at that. I’d almost always bust her.
I’m on the phone!
Would be what would be yelled from upstairs when I would hear the *click* of the other receiver being picked up. Or someone breathing. Or the muted tones of the TV playing in the background as someone had their hand over the receiver trying to muffle the background noise.
Ah, the technology of the 70s.
My mother’s parents had a party-line phone at their house. They lived “in town” so they had many high fluting things that we on the farm did not have. They had a party-line. No one had a dedicated line that they could easily use. No. The town had a line that everyone used.
Think about that for a minute.
At least there was never a busy signal. You just picked up and you were live. You could hear everything your neighbor was saying about what the pastor’s wife wore to church on Sunday and how the mailman was cheating on his wife, etc. Who needed Facebook?
A party line (multiparty line, shared service line, party wire) is a local loop telephone circuit that is shared by multiple telephone service subscribers.
Party line systems were widely used to provide telephone service, starting with the first commercial switchboards in 1878. A majority of Bell System subscribers in the mid-20th century in the United States and Canada were serviced by party lines, which carried a billing discount over individual service; during wartime shortages, these were often the only available lines. — Wikipedia
There is still one example of a party-line in the US still today.
An example of a community linked by party line is in Big Santa Anita Canyon high in the mountains above Los Angeles, near Sierra Madre, California, where 81 cabins, a group camp and a pack station all communicate by magneto-type crank phones. One ring is for the pack station, two rings for the camp and three rings means all cabins pick up. There are also eight emergency phone stations along the hiking trail. The system is a single wire using the ground as a return path. In 2018 maintenance of the line was assumed by the association of cabin owners. — Wikipedia
What can I say? It was boring at my grandparents’ house. They had a very small yard, no toys that I recall, no games, no nothing. But we were expected as children to go to visit and we would stay for hours on end. It was torturous. So the party-line was one of the few sources of entertainment we had at our disposal.
Think it wasn’t fun? Check Mary’s role play out and see for yourself!
If you want to actually watch the video to see her demonstrate what it was like to use a home phone in the 1970s and prior, here’s the link. Mary is funny as all get out!
