But they had a telephone.
My mother was born in 1905 in a log house (not a cabin) that sat at the top a hill between two pine trees. It wasn’t their house, of course, but belonged to a relative. I haven’t been able to find out the exact relationship yet, but they were fairly well off. At some point in time, the house burned. Whether while my mother was living there or not, I can’t say.
At any rate, my mother’s entire family wound up living in the country outside of Amory, Mississippi. As I’ve indicated in previous posts, their house left a lot to be desired. No screens on the windows, no running water, no electricity, coal oil lamps for light and a wood fired stove for cooking. Also a fireplace, which was used for cooking and provided light and heat to boot. But they had a telephone.
On the face it, that sounds strange. But if you stop to think about it, it wasn’t. Electricity required two lines and a high voltage. A telephone, on the other hand, only took one line and it was low voltage. To make a call, all you had to do was pick up the earpiece, stand in front of the mouthpiece and crank the handle mounted on the side of the housing. Before very long, the operator came on the line with that classic phrase “number puhleeze!”. You told her who you wanted, she connected you and then it was your turn.
By the way, if you’ve never experienced a telephone conversation on one of those early wall phones, or heard about it from someone who had, you’ve missed something. Let’s see if I can give you an idea of what it was like.
To begin with, once you had your party on the line, you had more than a few hangers on. Frequently the whole town plus the operator. All you had to do was pick up the phone and you could hear what anyone else was saying, a true party line. They say there are no secrets in a small town and those telephones were one of the reasons.
The early wall phones helped build your lungs, too. You have to remember, this was new technology to most people and they couldn’t get it into their heads that you didn’t have to raise your voice if someone was five miles away. Conversations went something like this: Edna? EDNA? CAN YOU HEAR ME, EDNA? And Edna would say: ROXIE? I CAN HEAR YOU ROXIE. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I HOPE YOU CAN HEAR ME WHEN YOU’RE SO FAR AWAY!!
Not only could you hear her, you ran the risk of blowing your eardrum out from the volume. But that’s the way they thought you had to talk because they were calling LONG DISTANCE.
Despite many conversations occurring at the top of their lungs and many people simply being afraid to even touch one of those evil things (yes, it was considered the spawn of the Devil by some), all it took for them to be accepted was for a child to survive measles or pnumonia or an accident where they fell in the fire because a phone was available to call the doctor.
My mother and her family may not have had what we consider the comforts of home, mainly because of a philandering father (my grandfather) who refused to properly provide for them, but they had a telephone.
At any rate, my mother’s entire family wound up living in the country outside of Amory, Mississippi. As I’ve indicated in previous posts, their house left a lot to be desired. No screens on the windows, no running water, no electricity, coal oil lamps for light and a wood fired stove for cooking. Also a fireplace, which was used for cooking and provided light and heat to boot. But they had a telephone.
On the face it, that sounds strange. But if you stop to think about it, it wasn’t. Electricity required two lines and a high voltage. A telephone, on the other hand, only took one line and it was low voltage. To make a call, all you had to do was pick up the earpiece, stand in front of the mouthpiece and crank the handle mounted on the side of the housing. Before very long, the operator came on the line with that classic phrase “number puhleeze!”. You told her who you wanted, she connected you and then it was your turn.
By the way, if you’ve never experienced a telephone conversation on one of those early wall phones, or heard about it from someone who had, you’ve missed something. Let’s see if I can give you an idea of what it was like.
To begin with, once you had your party on the line, you had more than a few hangers on. Frequently the whole town plus the operator. All you had to do was pick up the phone and you could hear what anyone else was saying, a true party line. They say there are no secrets in a small town and those telephones were one of the reasons.
The early wall phones helped build your lungs, too. You have to remember, this was new technology to most people and they couldn’t get it into their heads that you didn’t have to raise your voice if someone was five miles away. Conversations went something like this: Edna? EDNA? CAN YOU HEAR ME, EDNA? And Edna would say: ROXIE? I CAN HEAR YOU ROXIE. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I HOPE YOU CAN HEAR ME WHEN YOU’RE SO FAR AWAY!!
Not only could you hear her, you ran the risk of blowing your eardrum out from the volume. But that’s the way they thought you had to talk because they were calling LONG DISTANCE.
Despite many conversations occurring at the top of their lungs and many people simply being afraid to even touch one of those evil things (yes, it was considered the spawn of the Devil by some), all it took for them to be accepted was for a child to survive measles or pnumonia or an accident where they fell in the fire because a phone was available to call the doctor.
My mother and her family may not have had what we consider the comforts of home, mainly because of a philandering father (my grandfather) who refused to properly provide for them, but they had a telephone.
posted by Relative | 7:07 PM
2 Comments:
My grandmother had a party line for her telephone when I was a kid. I never could learn to tell the difference between the different rings for different parties...
My grandmother had a party line for her telephone when I was a kid. I never could learn to tell the difference between the different rings for different parties...
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