Early Telephones

During my early years in grade school about three-quarters of the families in Prairie Home had telephones. If you wanted to get in touch with someone who didn’t have one, you simply “rang up” one of their nearest neighbors and asked them to please deliver your message. There was no such thing as a private line; everyone was on a “party line.” There were six other families on our line and each one had an assigned “ring.” Ours was two longs and a short; Lindley’s was long-short-long, etc. (There was some suspicion that Mrs. Wicker, who loved to gossip, often listened in on her neighbors’ calls.) We could call the other families on our party line directly by cranking their “ring” on our big-box telephone, but to call anyone else we had to go through “central” operators in Bethany--by cranking one long ring.

The telephone office in Bethany was upstairs over Hudson’s Clothing Store and was staffed around the clock by local ladies who not only knew absolutely everybody in their service area, but also knew their business and, often, where they happened to be at the moment. For example, if Dad asked the operator to connect him with the Bethany Grain Company, he might be told, “Jim walked by a few minutes ago on his way home for lunch. Do you want me to ring his house, or do you want to talk to Betty at the office?” These operators sat at a switchboard that had a jumble of wires and actually made each connection manually by plugging in the wire from your line into the line for the party you wanted and making the appropriate ring. If you asked for “long distance,” they connected you with a long distance operator in Decatur.

As the Great Depression wore on in the thirties, many or our neighbors decided that telephones were too much of a luxury for those hard times and cancelled the service. This made telephones less attractive for the those remaining for two reasons: first, there were fewer and fewer persons one could call, and, secondly, the local telephone company was forced to raise its rates since there was now a much smaller base for covering its costs for operators, maintenance, etc. We were the last family on our party line, but finally Dad decided that we, too, would cancel. Then, early in the World War II years, the telephone lines were taken down so that the copper wires could be used in the war effort. It wasn’t until the late 1940s that telephone service (much improved with automatic switching) came back to Prairie Home.

A side note: After we cancelled service, Donald and John tore up our old crank telephone to get the ringer generator to use as a “shocker” machine. When the crank was turned the generator gave a mild electrical shock to anyone touching the wires. Sometimes they (especially John) surprised unsuspecting victims—“Here, hold these wires while I adjust this little jigger” –but mostly it was used with a group of kids who knew what to expect and held hands in a circle to enjoy the little jolt of the shock.