I can remember when I was a kid in the 70's, we had one phone mounted on the wall in the kitchen.
Hi Thundley,
When I was a kid in the 40's I spent summers on my grandparents farm in rural Ohio. They had a phone on the kitchen wall with the removable ear piece and the mouthpiece was attached to the box. You had to crank the knob on the right hand side to get the operator. One Sunday afternoon, my parents were there and we had 8 people at the dinner table. My grandmother sat on the long end of the table with the phone directly behind her and my grandfather sat across from her on the other end. The rest of us sat on either side. My grandmother had got up from her chair to get the dessert for everyone and we were in the middle of a thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning hit the phone wire, shot out of the mouthpiece of the phone and right down the middle of the table to within a foot of my grandfather's nose. Talk about a traumatic event! To this day I can still see as though it was yesterday; even though it was over 60 years ago. Had my grandmother been in her chair she would have been electrocuted as it would have nailed her right in the back of the head.
My mother screamed when it happened, which just added to my being terrified. Everyone sat real still for a minute and my grandmother walked to the phone and took the mouthpiece and pointed it up toward the cieling. From that day foreward, unless you were talking that mouthpiece was always rotated up and out of the way.
As I recall their ring on the party line was one long and two shorts. The phone would ring different series of rings but you would only pick it up when your particular code was rung. Not that folks ever listened in on a party line you understand.....
We also had a party line in 1951 in Palatine. Our number was 151W....and eventually became Flanders 8-0151.....to be followed by 358-0151. My folks had that number for close to 30 years.
You talk about typewriter to computer.......how about pen and paper to computer? When I went off to boot camp my girlfriend and I wrote each other daily....and that is exactly what it was, pen and paper. On the return address we would also write MMMMRLH....(mailman, mailman, run like hell) and HOLLAND....(Hope our love lasts and never dies). I saw her in 2000 - 42 years out of high school and she looks great, very happy and we gave each other a hug, talked for a few hours and were both happy for one another. Took both of us a second marriage to get it right but she is truly happy as I am and that is a good thing. I told her I would always love her just for the fact that every day in boot camp I got a letter from her. Nowdays I am not sure kids would do that.
Guess the thread started me down memory lane, hope it did not bore you.
regards,
5412
