Does anyone remember "party" and "private" lines when it comes to telephones?

[peeonme]

When I was a boy we were on a party line with 4 other households, when the phone rang we listened for our "ring" 2 longs and a short or what ever it was.
When you talked you listened for the sound of someone picking up and listening in.
When you wanted to make a call you hoped that the line wasn't busy.
Ok, I have truly dated myself, anyone else care to confess these memories?

 

[Kabluey]

I went on a school camp in the semi-wilderness with one of those. Does that count?

 

[rareboy]

My one set of grandparents had one up until I was about 6 because rural phone service sucked.

 

[palbert]

Remember it from childhood.

When I got my first cellphone I asked for a party line to keep down the cost, No dice.

 

[gsdx]

We always had a private line at home, but my grandparents on my mother's side and one of her brothers had party lines. A few of my school mates had them at home as well.

 

[Essex Boy]

I remember them, although we never had one. But as recently as the mid-70s there were two families in our street who had no phone line at all. They used the phone box in the street in front of the house and when anyone called them they had to give a 'special' ring (like let it ring twice, hang up, dial again) so they knew who which house it was for.

 

[rareboy]

^ slippery slope and all....

 

[palbert]

.... antiques dealer's store ....

Ahem!

Fixed that for you.

 

[SaskGuy]

I'm not nearly old enough to remember party lines (I'm 27), but my grandma has told me stories about it, and all the gossip people would hear about by listening to the line
Also, how phone numbers used to have a word in the prefix... in my city, it was "cherry 2", "oliver 2", etc.

 

[Maklaar13]

How funny! We were just talking about this on Saturday night. When one thinks about can't help but to wonder how far we have come when it comes to technology. Another thing we used to do was to pick up the phone dial your own number and quickly hang it up, then the phone would ring and you can pretend it was for you or a call for someone else, just innocent fun.

 

[CowboyBob]

We had a party line when I was a little kid. I remember picking up the receiver on the old black desk phone with rotary dial and listening to the woman talking on the other line.

The phone we had looked a lot like this.

We only had one phone in the house, cell phones didn't exist. Long distance calling was rare and expensive.

 

[bike10]

Oh yes the party line old phone number of years ago 4930

 

[PreTTy PeTe]

I don't remember party lines but I do remember the phone number my parents had for more then forty years.

I tried to change my number to that a couple of years back but rogers nor bell could accommodate me. I thought that if I had that number one day it would ring and it would be my brother who disappeared more then 25 years ago.

ok enough about me back to topic.

 

[luckynumbah7]

I'm a bit young to have experienced party lines - but we did have a phone downstairs and upstairs. When it rang, both got picked up and y'had to make sure no one else was eavesdropping. My father had a habit of listening for a smidge, then apologizing when he realized it wasn't for him and hanging up. Then again, he fell off a scaffol several stories and crushed quite a bit of his discs, everything from his lower arms down and hit his head, so no one really blamed him for having to take a bit to see if it was his phone call.

 

[G-Lexington]

Not so much "past my time" so much as "I lived in a very large city at the time", and "party lines" were sort of phased out of the larger cities first.

One phone thing that comes to mind is this. I lived in San Francisco, and my grandparents lived across the Golden Gate Bridge in Larkspur. And due to the weird set-up of the phone system then, it would cost fifty cents (or something) for US to call THEM. But it was free for THEM to call US. So anytime we wanted to call them, we'd call their number, let it ring twice, and then hang up. That was their sign for them to call us back, and save the fifty cent charge.

Not quite the same thing, but in my college dorms, there were phones placed every so often in the hallways. So each phone technically "serviced" anywhere from two to five dorm rooms. This was pre-cell phones, and although you could try to get a special phone placed in your room, hardly anybody did. So there were a lot of post-it notes and whatnot on people's dorm room doors. "Sally called - the date's off".

Lex

 

[cgymike]

^And the bridge toll was 50c right?

 

[G-Lexington]

That sounds about right. We only paid coming back to the city, and I was usually falling asleep by then.

Lex

 

[borg69unimatrix]

We had a party line when I was a little kid. I remember picking up the receiver on the old black desk phone with rotary dial and listening to the woman talking on the other line.

The phone we had looked a lot like this.

We only had one phone in the house, cell phones didn't exist. Long distance calling was rare and expensive.

I remember these phones in green or mustard colors too.

My grandmother had a party line. I remember her yelling at me to not talk long in case the neighbors needed to use the phone.

I also remember phone booths everywhere. Now it's pretty rare to see one.

 

[ronboy]

My parents had a pink rotary telephone!

I still have it too! Because it was made in the USA by Stromberg-Carlson, (in Rochester, NY), it will last forever!