Cursive and stick.....

[Yadkin]

Originally Posted by 6spdC6

We got ours in 1970 when we got married. Way back then you rented (AKA Leased). Had that one down stairs and a desk dialer in the living room

Somehow in the course of time the phone company said the phone was obsolete and would no longer lease it, or fix it and gave us the phone. I had called for service (the bell was broken) That was the period that the big phone monopoly was broken up!


Figured out a way to affro engineer the bell and the old phone just keeps on a working!

Back in the 70's I obtained an old phone, I believe it was made out of bakelite. Heavy, and of course, black. My dad let me install it in my room, as long as I disconnected the bell. According to him, MaBell measured the current required to ring the the phones that you had in the house, to determine if you had more than you were leasing.

[tjfontaine]

I personally don't miss that old crap - I hated writing in cursive - I have great keyboard skills - I only use it to sign my name. I love the modern hi tech automatics in cars screw slapping gears. I'll take my smart phone anyday over landlines/slide rules/cameras etc.

[Bruze]

Originally Posted by Yadkin

Back in the 70's I obtained an old phone, I believe it was made out of bakelite. Heavy, and of course, black. My dad let me install it in my room, as long as I disconnected the bell. According to him, MaBell measured the current required to ring the the phones that you had in the house, to determine if you had more than you were leasing.

I heard that same story back then too.

[mrvette]

Originally Posted by Yadkin

Back in the 70's I obtained an old phone, I believe it was made out of bakelite. Heavy, and of course, black. My dad let me install it in my room, as long as I disconnected the bell. According to him, MaBell measured the current required to ring the the phones that you had in the house, to determine if you had more than you were leasing.

We slipped around that, it was easy to do, but from ~70 years ago, pardon ME, but I fergit watt we did in them daze......

[6spdC6]

Being were talking about old phones I will put this sidebar in. When we bought my camp in 1985 (Now our house) most all the camps along the lake still had party lines. Ours was a 4 person party and for the most part was not a problem. We were only here mostly for weekends and a occasional other periods.

Then about 94 or so they kept the party lines but reassigned accounts. It got harder to get the line as most times in the daylight hours if you picked up the phone someone was using it.(particularly one older lady) We mostly only used the phone very little.

Then one day my wife called from the lake and let a message to call her before I drove up when I was done working. I tried about 20 times from the shop. Got in my truck and started the 70 mile trip up to the camp. I stopped at just about every pay station along the way and still busy. Finely made it to the camp and asked the wife what did she want. Fortunately it was not that important.

I then went to the phone and picked it up and herd the usual big mouth woman on the phone. I started talking on the phone and said some realy bad things, till she finely hung up.

I then called the phone company and told them the whole story. They checked their records and said they had other complaints about her and were going to force her into a more expensive single line. They did and we had no more problems on the phone. Back in 03 when we built the new house we changed over to a single line for about double the price of the party line. Nice thing it was the same number that we had.