Yes. Our neighbors, the Strubles, had to have been vexed to be stuck on a party line with their neighbor family (us), which included 3 kids. But we learned party line etiquette or else.
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Everyone knew someone was probably listening in on their conversations. Sure glad we don’t have that system anymore.
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How else was small-town America gonna know what was happening? On a slightly separate note, my grandma was an operator for a small phone company when I was a kid. She got to be the one to plug in the phones to connect people. How small was the company? My Aunts number was 2246.
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Was that the origins of the internet? LOL That’s cool you remember your grandma being the operator and she used the old swithchboards where each caller had to be physically plugged in to the person they were calling by the operator.
When I was 4 or 5 years old, we lived in Oxford, KS. I remember picking up the phone and telling an operator a 3 digit number to connect to. I only remember that because I remember calling my dad on the phone when he was at work.