Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Party telephone lines,

Then it was probably a circuit. Simple circuit that was either open or short.
Dual use cuz, you could talk on the circuit when they were short. Just like a POTS line.

Yes. Got rid of it when I was in high school.

We had a party line until ~1966, don't remember the ring sequence. Then we went to push-button phones.
Before we moved from Raton to Las Vegas, you got the operator asking "Number, please?"
The manager of the Raton office was our next door neighbor - I have no idea of how many times his wife would come over to tell my mom that one of us kids had left the phone off the hook!
My uncle and aunt, near Capulin, NM, were on a party line, and used a crank phone until ~ 1973.
Then, their phone co-op started modernizing.

Before railroads, time did not matter so much. When the sun was overhead it was noon.

JFC old man. You post some damn dumb stuff.

Are you stupid or just old?

I don’t know what the other regional telcos did, but ours, the former C&Ps, declared the inside wiring of homes to be the responsibility of the homeowner. Employees were sent little stickers to put on the phones they had to show they had been released from company ownership. Don’t recall how they handled the phones of regular customers. The breakup eventually led to a lot of benefits for customers, especially lower costs for long distance, but in the short term it also meant that local service was no longer subsidized by long distance revenues, so costs increased for installation, especially for those that needed long drops from the pole, which had formerly been absorbed as part of Universal Service. Eventually, the special features that were developed along with the new electronic switching systems helped keep the price of regular service down, as did stuff like data services, and by the time I left, video and internet services like FIOS. The local telcos had to get all rates for ordinary telepone service approved by the PSC, even reductions of rates, but enhanced products that ran on fiber were exempt from that requirement because the facilities weren’t built under the cover of a monopoly like those on wire.

The party lines were better than no phone at all.

He’s not a phaagut like you are 🥴

My aunt and uncle was on a party line. A single lady down the road listened to all the phone calls for her enjoyment. You could hear the click when she lifted up her phone. There was no privacy at all. Cousins used to holler at her to hang up now, then you could hear the click of her hanging up. Listening to every ones phone calls was her thing. We used to stay at aunt and uncles for summer for harvest and haying season.

My grandparents farmed West of Magnolia, IA and they had a party line till somewhere around 1980.

I remember mid-late 50's party line visiting grandmother and great aunt in rural Virginia. Had to turn the crank and ask the operator to connect with Uncle Bud to speak with the cousins. Didn't need last names and after a couple of calls the operator knew who I was.

Maybe you should read this....

https://www.history.com/news/when-did-the-united-states-start-using-time-zones

Early 80's we were on a party line at our rural residence. For after hours calls an answering machine at our office would play a recorded message telling the caller what number to call for the on-call vet.

Neighbors down the road had a phone on their bedroom nightstand and apparently their cat sometimes knocked the handset off the cradle. Callers trying to get a vet would get a busy signal. After some frustration the caller would try my partners number and then he would call me on our business band radio or drive out and tell me I had a call to go on.

I would drive by the the neighbors to tell them the phone was off the hook. After several visits they figured out something to keep the cat away from the phone. They were nice people, the phone just wasn't that important to them.

In tall cotton when it got down to two party line.

I’m 61. We had one when we moved into my great grandmother house in a small village in rural Ohio. I guess I was in 2nd or 3rd grade.
Dad was building a new house. Sold the old house. Great Granny moved in to a bigger town with Granny for the winters. No recollection as to how many houses were on that line.

The real party lines …Bishes

You reckon Wabritard was into the nose beers?

Probably the gateway
😂😂