telephone memories

[A Joseph Ross]

On 11/7/2010 5:15 PM, Dave Doherty wrote:
> Nice article, Donna. Thanks for passing it along.
>
> I wonder how many of us remember party lines?
>
> After he retired, my grandfather lived in New Hampton, NH. He was on 
> an eight-party line.
>
> You could always tell who got a call by the ring pattern - a sequence 
> of short and/or long rings. His ring was three shorts. One neighbor 
> was a long and two shorts, another was two shorts and a long, and so on.

I remember all that.  We had a 4-party line when we first moved to 
Bedford in 1957.  We were desperately trying to get a 2-party line 
because you needed that to get Suburban Service.  And we needed that to 
call my grandparents in Brighton without it being a toll call.

Even earlier, when I was a small child in Newburyport, I remember phones 
without dials, where we would pick up the phone and get an operator, who 
would answer "Number, please."  I think I made my first phone call on 
one of those, with my mother telling me what to say to call my father at 
work.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                     617.367.0468
92 State Street, Suite 700          Fax: 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004     http://www.attorneyross.com