Brad had some questions about today's post in which I mentioned living in a switchboard house.
"Was 'the Switchboard House' part of the phone company? That kind of switchboard? I've always wondered how the long distance operators knew how much money you put into the payphone back then."
Brad, back then in rural areas and small towns, the switchboard was in the living room of a house. Whoever was employed by the phone company to be "central" (the phone operator) got to live in the house as part of their compensation. My parents were responsible twenty-four hours a day for tending to any calls that might be made through our switchboard.
Now, people were polite and didn't normally use the phone at hours when we might be sleeping, unless it was an emergency... or unless they'd imbibed a bit too much. So I don't think my parents' sleep was disturbed too often. My mom paid a neighbor girl to come and stay with the switchboard when we went to Church three times a week. If we went somewhere overnight or on vacation, we paid somebody, usually a teenage girl, to stay at our house and be the operator.
As far as the payphone goes, our little town had one public phone that I remember. It was in our living room, just inside the door, and I imagine if you used it you simply handed over the change to my parents.
I recently did an entry about switchboards: you'll find it HERE.
Thanks for this post. I worked in telecommunications for years, so I love this kind of stuff. The pic you posted on the other post brought back memories. We had a switchboard like that in our office as a curiosity. When I went to work for "The Evil Coffee Empire" we moved the business into an old Sear distribution center here in Seattle. During my intial building inspection we found wire termination blocks just as in your picture to the right of the switchboard. That was all the building had. We had to make use of those for the first couple of months while we built out the space. To say they were barely functional would be an over statement. Fun times!
ReplyDeletewhen I was in the army we had a real switchboard and crank phones. now I work for the phone co and it's hard to believe that switchboards existed not that long ago, technology is pretty amazing nowadays
ReplyDeleteThe telephone booth in the house where I worked in my hometown was dark and dank and smelled of cigars. The chief operator finally had to put a railing between the booth and the switchboard and livingroom. Guess the customers were getting a little too comfy.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time we had a phone andwere on a party line. Back in the 50s. My dad was the county vet. And the last time I had a party line back in the late 70s! We got a call from New Zealand and the neighbors interuppted. It was a call to tell us my uncle drowned. I was so upset by the neighbors!
ReplyDelete