The Party Line

noun

1. 1.

   a policy, or the policies collectively, officially adopted by a political party.

   "they rarely fail to toe the party line"
2. 2.

   dated

   a telephone line or circuit shared by two or more subscribers.

Isn't "Party Line" an interesting phrase?  Toe the party line.  Or perhaps a Conga Line.  But no - it's a telephone service ("dated") that few remember and a term that cartoons nosiness: "rubbernecking".  

Here's a second helping from Sid Stivland


Lowry Telephone Company – and the rural “Party Line”

By Sid Stivland

The Lowry Telephone Company was founded in 1905 and lasted until well into the late 1960’s.  In fact, it was one of the last rural party line telephone companies in the state.  Not only was it a party line system, it sported those famous box-on-the-wall crank phones.  For those too young to remember, the phone system consisted of a main switchboard in town and clusters of 8 to 10 families on each rural party line.  The way the system worked was that each family was assigned a sort of code or ring pattern, a pattern of short and long rings.  So, for example, our unique ring consisted of a long ring followed by a short ring followed by another long ring – long, short, long.  Whenever our phone rang that code, we answered it.  


Presumably, we ignored all others, for example – two long rings or four short rings because those rings belonged to someone else on our party line.  I say, presumably, because it was necessary to resist the temptation to listen in when someone else’s phone rang. I don’t know for sure, but it is rumored that some folks could not resist and carefully lifted the receiver to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation, a process called “rubbernecking”.  Calling someone on the same party line was simple – just crank out the ring pattern on the crank – and wait for an answer. So, if I wanted to call my friend, Duane, I just cranked two long cranks – simple!  

But, if it was necessary to call someone on another party line or someone in town, it was necessary to call “Central” first.  Central was a term given to the switchboard in Lowry. Any call outside the immediate party line meant cranking one long ring, waiting for “central” to answer, and giving her the desired destination number.  Inez Johnson was the switchboard operator forever, actually for almost 60 years.  Give her the number and she would first ring the number, then manually connect your line to the desired number and – voila – you were connected.  I will never forget her nasal “telephone operator” answer – “LOUW RAAY!!” – for years I believed she must have had some kind of training for this.

My family had a sort of love-hate relationship with the phone; well, not actually the phone, itself, but the party line aspect of it.  First the “hate” part of it.  It was not actually hate – we certainly valued the phone and the connectivity it gave us to the outside world, not to mention the safety factor – it was the line sharing that was the problem.  Perhaps a couple of examples would best illustrate the issue.

We lived on a farm a couple miles from town.  My father was a livestock man – we usually had several hundred cattle or hogs, or both.  It was thus not uncommon for my dad to require access to the telephone. Sometime he needed the veterinarian for some sick animal, sometimes he needed Bill Weisel for a well problem, sometimes it was for an electrical problem, and so on. But these were not your typical social calls – when the pump quit or a calf was sick, he wanted to use the phone – now! But on more than one occasion, the phone was already tied up.  So my dad would trek into the house every 15 minutes or so and try to make his phone call.  Usually, the phone was available before long and all was well.  But, sometimes, the party line phone was tied up for a very long time. Needless to say, my dad was not impressed with long conversations about recipes or teenage angst, especially when some emergency loomed. I seem to recall once or twice when my dad got on the phone and “encouraged” the conversant to wrap it up.

But for me, the party line was even worse, at least as far as my social life was concerned. Some of my friends were really smooth around girls but I was not. The notion of asking a girl for a date was scary enough but the very idea of calling a girl for a date on the party line put me into a cold sweat.  As if trying to talk with a mouth that felt like it was full of cotton were not bad enough, you had to do it front of your whole family! There was only one phone, it was located in the kitchen, and there was no curly cord long enough to sneak into the next room.  Even your SISTER was listening to you.  And everyone on both your party line and the girl’s party line was a potential eavesdropper.  Trying to think of something clever to say with the whole community listening was just too much pressure.  Fortunately for me, there was a phone on the street outside the phone company building in Lowry so I would literally drive to town just to make that call.  I must have looked pretty pathetic hunched over that phone in town.  And at least I could cut out half the “rubberneckers”.

My grandmother had the perfect solution to the party line privacy issue.  She was a Norwegian immigrant and spoke only Norwegian.  Even though she lived in the Starbuck area, an area populated primarily with other Norwegian speakers, she spoke with a very strong Stavanger dialect/accent.  Whenever she spoke on the phone nearly every “rubbernecker” hung up because they were from Sogn or Tronheim or somewhere else in Norway and could not understand her.  

But there was another side to the love/hate relationship. One day in the late 60’s, I was about to change oil on my car when I realized I was out of oil.  So I did what any rational person in Lowry would do – call Leo Dahl.  Leo had the gas and oil business in Lowry delivering gas to farms and providing all sorts of lubricating products.  So I gave the phone a crank and got the predictable “LOUW RAAY” from Inez.  I requested Leo’s house (Inez knew everybody’s number by heart so it was not necessary to give her the correct number) and shortly she came back on the line and reported “There is no answer there”.  Before I could say anything, Inez volunteered “But you know Blanche works down at the grocery store – do you want me to ring there?”  “Sure”, I replied.  After a few rings, Blanche Dahl, Leo’s wife, answered.  I asked her if she had seen Leo but she replied he was on a farm gas delivery call that morning and had not seen him since then.  “I’ll give you back to central” she said.  Inez came back on the line and I was about to thank her and hang up when she exclaimed “Leo just pulled up at the Hardware store.  I’ll ring there.”  It is important to note that Inez had a full view of Lowry’s main street from her vantage point window at the telephone office.  Inez rang the phone at the hardware store, Dave answered, and put Leo on the phone.  I got my case of oil.

Another time I was attempting to call my cousin Dale.  His family had recently moved to Minneapolis but Dale spent summers in Lowry living with his grandparents, A.R. and Olive Anderson.  As usual I rang the phone one long ring, waited for the “LOUW RAAY”, and asked to be connected to A.R. Andersons.  A minute or two later, she came back on the line and said, “I’m sorry – there is no answer”.  Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “But you know – Mrs. Anderson has been in the hospital this week!”  As it turned out, I didn’t know, but was grateful to learn it.  Thankfully, she returned home in a few days.

Eventually, the old box phone was replaced by a modern dial phone. While a significant technological improvement, many still mourned the loss of “Central”, and I recall many conversations wondering what in the world we would do without Inez and the connectivity she provided.

One last observation:  In 1969 my sister was married and moved to the East Coast.  But making a phone call to Lowry from there required persistence.  To place a call to Lowry she would start by calling the operator in New Jersey or New York requesting assistance.  But the biggest challenge was convincing an East Coast operator that, yes – Lowry is an actual place in Minnesota, and, yes – 22F717 is a legitimate phone number.  Some operators needed a lot of convincing before they would make the call.  By the time Lowry abandoned the old crank phones in favor of dial phones, it was increasingly difficult to convince the East Coast operators.  I seem to remember a few times when she had to give up and call back later in the hope of finding a more open minded operator.  She always suspected that at least some of those operators truly believed they had some crazy person on the line!  I think my sister was happier than anyone when she could “direct dial” back to Lowry.

S.S.