Those old time telephone exchanges lasted longer than one might think. We had a 6-party line at the place we summered in Chetek in northern Wisconsin in the 1950's & our ring was long-short-long. I know when my mom, for whatever reason, had to call back to Chicago, it involved ringing up the operator and basically making an appointment for an approximate time. The operator would then place the call & ring us back when it was ready.

The bills were all done by hand & we'd get them with coffee rings and jelly stains on them. If I'm remembering right from my days working at the phone company, the last commercial non-dial exchange was in New England (in Maine, I think) and is was retired in the late 1970's or early 1980's.

My grandmother lived in"the country" and had that type of phone.I remember calling my aunt from her house and cranking two longs and two shorts. It was such fun making a call. I don't remember when they converted to regular phone service.

I suppose everyone at sometime listened to other calls. I think my grandmother was pretty guilty of that. For some special birthday, my mother and her siblings planned a big party that was to be a surprise. They were really peeved when they realized she had know about if from the very first mention.

When I was in college in New England, every phone company was a separate little entity...
And say if a guy I had met from say Dartmouth wanted to call me and I was at the library, he would leave a message to call operator 24 or whatever in Hanover for a person to person call.
Of course in those days, those dorms full of girls had just one phone line and a pay phone....it got a little crowded outside the phone booth!
But way back when ( say 1955 or so) a 5 minute call to Boston cost about $.75 for 5 minutes....and as you were talking the operator would come on and say "your time is almost up"....and then "your time is up" and sometimes you would hear the clink of coins in the coin slot, and you knew the guy really liked you....and was willing to spend an extra $.75 to talk.
Remember these were the days when a small "shell" of beer was often $.10...called "dime-eys".
I can feel the moss growing as I type.....
Linda C

I remember my mom making an appointment for long distance calls in the city when I was a kid, especially around the holidays like Thanksgiving & Christmas.

The first time I saw a touch tone phone I was in high school & it was a pay phone. The tones were a novelty & I remember people passing around umbers to punch so they'd play a tune. Lord only knows where the call would end up!

Going to college in the fall of 1966 was like a step back in time. In the Freshman dorm there was one pay phone for our section of the dorm & then there was a house phone for whatever calls you got through the dorm switchboard. We had little buzzers in our rooms One person would have two long buzzes for the house phone & the other two short. Of course nobody wanted to get personal calls on the house phone because we always suspected that the dorm authorities listened in. We've give the pay phone number instead & have out "important" friends call that phone.

In my last house outside a little village in our county, I was very shocked to learn I had to "wait" for a private line. This was in the mid 80s. For several months I was once again on a party line blast from the past.

One can hardly find a pay phone anywhere around here anymore because of the abundance of mobile phones. That was one of the reasons I ended up biting the bullet and getting one. I hate them and still have months and months of paid up minutes waiting to use.

My parent's house still have the old, heavy rotary dial phones. Like Andie, that spoilt me forever because when I talk into a mobile, or even one of those lightweight land line phones, I feel like I am talking into the air. I hate the chintzy things too. LOL. Can you tell I am phone challenged? I still think people wearing those little do-dads over their ear and talking into the air look like borgs. I also hate to get behind them in the market, as they evidently walk down the isles connected through their air-wave umbilicus to someone in their house and that person is going through their pantries looking to see if the household is out of whatever item the borg is standing in front of.

I don't remember ever having to talk to operators, save when making long distance calls or collect calls when away from home or at a phone booth before credit card calls were invented.

The phone I miss the most was my ericaphon. sic sic sic. The rotary dial was at the base, and one picked the whole unit up and talked into a showerhead. rofl.

I don't remember ever being on a party line, but in the mid-30s my Mother worked for the phone company when operators still asked "Number, please" and calls were plugged into connections. I've been told that one day I picked up the phone--I wasn't old enough to call anyone, so don't know why--anyway, I recognized my Mother's voice as the operator. I was thrilled and didn't want to hang up! At that time "supervisors" walked behind the operators to make sure they weren't doing just what I was making my Mother do--engage in unnecessary conversation with a customer! Fortunately, our housekeeper made me hang up.