I'm the same age as you. We used to let people come use our phone because they didn't have one. When I got older, my parents built a house and we shared a party line with four neighbors. Our party line wasn't too bad. Once in a while someone would leave the phone off the hook and you couldn't make a call. I felt for some of the other neighbors and their party line. There was a nosy lady who would listen in on their phone calls. She liked to gossip. Her next door neighbor really hated her.

I grew up in Arkansas. I knew people who used an outhouse into the early 80's. They didn't have running water either. I think they also drew water out of the well and carried it to the house. When I was little we lived next door to a lady who was mentally ill. She didn't have a bathtub and sometimes came over to use ours. She washed her clothes in a stream that ran by the house. I'm not sure how she cooked, but sometimes my mom would make a meal 'for us kids' just so this lady would have something to eat and wouldn't feel like she was asking for a favor.

Hi Paula PA,

A three-holer, maybe ... for a little more separation?

ole joyful

P.S. I never remember being without power on our farm - we called it "hydro" in Ontario ... 'cause it was generated from turbines at the foot of Niagara Falls.

We had a pump at a sink in the pantry, that pulled water from a cistern for washing. A well in the yard from which they pumped water into a pail that sat in the pantry, with a dipper sitting on the surface ... that everyone used.

The well needed cleaning and Dad was afraid to climb down into it for fear that he'd get a brick or a stone on his head. Drilled a well in '36 when I was 7 and we had cold water on tap from then on - but not a flush toilet.

When I was 17 in '46 we moved to a sharecropper farm on the Prairies 9 miles out of capital city of Saskatchewan, no electricity (neighbours had it, but landlord didn't pay for 1.5 mile service line ... till he retired and moved out there!), had to haul drinking water until Dad bought his own farm.

I never had flush toilet or hot water on tap till I went to Univ. in fall of '47.

Great neighbours.

After a Junior Parliament on first Christmas holidays there, when we had the worst snow and blow for many years, when I walked 4 miles to home carrying suitcase just at New Year when temp. about 20 degrees below zero, facing a light wind, stopped at last house 2 miles from our place. No one home, I stood in back porch for a while to warm up before heading home.

Later they gave me the devil for not going into their house ... and there was no way that I was going to go into their house with no neighbours there: didn't even try the door to have found it unlocked!

Told me not to make such a walk again, either, for there was a road with fences for a mile north of their house to a rail crossing, then only a graded road, with telephone poles but no fence for a half mile, then just an earth road with telephone poles for a half mile to our house ... if the wind had risen, to blow snow around anough for me to lose my bearings ... being able to see the phone poles and line would be my only guide for that last mile.

Getting lost on the flat prairie in a snowstorm at 20 degrees below is not a pleasant situation to be in.

o j

Back in the late 40's, early 50's - We always had a phone, no party lines.
I don't remember anyone not having a phone or indoor bathroom..except for my father's aunt on a farm in middle Tenn.

But, as a very young child, I do remember not having a TV, and going over to a friend's house to watch Willie the Worm. We didn't get one until 1950.

Monica 1950 is about when we got our first TV. We had a phone for a short time before we moved to the big city, but I had the first one installed here and I was only 16. Mom had a party line, probably until they did away with them. I had one for awhile and it was my neighbor who shared with us. I thought it was a good deal because she always hung up when she heard me pick up the receiver, until my mom told me she could never get me when she called. I remember one day I was ironing and watching TV when the network interrupted to say that John Kennedy had been assassinated. I picked up the phone, told my neighbor what happened and told her to hang up, I wanted to call my Mom.

When I was a child (b. just before WWII) our neighbors were like extended family. We kids were in and out of one anothers houses all the time. Mothers didn't work outsdie of their homes. You only locked your house if you were going away on vacation.

We had a two-party line until after the war. Our telephone number had four digits and an "R" for "residential"; when you lifted the receiver a real, live person asked in a pleasant voice, "Number please?" (Help was right there in the person of that operator if you had an emergency!) Most parents taught their children to use a 'telephone voice' -- to speak clearly and in a pleasant tone.

Most homes in my town had one car garages; only one car was 'necessary', for the man of the house to commute to work. This was NW suburban Chicago. In many families the wife drove her DH to the train and picked him up at night, so she had the use of the car during the day.

People didn't use their cars more than necessary, having gotten used to rationing during the war. You had to have coupons then to buy gas or tires -- when tires were available -- and there WERE no new cars. (When a neighbor's brother came home from service there were no suits, or cloth for suits, to be had. My mother gave him my late uncle's suits -- about twice his size, but they were good material and could be cut down. Neighbors looked out for one another in ways like that.)

Even during the war my mother and several neighbors ladies had monthly 'Book Review' luncheons. They paid a reviewer and took turns hosting. This was a major ladies' event with hats and gloves. (We kids loved to come home from school after it had been our mother's turn to host so that we could finish off the sandwich layer loaf -- remember those cream cheese-filling wonders?) There were also bridge parties. It was as though one woman hoed the victory garden and tidied the house in the morning while quite another, a beautifully groomed lady, sipped her tea with lemon, listening to the latest novel in the afternoon.

When i was a kid, we had a party phone line. We shared with (I think) four or five other houses. My Mom taught me to hang up immediately if I picked up a phone and someone was talking. When you wanted to call long distance (out of state) you had to call the operator and she'd make the connection, then call you back. It took about a half hour. My unlce and aunt had a house in the "country", actually only about eight miles from the Buffalo city limits, with an outdoor pump for water and an outhouse. They used torn sheets of newspaper as toilet paper in there. Nasty!

You're bringing back some memories...We did have a party line with 4 other houses...We also had a neighbor across the road that didn't have a phone and would come over and use our's all the time. In fact I think she was on it more than we were and my mother said, she thought it would be a good idea to put in a pay phone on our front porch....This neighbor had at least 8 kids, NO bathroom, but had that 2 seater outhouse..My sister and I were so thrilled when we'd be asked to stay over at their house....(We must have been crazy)...We also were there the 1st ones to have a TV in our area...Does anyone remember the "color screen" you got to put on the front of the TV? We really thought we were big time.......

we had one section of party line left when i was working pac tele in so ca...it was up in the beach community of del mar...

does anyone remember how big "tube" tv's were and going to the radio shack or whatever they were to get new ones? those were they days you serviced your own tv...now we just replace them..

I'm in my early 40's. We never had a party line in my lifetime but I remember visiting some distant relatives one summer on vacation when I was probably 8 or 10. The phone rang and the woman didn't pick it up. I thought that was really strange and I gave my mother a "look". She explained party lines to me then.

I do remember that our phone number was ( for example) 123-4567. When I was young you only had to dial 3-4567 and when I was a teenager they changed it so we had to dial all 7 digits. My older sister remembers when you only had to dial the last 4 digits.

We didn't have a phone until my mom married my stepdad. Till then we used Grandma's, she lived a couple of blocks away, it was a party line. The phone number was 5272.

Amazing how quickly life and technology changes.

I remember party lines out in CA when we first moved there. Can't remember how long we had them for, though. I don't think long. This was in the 60s. Phones were those big heavy, dial ones. You could knock someone out with one. They're so flimsy now and don't last very long.