Number Please!
It’s somewhat amazing the bizarre thoughts one can have while performing repetitious chores. Just yesterday it occurred to me that my cousin Tootie (now passed) was an endangered species. She was the only surviving telephone operator that I had known. You know what I mean, the person that operated the switchboard at “Central” in every town.
Tootie, along with her Sister and her Mother, who was my maternal Aunt moved to Chamois, Mo in the 1950’s to operate the local telephone office. My Aunt knew it was a temporary job when she took the position because United Telephone was beginning the conversion of every community to the Dial system. The job provided a miniscule living space along with the front office which housed the switchboard.
The telephone operator plugged the answering cord into the subscribers jack when they rang in and they would then say “number please”. The cords came in pairs and the operator plugged the other cord into the called party’s jack and then began the ringing cycle. Cousin Tootie explained the ringing switch could be pushed forward and backward. Pushing it the wrong direction would cause the ringing to go back into the ear of the caller. A somewhat unpleasant experience that could have gotten her a real tongue lashing but as she happily recalled: “Everyone was always nice to me because the residents of Chamois were very kind.”
To make long distance calls the operator plugged into a trunk circuit which took it to another town. Long distance calls were not fast and it was estimated to take fifteen minutes to place a long distance call in 1918. Poor connections were the rule, not the exception, especially for rural customers out in the country. Poor connections was how Tootie met her husband Louis. Louis was in the army and was trying to call home to his parents who farmed outside of Chamois. Neither party could hear the other but Tootie could hear them both so when Louis talked, Tootie would relay his thoughts to his parents. She would then repeat back to Louis what they said. On Louis’ very next trip home he stopped by the telephone office to thank that nice girl and the rest is history as they say.
The living conditions provided by the phone company at “Central” was anything but luxurious. It was not only small but they actually had to step out on the back porch to enter the bathroom. The job was 24/7 so who ever was in charge of the switchboard at night had to sleep on a roll-away bed next to the contraption. At night the ringer was set on an alarm so the operator would wake up and hear the call. Tootie remembered: “Luckily we didn’t have many calls at night in those days, just a drunk ever now and again.” On such occasions I’d bet Cousin Tootie longed to exercise the phone company motto of “Reach out and touch someone.”
The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in March of 1876 and he introduced it to the world at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia that summer. An unknown Hungarian built the first “telephone exchange” in 1877 and the first telephone was installed in the White House by President Hayes in 1878.
A decade later, 1888, the people of New York City were very annoyed with the large amounts of phone lines along their streets. When a snow and ice storm snapped some of the poles they fell on private buildings. Mayor Hugh Grant, in response to the citizens frustration, took a group of ax men around the town, cutting down poles. It was reported Mayor Grant cut down the first pole himself.
Public Officials often took a stance about the telephone system. In 1905 a local Editor set about correcting a phone problem with a scathing editorial: "One of the prevailing evils of the country telephone lines is the unfortunate habit of a good many people to run to their phones to listen whenever the bell rings, whether it is their ring or not. The identity of these eavesdroppers is always discovered by their neighbors, sooner or later. It may be the striking of a clock in the room or it may be some other familiar sound to the neighbor that tells the tale……..Don’t you think you had better cut it out and save your reputation?”
When the area phones went dial in the early 1960’s service here on the creek was still “party line” with five or six houses sharing a common line. You didn’t hear the neighbor’s phone ring but inadvertently you could overhear a conversation when you picked up your own phone to use it. An elderly lady was very unhappy with the new system because most of her daily entertainment had been “listening” in on everyone’s calls when we still had the wall mounted crank phones. Somehow she ingeniously discovered her new desk phone could be placed in a dishpan and it would make a vibration when calls were coming into the party line she shared. It didn’t completely satisfy her nosiness but as she remarked to my Grandmother, “It was better than nothing.”
Our telephone operators handled everything. At Christmas time children would call asking for Santa. People would call wanting to be connected to the service station across from so and so and the Operator actually knew who they meant. Special events in town were advertised by the Operator calling out over the country lines. One long continuous ring brought everyone to the phone to see what “Central” had to tell us. I still recall the long continuous ring in the 1950’s that warned us of the prison break in Jefferson City and a convicted killer’s return to the County. It was the beginning of a giant man hunt that raged for over a week.
Persons would leave word with “Central” where they could be reached if they were expecting a call and many times people would call for the correct time. It was always given in a pleasant tone just like when they said: “Number Please.”
