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Jim Elbrecht

(David Combs) wrote:

-snip-
What's this "pair" stuff?

Back in the 50's, in West Texas, we (and everyone else not living
"in town") had a wood box hung on the wall, maybe two feet high
and 8-inches wide, with a stethascope-like mike in the middle,
and a crank on the side.

Cranking long or short gave you the long-short-short etc.

Now, the "pair stuff":

We were some 15 miles from town, and our "line" (well, party line)
went that entire distance, and consisted not of a pair, but of
a single bare wire. The other side of the pair was the ground,
of course.

50's!? In 1972 I went to work for a small independent telco in
upstate NY. [Middleburg Tel] They had just purchased an even
smaller independent- the Summit Telephone Co. Those folks had 20
party lines on that great old bare wire stuff.

Joe, the owner was more inventor than type a personality, so he often
just "made things work" any which way he could. One of our favorites
was a stretch where he just hooked into an electric fence when his
lines went down. The phone worked- but I couldn't say if the
electric fence was still hot.

You ALWAYS had to shout over the, uh, rice-krispy (sp?) pop crackle
and snap or whatever, but LOUD, damnit, LOUD!

Yeah, but there was an upside. When you called someone local the
operator could tell you when they left, and maybe where they were
headed. And when they got home and made a call she'd fill them in on
who had called.

Jim