People have become less discreet in their conversations. With the advent of cell phones, we’re privy to a lot of personal chitchat whether we want to be or not. In the checkout line at the grocery store or at the post office, everyone within earshot gets to hear about Aunt May’s arthritis, Susie’s boyfriend problems or that big catfish cousin Bob hand grappled down on the river..
I was in the video store not long ago, minding my own business as I always do. As I approached the horror section, a man with a cell phone glued to his ear was delivering a hellfire and damnation sermon to some poor lost soul on the other end of the line. I suppose I can understand the desire to preach the gospel while standing in front of video jackets for “Saw 2” and “Jeepers Creepers” but it still seems to me that soul saving is something that really ought to be done on a face to face basis.
When I was a kid – a few years back, folks were much more discreet in their telephone conversations, even though no one had even dreamed of such things as cell phones, picture phones and text messaging back then. Everybody was still tethered to the wall of their home by that old black rotary. I can still hear those rolling clicks as the wheel was dialed and if your finger slipped, you had to hang up and start all over again.
But you ask – why were people so cautious in conversation on their own phone, in their own house? Because of that wonderful community service provided by Ma Bell; the eight party line, a kind of primitive Facebook. Back in the old days, up to eight households had to share a phone line. When anyone on that line got a call, the phone rang in all eight households. Every family had their own personal ring code so that everyone knew who was receiving the call.
Our personal code was two short rings together; a sort of a Stone Age version of the personal ring tones available now on cell phones. (My daughter likes to play with my cell phone and she changes my ring tone all the time without telling me. One day, it’s the “William Tell Overture” or “Brown-Eyed Girl” and the next it’s a charming version of "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy”.)
The eight party line served several purposes in a small community, not the least of which was as an unofficial bulletin board. If you had some news that you wanted to get out quickly, simply call someone on another eight line system and say something like; “I wouldn’t want this to get out, but--”. By you’d receive a call from your cousin three towns away asking “when’s the baby due?”
And the party line was the primary source of entertainment for a lot of people. As a child, my neighbor was a widow lady. Ms. Katie didn’t know how to drive which was just as well as she couldn’t afford a car anyway. She was a very hard working lady who lived on a small fixed income and she had to watch every penny. Her entertainment choices were pretty limited. Every afternoon, she would take a break from canning vegetables or yard work to relax for a while. After watching the trials and tribulations of those poor folks on “The Edge of Night" and “The Secret Storm", she would turn the television off and quietly pick up the phone for some real entertainment.
I would often visit Ms. Katie after I got home from school and find her sitting on a stool next to the phone with her hand over the mouthpiece and a big smile on her face. She would shush me and wave me in to sit on the floor or in an old vinyl chair covered with cigarette burns until the conversation lagged enough for her to lose interest. She would then regale me with tales about the love life of the teenage girls up the street or who was being harassed by bill collectors. For her, this was the juiciest gossip there was, and she didn’t even have to leave the house to hear it. For me, I felt a little sinful about being a party to this. I guess that’s why I kept coming back every day.
Progress changes everything and the eight party line went the way of black and white TV and full service gas stations. Ms. Katie lost her primary source of entertainment and I don’t think she was ever quite the same again. She’s gone now. I think about her often and I wonder if she could have dealt with all this new technology; cell phones and the internet and such. Probably not. But if she were still with us, I know what I’d do. I’d buy her a nice soft padded stool, set her up right there in the lobby of the Post Office and visit with her every afternoon so I can find out how Aunt May’s getting along.
w mccully
