Longing for the Days Of the Party Line

A little more than a half- century ago, when I was growing up in a small town in Minnesota, the telephone was a relatively new source of fascination in my life. We got one when we left the farm and moved to town in 1941.

I mean that literally--we got one . There wasn't a telephone in my room or, for that matter, in Mom and Pop's. The simple wooden box with the exposed chrome-plated bells on top hung in the dining room. A Bakelite receiver dangled from one side and a little crank was attached to the other. We were on a party line, like everyone else in town, so we had to pick up the phone and listen to make sure no one else was using it before we turned the crank. But wonder of wonders, when we did we were rewarded with a human voice. ...