Anyone remember the "Party Line" on phones ? (Houston: rental, house)

[TXtrkgrl]

Originally Posted by HillCountryHotRodMan

I liked the party line, too .... but then somebody kept asking me what I was wearing....

It's me again Margaret........ Are you nekid?? heeheeehee

[outafocus]

My neighbors had a party line well into the 80s!

Frost Bank time has been around a long time, but do you remember "Tel-News? It was a recording of top news stories that ran on a loop. Tom Ellis, the anchor on Twelve Star Final recorded it. I remember the jingle for Tel-News!

Dial Tel-News San Antonio, CApitol 5-6431. Your personal newsman waits for you with 'round the clock news and the temperature too, Dial Tel-News, San Antonio CApitol 5- 6431.

I miss the old prefixes, too. I know the phone number I have now would have been PErshing.

[brenty13]

Back in 1970, in Michigan we had a 7 party line and our phone bill was $3.86 a month. Also remember our telephone number started out with a prefix of MI for midwest. MI46351.

Also, had our milk, in glass bottles with a paper cap, delivered on our porch every morning. In the dead of winter the temperature would often go below freezing. So if you didn't bring in the milk in time, the milk would start to freeze and expand upwards. We would have a frozen milk spout coming out of the bottle sometimes 3 inches high...with the paper cap still on top. Funny to see.

Ah memories!

[cjw]

We moved into the rural Schertz area in the mid 70's and we had two phone lines. My parents had a private line and us teenaged kids had a party line. Those poor people on our party line.

Do you remember when it was a toll call to call from one side of San Antonio to the other? We lived in the Wurzbach/Evers area and had friends in the Walzem/Camelot area. It cost money to call them. That would have been in the early 70's.

[940]

Originally Posted by TexasRedneck

I had her a *few* years earlier...<cough - 60's - cough>. Mrs. Sawyer was the speech therapist there at the time - she's still alive as well! She's in her 90's now, and still sharp as a tack!

Jeez, I had Mrs Sawyer too...LOL...while Mrs Burns was my teacher, I also went to Mrs Sawyer because of a problem pronouncing the sound "er"...she got me straightened out!! Very nice lady too...glad to hear about her also.

[TexasRedneck]

Yep - she worked with me as well! Whereabouts did you live? We lived over on Sawyer Road - it's changed a WHOLE lot since then! I can still remember when they were putting in the dedicated phone lines - I think half the old ladies on Sawyer lost their "reliable sources"!!!

[940]

Originally Posted by TexasRedneck

Yep - she worked with me as well! Whereabouts did you live? We lived over on Sawyer Road - it's changed a WHOLE lot since then! I can still remember when they were putting in the dedicated phone lines - I think half the old ladies on Sawyer lost their "reliable sources"!!!

Wasn't Sawyer Rd named after Mrs Sawyer and her family? She won't remember me but if you see her, tell her a former student from the early 70s still appreciates all she did for him!

My parents have always lived off Potranco Rd outside of Loop 1604...back then, all the rural areas out that way were zoned to Leon Valley Elem. No traffic then so it was a quick drive or a quick ride on the bus.

[TexasRedneck]

Out there w/the Radicke's an' Wurzbach's, then, eh? Brandt and their dairy was east of you on 1604 - Red's was still going strong back then, too.

Yes - Sawyer was named for them. We lived next door to 'em - my Dad was one of the folks that got Leon Valley incorporated, because he knew that SA would be that way soon if they didn't. If you'd like to DM me a name, I'll see that it gets to her - my youngest boy is a cop there in Leon Valley now...(Marcie Trump would never believe that MY son would be a cop....)

[940]

Red's was the closest thing we had to a store then so we were there quite a bit either getting gas or some junk food. The Laidley's were such nice people...I sometimes rent "Race with the Devil" just to see their old store off Potranco and Talley as it was in the mid 70s!!

I'll DM you with my name...Thanks!

[TexasVines]

my aunt and uncle had a real party line in Gardendale north of Odessa and you had to listen for "your ring" as others said and it was strange to pick up the phone and hear others on it and then hang back up real quick

a guy installing some stuff for me just recently had worked up in the far north Texas panhandle in the very rural areas around Amarillo where people still had phone lines strung in trees and fence post and just about anything else that would keep the line off the ground

the area still had some party lines and the company that had the lines (bought from SBC) had some electronic cards called "go digitals" that could split a party line up into 4 different lines where everyone could have their own line instead of sharing......but that "technology" was only around a very very short time for the most part and the cards were very rare and expensive to replace......so when a card would go bad the company had a plan where they would send someone out every so often to the co-lo (about 10 days) and they would take a good "go digital" and swap it into a set of lines that had a bad one and put the bad one where the good one was so now the people that were on the bad one had their phone back and the people on the good one were going to be out for 10 days......he said the people were so used to their lines being torn up, the phones being bad or down ect. that they thought nothing of having yet another outage and they all had cell phones anyway that they used so you almost never got a complaint when they knocked one group of lines off to put another group back on

as a kid in Houston we used to be able to dial the numbers on the "diagonal" of the phone like 159 or 753 and you would get onto a group line where there were others (mostly kids) all doing like others have said asking where everyone was from and trying to hook up and cussing at each other.....we called it the party line too, but I think what it was for was so technicians had a line to the home office, but again I think that need faded quickly and they just left those lines open for any future need and eventually they were turned off or disconnected I can't actually recall why we stopped using them, but it was pretty fun to just pick up the phone and dial the diagonal and hear 8 or 10 others on there all saying "hey what's up"