Telephone stories

[Dennis Markham]

I know that you all made these posts many months ago but I'm seeing them for the first time.  I didn't realize that we had so many members in Michigan--with several in the Detroit area.  In response to those great stories I thought I'd post a couple of dial cards from this area.  Two of them are on 500's I picked up this summer at flea markets and are still in "as found" condition.  The third exchange, the TYler exchange is on one of my ivory 500 sets.

With regard to the busy signal stories, when I was a kid we lived in northern Alabama.  There the kids called it the Beep-beep line.  One could dial their own number and get the busy signal.  Voices could be heard between the beeps.  I later discovered it worked here in Michigan too for a short period of time.  Here is a posting (for those interested) I made on my blog site a while back.  I've had some response from Minnesota where they called it the Jam-Line.

http://www.vintagerotaryphones.com/?p=100

Shovelhead, I loved the story about the BSA shop in Ann Arbor.

Brian, your phones are awesome. 

A couple of quick stories that I recall about using a pay phone when I was young.  Again, in Alabama....probably 1965 my buddies and I would often go to the local theater on Saturday to watch a movie.  One parent would drop off and another parent would pick us up.  We'd go early in the morning and the shows would run continuously.  Often we stayed all day watching the same movie over and over again.  We would call home from the pay phone outside the theater when we were finally tired of watching the movie.  I would deposit a dime and dial the Operator.  When she answered the dime would drop back into the coin return.  In my best ten year old voice I would lie and tell her I lost my dime and I needed to call home.  They ALWAYS placed the call.  We'd get a ride and keep our dime too.

Another way we "tricked" the phone company related to long distance calls.  As mentioned earlier they were quite expensive, even in the 60's.  Our family would take summer vacations to Michigan where we were from originally.   Often we would drive straight through---a 14 hour trip at the time.  The freeway system was not completed then and often we had to drive on the old U.S. Routes.  When we arrived back home in Alabama my father would dial the operator and ask for a "Person to Person" call.  The caller would have to give the name of the person they wanted to talk to.  If that person wasn't available there was no charge for the call.  So Dad would call my relative in Michigan and ask for himself.  The person on the other end would of course say he wasn't there and the call was ended.  No charge and the relative knew we made it home safely.

With regard to the telephone company testing the line for ringers I had that happen to me just after I was married in 1978.  The wife and I received a rotary dial telephone (yes, in 1978) from someone as a wedding gift.  We lived in an apartment at the time and already had three phones in that small apartment.  We had a Trimline wall phone in the kitchen area, a Trimline desk phone in the living room and a Trimline in the bedroom.  Since it was a two-bedroom apartment we plugged in the gift phone in there.  We really didn't need it.  One day the phone company called and said we had an unauthorized phone on the line and they were going to charge me for a 4th phone.  I said, well in that case, have someone stop by and pick up two of the Trimlines...I don't need four phones.  So instead of getting revenue from 3 phones, because they wanted to be greedy they only got revenue from two.

Sorry about the blurry dial card.  I took the photo in a hurry.

[BDM]

Dennis, man do I remember that trick for long distance. Someone in my family did that, but for the life of me, I can't remember who or when. Didn't even occur to me until I read your post.

[Konrad]

I grew up in London.  The scam was to arrange a weekly call at a specific time.  The call would be placed as a reverse charge (collect call.)  Only thing was the number accepting the charges was a payphone.  Many college students got to talk to the family in other countries for free that way.

My earliest phone memory was the GPO repair man coming to our apartment and leaving me a receiver and transmitter.  Not knowing about a network I tried splicing them in to create a phone.  I could hear OK but nobody could here me.  The other not so pleasant memory is how the old English red phone booths always smelled of stale urine.

[McHeath]

The other not so pleasant memory is how the old English red phone booths always smelled of stale urine.

Stopppp!  You're ruining my illusion of England as a charming little place of old laddies in funny hats and stiff upper lips.   

[BDM]

The other not so pleasant memory is how the old English red phone booths always smelled of stale urine.

Oh, I can remember that here also. My favorite was getting lost in downtown Detroit early one cold morning. So I found a phone booth. Parked, opened up the booth door(booth door hit his legs, jamming it), and wadda ya know. Some old drunk made it his personal shack. Man did it smell when I opened it. He was probably there for one night, but imaging how the smell of a man who hasn't washed in god knows how long, drunk, probably spit on himself in 5 different colors Cramped up in that little space for one night. It hit me like a sledge hammer....PHEEEEEEEEWWWWWW

[Bill Cahill]

An aunt of mine in Detroiit had the exact model 302 I just won on ebay.
My mother had two of the black desk phones, 500 WE Bell.
My Gawd!
I am a telephone freak!!! 
Bill Cahill

[Greg G.]

Only phone-related story I remember was back in the early 60s when we still had party lines.  My older brother, and avid "tinkerer" and ever the mischievious, made a device to listen in on the party line conversations w/o lifting up the receiver.  It was rather simple.  He took an earpiece designed to plug into a transistor radio.  He cut the plug off and wired an alligator clip to the end, than fastened the alligator clip to the metal finger stop on the phone.  It worked, you could hear whatever conversation was going on.

[HobieSport]

My older brother, and avid "tinkerer" and ever the mischievious, made a device to listen in on the party line conversations w/o lifting up the receiver.

Hmm.  So you had one of those older brothers too.  My older brother didn't tap our party line phones (I'll bet he would have but we didn't have a party line) but he did sneak a microphone into each room in our house and had a control center in his room where he could listen in.  One too many FBI movies I suppose.  But our conversations were normal and had no intrigue, so he got bored and went onto other evil projects and experiments.

We caught our eight year old (long time ago) listening in on our neighbors cell phone, which he discovered by accident on his cheap walkie talkie.  We put a stop to that, of course.  Today he is a grown up info tech wiz.

[BDM]

My older brother, and avid "tinkerer" and ever the mischievious, made a device to listen in on the party line conversations w/o lifting up the receiver.

We caught our eight year old (long time ago) listening in on our neighbors cell phone, which he discovered by accident on his cheap walkie talkie.  We put a stop to that, of course.  Today he is a grown up info tech wiz.

You mean "cordless" phone, of course

[Greg G.]

My older brother, and avid "tinkerer" and ever the mischievious, made a device to listen in on the party line conversations w/o lifting up the receiver.

Hmm.  So you had one of those older brothers too.  My older brother didn't tap our party line phones (I'll bet he would have but we didn't have a party line) but he did sneak a microphone into each room in our house and had a control center in his room where he could listen in.  One too many FBI movies I suppose.  But our conversations were normal and had no intrigue, so he got bored and went onto other evil projects and experiments.

In my brother's case it was from reading too many Tom Swift novels.  And yeah, the novelty of the eves dropping quickly wore off for lack of anything interesting.

[bingster]

The only phone tinkering I ever did when I was a kid (besides on my own collected phones) was swapping the white caps on our kitchen 2554 with my black 500's caps.  I just thought it would look cool.  My mother actually liked it, so it stayed that way for a few years.

[Greg G.]

Just remembered another one.  When I was in Jr. High I decided to skip school one day.  But in those days (60s), if you didn't show up (do they still take attendance?) they would call your home.  Anticipating this, I removed the mouth piece from our only home phone and hid it so Mom couldn't respond.  Sure enough, they called, but she couldn't communicate.  But I didn't anticipate this next part.  She called the phone company from a neighbor's phone, they sent out a repairman, and first thing he did was unscrew the cap and discovered the mouthpiece was missing.  He replaced it, she called the school, and then all hell broke loose.  Hoo-boy, was she po'd!  To this day she still reminds me of that from time to time.  She thinks it's funny now, but I'm trying to forget it, wasn't worth the rath I endured!

Oh, and I didn't skip school after that either!

[AET]

My grandparents got busted for the extra phone too.  Also, remember the rotary phone locks?  Grandpa put one on the 554 in the kitchen, because Grandma was on the phone 6 hours a day! 

[Dennis Markham]

I took some time to read through this topic again tonight.  It's been a couple of years now since the last post was made.  For some of you that have joined the forum since then you may enjoy reading some of the stories....and adding yours.

I enjoyed reading the posts from members we haven't heard from in a while.  Perhaps you will too.

~Dennis

[jsowers]

In the olden days when we had a 4-party line, about 1973 or 74, I figured out that all I had to do to snoop on the party line was take the transmitter out of the handset. This was after our AE40 with the party line switchhook was replaced with a regular AE40 and then an AE80. The party line switchhook was literally made for snooping because it didn't connect the transmitter until you squeezed the lever. I don't remember ever hearing anything really juicy. Our neighbors were all older people my grandmother's age.

If anyone ever has a chance to see the movie Mr. Hobbs Take a Vacation, with Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Hara, they have a great running gag where he picks up the phone and hears all these gross descriptions of people's sicknesses from the old ladies who won't stop talking on the party line.

When I was a kid, I also figured out all I had to do to record the call was connect a mini-plug to the two transmitter leads and plug it into the AUX input of my casette recorder. On the AE40, or on my grandmother's AE50, I could also put the transmitter back in and record both sides of the conversation, because the transmitter is held in place without the cap (so the wire I connected can exit). I only did that once and the person I called knew she was being recorded.

Thanks, Dennis, for reviving this thread. I hadn't seen it before.