Ah, yes, the good old days

Since nothing exciting is going on around here - still - I share a photo that I found online. (I don't recall what I was looking for or where I found the photo). It reminds me of the "Good Old Days" when everything, so many people claim, was perfect - except - we were engaged in World War II, we had no indoor plumbing, and I had already lost two siblings, one of whom could possibly have been saved with penicillin. A friend from our small town had been shot down in China, suffering a broken back in parachuting and unable to communicate with the Chinese peasants who came to his aid.

"What" I hear you ask, "...does Fred Emery [the parachutist] have to do with an early-day telephone switchboard?" Well...Fred's mother, Nettie Emery, was "our" switchboard operator. On rare occasion, if I behaved myself, Nettie allowed me to "help" her at the switchboard in her parlor. Ah, yes, the good old days!

ADDITION of 12/20/2021

1954 August or September - Missouri Air National Guard Summer Camp Communications Center - Casper, Wyoming

Equipment from back-to-front: Field Switchboard (hidden), Commercial Switchboard (staffed by Hunky Husband), and Teletype

It isn't apparent to me what the fourth airman, the only one with his airman's stripe showing, is doing. HH had written the date and place on the back of the photo, along with identifying the four airmen. I believe this to have been HH's first deployment for training in the Air National Guard as he would probably not yet have reached the age of 18 when the photo was taken, his birthday being in early September. (His parents would have had to sign a waiver for him to have joined at age 17.) HH no longer recalls much about most of his Air Guard service of 11 or 12 years.

Comments

[Peter Tibbles]

I was born and grew up in a small country town.
I remember that we’d turn the handle on the phone and give the operator the number, or more often, just ask for a person or business by name.
It was a small town, as I said, and pretty much everyone knew everyone, especially the phone operators.
None of these eight digit numbers we have now – the place where dad worked had the phone number 3. Our home number was 273.

[Cop Car]

Hi, Peter--Thanks for the interesting rundown of your childhood telephone situation. Your town was larger than ours if it had more than one operator - lol. As I recall from TGB, you were born in Australia and more recently were living in Melbourn. Was your small town near Melbourn or did you stray farther afield?

As to phone numbers, we had combinations of longs and short rings in our little town. If the phone made one long ring + two short rings, I knew that Grandmother D would pick it up. (As far as I know, the rings were not assigned as Morse code equivalents to initials; but, in the case of my grandparent Ds, it happened.) I seem to recall that we had a phone in the house that we rented from my great-grandparents in 1940-41, but our tenure was so short and I so young that I don't recall our ring. In 1943 we moved into a home in Tulsa in which we had a rotary telephone (with 5-digit number?) My great-grandparents and great-great-grandmother had moved to a town large enough to have 3-digit numbers (with a candlestick phone).

[Peter Tibbles]

We were a long way from Melbourne, indeed, pretty much as far away as was possible while still being in the same state (Victoria). That was in the west, not far from the South Australian border.
The town’s population was about 2,500 at the time. We came to Melbourne in 1959 when I was 14. Melbourne’s population these days is about 5 million (less back then, of course) so it was a bit of a cultural shock.
Sounds like you had a party line. We had them here too, but out of town for the farms and so on.

[Cop Car]

Thanks for the clarification on your geographic locations. So you got to acclimate yourself to the big city while in high school! The only time I've lived in a city with that high a population was when I worked in the Los Angeles area - and that was an auxiliary place. I had an apartment there, but my house was in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You are correct, Peter, that in our small town (population, I'm guessing around 200 + another 100 or 200 in even more rural area around it) we had a party line. In fact, we also had a party line in Tulsa and, in 1946, in Kansas City, Missouri. Eventually, in the early 1950s (still KCMO), we were able to obtain a private line. Our original phone number in KCMO had 6 digits that later became 7. I don't recall when it became 10 (including the area code) - probably after I left home in 1955.

[Peter Tibbles]

I know Albuquerque a little.
My sister lived there for a few years in the late seventies (before moving to San Francisco) and I visited several times.
A few times later as well, when we returned to visit friends of hers.

[Ole phat stu]

Stayed once in a pub in eire that had a single digit number
Twas a very small village.

[Cop Car]

Peter--Albuquerque has really grown, over the years. The metro area had about 200,000 people in 1950. It's now up to nearly one million. I lived there 1983-1990, so I missed your sister by a few years, and I was working in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1989-1990. Albuquerque has nearly doubled since I was there.

Stu--I cannot infer the size of the village from the fact that the pub had a single digit number. Is there a rule that says that all phone numbers must have the same number of digits? I'm not familiar enough with the relays and other parts to know the answer. Help me!

[Joared]

I recall switchboards and had a SIL who had worked one in San Luis Obispo years earlier before she joined our family. I certainly recall interacting with real people operators any time I wanted to make a long distance call and had a friend who was one of those for a time.

[Cop Car]

Joared--So you are well familiar with basic switchboards/operations. It occurred to me that HH had set up and operated switchboards during his first couple of years with the Missouri Air National Guard - before he qualified in cryptography. I'll add a photo of the communications center that he helped set up and operate in 1954.

[Joared]

I think that was also the kind of switchboard we had at the TV station when I went to work there. Was a big deal to our operator when it was replaced with newer technology.