Column: When the custom ring was the thing on the telephone

Published 12:00 am Friday, February 14, 2003

Let’s thank modern technology, cell phones, and even the 9-1-1 Emergency Reporting System for finally putting an end to the party line.

Despite its name, the party line was less than a happy innovation for the nation’s telephone systems. To put it in the most basic of language, the party line was a telephone system which served as many as 18 customers on the same line. These lines ran along country roads in the early part of the last century and connected each farm place with a central telephone operator.

Now, if there are 18 separate customers or patrons on the party line, how did one ever make the connection with one specific person or family? The answer was with the ring of the telephone at the other end.

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This was done with a system based on long rings and short rings. For example, one family on the line might have one short and three longs as their ring for incoming telephone calls.

I can recall being in rural homes years ago when the telephone would ring several times. However, no one would even try to answer. Sometimes someone would finally say, &uot;That’s not our ring.&uot;

Then there were times when someone in this home would utilize one of the prime benefits of a party line to listen in on conversations already in progress. From these obvious invasions of privacy came all too much fodder for the gossip hounds.

Now, let’s get back to the subject of party line ringing. I recently saw a copy of the 1912 directory of the Lerdal Telephone Co. Their &uot;List of Rings on Party Lines&uot; had a total of 43 possibilities. These ranged from one long ring for central (the switchboard operator), two longs for a fire alarm, and what were combinations of longs and shorts up to a total of five rings. One of these possibilities was one long. one short, and one long. Another was two shorts, one long, and two more shorts.

More years ago than I care to specify, I lived in a town north of Mankato. This town had a local telephone system which was a decade or more behind the times. Anyway, our apartment’s telephone was on a four-party line. One of the patrons on our line was the owner of the local school bus system and getting a majority of the calls. Another patron on the line had accepted the challenge to disrupt our incoming calls for a few months.

We had acquired the same telephone number and ring assigned to the previous tenant I’ll call Fritz Sludge. And when our ring sounded (which may have been three longs), this other person would immediately answer and bluntly tell the calling party the Sludge family had moved to St. Paul, then quickly hang up. By doing this, she was cutting off our incoming calls.

It took about two months on

my part, and with absolutely no help from the local telephone company, to finally convince this lady that I had inherited the Sludge telephone number and specific ring on the party line.

Now, before anyone in Freeborn County assumes that party lines are just something from the very distant past (the olden days), please allow me to mention the 9-1-1 factor.

In late 1987, the county’s 9-1-1 Emergency Reporting System with an enhanced feature was activated. The enhanced feature meant that each incoming 9-1-1 call was displayed on a computer screen. This display, plus the printer, immediately showed the caller’s telephone number, name and address, and the appropriate law enforcement agency, fire department, and ambulance service to respond to the emergency situation. This system really worked great, except for the party lines.

In late 1987, there were still party line subscribers in the Alden, Clarks Grove and Geneva areas. The law enforcement center dispatchers had to rely on verbal contact to determine exactly which person on the line was making the emergency call. Thus, thanks to the new 9-1-1 system, these party lines were soon eliminated.

I have a correction for the article about the Skinner, Chamberlain article which was published in the Jan. 26, 2003, edition. The escalator in this store was evidently installed in the early 1950s, and not in the 1920s as one of my printed historical sources indicated.

Tribune feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.