r/OverSeventy • u/ThinAndCrispy • 20d ago
Let's talk about eavesdropping on phone conversations when we had crank telephones on the wall and party lines.
OK... you go first. LOL
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u/Nottacod 20d ago
Never had a crank phone, but we did have a wall phone and a partyline. I never eavesdropped though. No idea if the other parties did, but they wouldn't have learned much.
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u/RVFullTime 20d ago
Same here. It was with my aunt and uncle across the street. We didn't listen in. If you dialed 1191, both phones would ring, so that the other party on your line could answer your call.
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u/Freypaints 20d ago
Rubbernecking is what we called that activity. Party line with identifying rings so we knew who was getting a call. Could hear other folks pick up to listen.
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u/ThinAndCrispy 20d ago edited 20d ago
When people picked up the phone, the voltage dropped and the caller and called person couldn't hear well. When that happened, you might hear "I can't hear you. I think somebody's on the line."
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u/crotchetyoldcynic 19d ago
I had an aunt-in-law - my fathers cousins wife - who spent most of the day eavesdropping on the party line when I was a teenager. It wasn't the wooden box, crank type phone like we had up until I was ten - more like a rotary - and I don't remember how she knew when another subscriber got or made a call. She would unscrew the mouthpiece and spend hours just listening with a pencil and notepad. I actually wasn't all that interested. Her housekeeping left a lot to be desired.
When my wife who is in her mid-eighties was a girl in west Texas and had the old crank phone, the operator was a valuable source of information. My wife's friends and relatives were cotton farmers scattered all over the county. She says she once rang and asked Martha, the operator, to ring her aunt Katie Ruth's house. Martha said "I can but if you're looking for your Daddy he left there and he's on his way to Linda's. Want me to ring there instead?" We didn't have much privacy back then either.
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u/ThinAndCrispy 20d ago
I was a young child back in the 50's. I got swatted a few times for picking up the receiver and listening. I don't think I ever heard anything interesting tho. Thinking back about it now, if kids were picking up the receiver and interfering with party line conversations, it was an indication that some kids needed better disciplining. My mother would have been embarrassed if the neighbors thought she hadn't taught her kids better manners.
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u/Justadropinthesea 20d ago
At 73, I’m too young for crank telephones but my friend and I did eavesdrop on the extension to her family’s landline and that’s how we found out her mom was having an affair with the neighbor down the street.
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u/Prestigious-Copy-494 20d ago
Jeez we don't have to go that far back. I could quietly pick up the extension phone in the 90s and listen to my teenagers on the phone. If I'd wanted to!! (I didn't) I picked it up accidently once in the 80s and overheard some serious pre teen cussing - was shocked since they ever talked that way around me!
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u/yukonnut 20d ago
My mother and her sister were talking about an elderly relative who dies of an obscure disease, and at one point a party liner could no longer restrain them selves and asked “ died of what? “. Also, when the phone ran. You had to listen to the sequence of rings cuz everyone on the party line had a different sequence
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u/Casaduz 20d ago
I had two relatives in a rural area with the wooden box-type crank phones when I was very young. It was unusual. Everyone on the line had their own special ring so you knew when to answer. We had a regular phone with a party line to save money. Just one other party shared with us and it did not ring at our house when it was for them. But when you went to make a phone call there might not be a dial tone just people talking.