My Family's Landline Retires
 | Author:
Nancy Marks
Nancy Marks: MT43 News Secretary and News Editor |
Nancy Marks
At the beginning of March, I had my landline disconnected. Sounds easy enough. Just call Centurylink and the deed is completed. The number was 266-3710, just lately (406) 266-3710.
I and that number have a 60-year history. I live in rural Central Montana where phones came in about the time the REA brought in electricity, shortly after “The War.” Each ranch’s phone was one of several numbers on a party line. Everyone could hear your phone number ring, and you could hear theirs.
My grandparents had a phone before my folks did. All calls were placed from a central office in town where several people, ladies mostly, took your request and plugged the call into the party you were trying to reach. My grandad knew all the operators by their voices. The call went something like this:
“Helen (Karhoff), give me John at Husky’s. We need fuel at the ranch. We’re about out.”
“You bet, Mr. Marks. Just a moment.” Click. Ring.
“Hello, this is John Schreiner, Husky Station.”
“John this is JP. How soon can you be out here with a load of fuel? We are out.”
And so on.
Problems with the new phone service in rural areas were common. The night I was born the nurses knew my birth was imminent. They began calling my dad from the hospital. This began at midnight. No answer. They rang about every hour until dawn. The baby was born at 4:25 a.m. At daylight, my uncle, whose phone was on the same party line, banged on my dad’s door. “Harold, why didn’t you answer your phone? I’ve been listening to it ring all night! And by the way, you are the father of a baby girl.” The phone was out.
When the neighbor lady had nothing else to do, she would pick up the phone to listen to anyone making a call. Just in case she needed to keep the gossip line going. Nobody much minded unless it was personal. Otherwise, my Dad would say, ”Mabel you can hang up the phone. I’m just ordering parts from Neifert and White!” Click. Mabel would avoid my mother for several days following the call.
Time passed, but the party line stayed on. Grandad JP landed in the hospital in Missoula. At noon May 13, 1961, a call came in for my dad. Grandad had passed away. A sorrowful moment for my family. The families on the party line soon began showing up to express their condolences, and to bring food.
My grandma Hattie Hargrove and her son Walfred, lived in Toston by the river bridge. They were both elderly. My mother constantly worried about their well-being, so she asked if she could have a phone put in, to be able to check on them.
No was the answer. Grandma Hargrove, direct from the old country, had raised six kids through the depression. She could take care of herself and besides it would cost way too much money. Mom agreed to float the cost: $6.00 per month. The phone was installed. It stayed on the wall. As far as I remember neither Grandma nor Walfred ever made a call themselves.
Mountain Bell really came into the real world in the mid-’60s when they changed our party lines to a seven-digit phone number. And the user had to buy a rotary phone for the “upgrade”. And you had to dial the number. You could no longer call Helen to ask her to connect you.
By the '70s I was a newlywed living in Butte. Calls out of your own prefix, were still considered “long distance.” My new husband worked nights so I talked to my family almost every night. Since we could not afford long-distance charges, I would call the ranch, let it ring once, and then hang up. I would then call again, let it ring once, and hang up. My mother knew I was trying to call. So she would call me back to put the charges on her phone bill. Pretty slick, huh?
As cell phones began to be popular in big cities, MaBell, now Qwest, began to let up on long-distance charges for phone calls. Phone calls were no longer just for ordering parts and getting bad news. A call came to the 266-3710 number about 7:45 p.m. October 14, 1983: “Eleanor, you are a new grandma of a baby boy!”
By the nineties, my folks’ health was beginning to fail. I went home to care for them while running a business and talking to friends on the 266-3710. But not on weekends. So many times the phone service was out.
We then moved into a new era of two phone numbers in the same home. The business had its own number: 266-3174. By the 2000’s there were teenagers in the house. The Directory showed 266-3174 as “teenagers.” The business could not operate with the lines tied up while teenagers talked day and night.
Time passed. The teenagers left home. The business closed. It was time for me to leave the ranch. On October 12, 2017, I sold the ranch and moved to town. My new partner was shocked when I said I was putting in a landline. He even gave me a Crankshaft comic strip from the funny page.
It showed a TV reporter outside a residential house. She says, “We’re outside the house of the Crankshaft family where rumor has it, in this house resides the last landline in the United States.”
By the time I left the ranch, I had used a cell phone for a couple of years. The first one I lost was in the canal working on the pump to the pivot. The second one kept falling out of my pocket ending up on the tractor.
That’s the thing about a landline phone: you always know where it is. It’s right there on the counter with the phone directory beside it, with a pen and paper and a comfortable chair. You NEVER have to look for it! Like I do now – is it in my purse, in the car, under the chair? Would someone call me so I can locate my phone?
