New history blog posts every Monday.
If you have seen the 1959 film Pillow Talk, you will remember how Jan, played by Doris Day, kept trying to use the phone only to find that Brad, played by Rock Hudson, was constantly on their party line. A party line consists of multiple telephone subscribers connected to the same land line.
An incoming call would ring in all the homes connected to the party line, but a different ring would indicate the call was for your household. To make an outgoing call, you had to pick up the receiver and listen to see if someone else was on the line. If you heard someone talking, you could try again later.
In 1930, 63% of residential Bell system customer had party lines, according to the AT& T Archives at techchannel.att.com. Most of these customers lived in rural and suburban areas. That number increased to 75% by 1950, due partially to a need to catch up with the need for private lines following World War II. By 1965, only 27% of customers were still using party lines.
Richard Titus describes how a party line was the only option in his book Dunwoody Isn’t Bucolic Anymore: Vignettes, Anecdotes and Miscellaneous Ramblings of the 1950s and 1960s. The Titus family moved to a home along Roberts Drive in Dunwoody in 1950. The home still stands on Glenrich Drive and is identified as the Larkin Martin Home circa 1840.
When the Titus family moved into the home, they had a four-party line with a Roswell exchange. Sometimes it was possible to have a private line for an additional fee, but this was the only phone service available to their home. If the family made a call to anywhere other than Roswell it was considered long distance.
Later, their service improved when it changed over to a two-party line and the second party happened to be one of their friendly neighbors. Then the family telephone service switched from a Roswell exchange to a Chamblee exchange. They paid extra to call Atlanta and they paid a mileage charge for calls to Chamblee.
One of the issues of a party line was the possibility of the line being busy in the case of an emergency. It was also a problem that people occasionally pretended they had an emergency just to get the other party to hang up the line.
In 1946, the Bell System produced a film titled Party Lines to demonstrate proper etiquette for party line customers. Customers are encouraged to not monopolize the telephone line and not speak rudely when asking others to get off the line. The film featured the marionettes of Bill Baird, the same puppeteer who did the marionette performance in the movie The Sound of Music.
My grandparents had a party line in their farmhouse on Covington Highway in the 1960s.
When this story first appeared in the Dunwoody Crier newspaper, I asked readers to contact me with their party line memories. Here are a few of those memories.
Phil Stovall remembers his family had a party line in their home near Roswell Road and Wieuca Road. As a teenager with a sister, his sister’s frequent use of the phone was more of an issue than the party line. As their neighbors were beginning to get private lines, Phil recalls, his father did not want the extra cost of a private line. This is the reason why many families continued to have party lines after a private line was available.
Susan and Tom Player moved to Dunwoody in 1968. Party lines were typical in Dunwoody at the time. Due to the rapid growth around Atlanta, technicians were brought in from around the country to increase private telephone lines. Susan recalls that one of her friends met and married one of those hired for the work.
Growing up in the West End area of Atlanta, Joyce Mathis remembers her family started out with a four-party line. Later, they switched to a two-party line. She had fun as a child listening in on phone calls.
Mary Lou Brooks remembers when the assistance of an operator was needed to make a call. The caller would crank the phone and wait for the operator to ask for the number they were trying to reach. The operator then made the call for you.
When Mary Lou was a child, her mother would take the family to visit a friend with a party line in Vergennes, Vermont. The friend’s phone number was 133 ring 3. This meant that the phone would have to ring three times, then pause, then keep ringing until someone at the house picked up the phone. This ring pattern is how you knew the call was for your household and not for another home.
When Mary Lou’s family moved to Georgia and Nancy Creek Heights in 1955, they had no phone line at all. There were not enough phone lines in this area off Ashford Dunwoody Road in Brookhaven, considered far away from Atlanta at the time.
The family’s next home was in Warren, Ohio, where they stayed for fourteen years. This home had a party line. Mary Lou says you never knew who was on the line and you never had privacy.
Another movie that incorporates the party line is Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962). In this film, two women are on the party line gossiping and talking about their ailments every time Mr. Hobbs, played by Jimmy Stewart, needs to use the telephone in his vacation house.
