Good Community Is Where You Build It
The day was hot. Such was then and continues now to generally be the case in Beautiful, East Texas. That heat, y’all. There are many things I miss about home. That heat is not among them.
Earlier in the day Momma called, “Why don’t y’all come to my house for Sunday Supper?” she asked. “I’m gonna fix fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, and make a chocolate cake.”
At that time in my life, Momma’s fried chicken was my very favorite food and I always enjoyed her good chocolate cake.
“Can’t wait,” I said. I hung up the phone then looked at it marveling at the progress of technology.
When I was a boy the phone in our home, a modern home in its time, was hard wired and permanently mounted to the wall in the kitchen. Our telephone was rotary dial, green, and was equipped with the standard three foot cord. Dub, my dad, had no interest in one of those fancy twenty foot affairs that might encourage people to get comfortable and lay about the den while talking on the phone.
Our phone was part of a party line. Don’t be fooled. Despite the name, using the phone was not a party. The phone line was shared between four families.
When one wished to make a telephone call, it was impolite to just pick up the receiver and start dialing. First one had to pick up the receiver and listen to ensure someone else was not already having a conversation. If no one was using the line, then a call could be made.
If someone was already using the line, a polite person would refrain from interrupting the ongoing conversation and return the receiver to its place. I say, a polite person, because very often people were impolite. It was all too common for noisy neighbors to pick up the receiver, listen to see if a conversation was ongoing then, instead of returning the receiver to its cradle, place their palm over the microphone, and settle in for a listen.
I remember a cousin of mine, Gary who’d just married his second wife. She was a pretty sort of girl, not a knock out by any stretch of the imagination but, pretty. It helped that she was young. Sadly she had not lived out in the country before. Party lines were new to her as was, apparently, common courtesy. The bride of my cousin loved to eavesdrop on other people’s telephone conversations and had no problem with interrupting others who were using the phone to announce that she had an important phone call to make and demand the line be made available only to later to be overheard engaged in conversation that was less urgent than she’d led her neighbor’s to believe.
We all loved Gary. No one particularly cared for his wife. That said, what are you going to do?
I asked Dub about it once as we were working on his old 64’ model pickup. Dub dipped snuff. He had a gap in his two front upper teeth through which he could and often did launch a shocking stream of tobacco juice as far as fifteen feet with astonishing accuracy. In doing so a peculiar sound effect was produced. It was a sort of, “squinch,” though that description is inadequate.
After I asked bout cousin Gary’s young new wife, he chuckled, spit, then said, “Gary didn’t marry her for her telephone manners.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“You’ll understand one day,” my father assured me.
From that wall mounted, rotary dial telephone, we’d improved over the years to a phone that was light weight, rested on the glass top table next to the couch, had caller ID, a long cord from the back of the phone to the wall, anther long cord from the phone to the handset, and most happily – was not a shared party line.
The kids will be pleased to see Grandma I thought. Then ruefully, hopefully she won’t try to send them home with another baby chicken… or, Heaven help me, worse.
… Listen to the podcast to hear the rest of the story.
Much Love,HankYou’ve Been Hanked!
