I'm old enough to remember having an 8-party line with a 3-minute limit on each call...people would take turns calling each other just to be able to finish their conversation.
@Nimbus: I remember not having a house phone cause the phone company hadn't gotten the farms wired up for phones...we had to drive two miles to use the phone at the general store in a small village. The phone looked like this:
No joke, and the phone system had a switchboard and operator and when you wanted to make a phone call you had to take the receiver off and tap the tap-hook thing and tell the operator the phone number.
I remember when the dials were rotary and there was one phone in the hallway so when you talked to your friends your parents could hear every word. That's when you learned ....code. Then came princess phones and you got one for Christmas if you were a good girl.
Yep. We had a white rotary phone rented from Ma Bell (aka Pacific Telephone). When my siblings were dating my dad got a 40' pigtail so they could take the receiver into the other room for privacy (little brother still eavesdropped).
@Flenflyys: That's a recent development. Back in the day when we wanted to show someone our stuff we had to go out in the country to do it. And then sometimes you got caught.