Reminiscences

[CHARLIE]

Tom's and my phone number was 403 and our cousin's was 567R. That's back when you picked up the phone and the woman operator would politely say; "Number Please."  I would tell them 567R and they would connect the line and ring my cousin's phone. One time, the operators went on strike so the management had to run the operator's jobs. I was still in elementary school at the time. I picked up the phone expecting to hear a woman's pleasant polite voice. Instead, a man said; "What do you want?"....and he didn't sound too happy. It scared me and I hung up the  phone.

When I was going to Georgia Military in Milledgeville, sometimes I stayed in the barracks over a short holiday because I was too far to be able to go home and get back in time. So with few cadets there, things got sort of boring sometimes. So during those real boring times, I'd go down to the pay phone and dial '0' (it didn't cost anything to call the operator.) and then talk to the operator for a long time. Every once in a while the operator would excuse herself to help a customer but would always come back to chat.

[Swede]

Kids use to have fun with telephones. Oce there was 7 young boys. One rang an old man an asked for Janne.
- No Janne lives here, You must have dial the wrong number!
The second boy did the same, and so on.........
When the 6:th boy made his call asking for Janne of course the old man was complete crazy.

Then the 7:th boy made his call: - Hello, it´s Janne. Has anyone asked for me?

Swede. (who once poured 25 litres concentrated washing-up liquid in a fountain) :D

[Stephen_Wiley]

Swede,

One of the many kids jokes here,  is to call and ask:

"Is your refrigerator running?" (working)

Obvious response from adults is:

"Yes"  (thinking they may be talking with a salesman)

Kid:

"You better run down the street and catch it"

[Tom]

Call the store.
"ya got Prince Albert in a can?"

"yes"

"Well you better let him out."

[Bibbyman]

Oh Man!  Talk about phone jokes...  Thirty some years ago when the factory where I have my day job first opened up, everyone was young and foolish.  Every couple of weeks there was fresh batch suckers to be played.

Lets see...

We leave a message to call this number and ask for "Doug Graves".  It'd be the grounds keeper at the cemetery.

Or we'd have them call a number and ask for "Bill Board".  It'd be the local road sign company.  (They got so mad after about the twentieth time getting the same call,  they traced the calls back to our office and we were told to knock it off.)

Or we have them call the local women's correction center and ask for "Freda Peoples".

About every new draftsmen was send down to one of the punch press' with a print and told ask for "Stubby Workholder".  (Of course that's a part of the punch press.)

Our "Janne" was Francis Thatcher.......

One guy kept getting phone calls ask for a "Francis Thatcher".  This must have gone on for a couple of weeks...  a couple of times a day from different people...  all wanting this guy to ask around for her to come to the phone or take a message or if there was a number where she could be reached.   This guy was going nuts.  He couldn't pin it on anyone and there was too many new people coming in every day to know if there was really a Francis Thatcher or not.  

One day we had this young file clerk that had a voice that could melt an iceberg call him and say she was Francis Thatcher and she had finally found out that he was getting her phone calls and wanted to know if he had taken any messages for her.  She must have talked to him for a half an hour.  She laid it on thick and he was eating it up. By the time he got off the phone,  he was in a high state of excitement.  He was telling everyone about his conversation.  "Oh yea?  Oh yea??  And then what'd she say?"   He spilled his guts telling us all about Francis.

About the time he exhausted his story and had time to calm down,  the young lady walked up behind him and said.   "Hi.  I'm Francis."  Our pidgin didn't really know her but he knew she wasn't Francis.  Now he was totally confused.  We all broke out laughing and he realized he'd been had.

[SwampDonkey]

Sounds like the same old hijinks kids played here on phones. We had phones here way before power lines, I think the 20's. Power was in town by the 1920's, out here in the 50's. They had their own hydro dam on the Presque'Ilse River.  I remember the old phone lines here where cut down in the 70's, they were cedar. We gathered them for kindling wood. Replaced the poles with creasote poles then, later with copper arsenate, now that's banned hehehe. Anyway, we also had the neighborhood gossip. She actually was the last to own a party line up till 1993 I think. We went on private in 1980. She'd even stand in her front room with the binoculars so she wouldn't miss ya taken a leak around the corner  :D  :D  :D. I remember one rummer she tried to start and that was concerning the taste of maple syrop. My cousin taps and boils it down at his shop. Well this local gossip was tellin around that 'they say it tastes like smoke'. She was the only one saying it and she never bought or tasted it herslef to even know. At around that time my cousin caught her stealing stove wood of his farm, so we figured she was saying that because 'she got caught with her hands in the cookie jar'. Her son still steals stovewood, never a word said. Lovely neighbors

[etat]

Late at night, "hey mister, your goats in my garden",..."huh"...."your goats in my garden"...sleepy and grumpy.."I DON'T HAVE A GOAT", ...."Oh, excuse me, I don't have a garden!"   click.

Late at night, phone rings,;;;;; on other end, "Is that you, ROB where you at and why ain't you home",....fast thinking....."Yeah, it's me"... about 5 minutes fussin on other end.......My cousin Vickey in the background, "Rob, get back over here and hang up the phone, I'm lonesome"..... silence and explosion on other end, click....  we never did find out what happened to Rob

we outta been whupped with a razor strap!  woulda been if our parents had caught us!

[CHARLIE]

We used to call and tell whoever answered that we were Little Jimmy at WARN radio station. If they could answer this question and get down to the station in 15 minutes they would win a brand new record album (usually of a top named group). We'd ask them a real siimple question and then tell them to get down to the station in 15 minutes!   :D

Called a few people and told them we were the phone company and were going to run a high powered test through the phone lines. Would they please jerk the line out of the wall (this was before the little plugs were on the cords) and we'd send a serviceman around after the test to reinstall the lines. Then the line would go dead. :  Geeeez that was not a nice thing to do now that I think of it.

One year I got a phonecall from a young boy that said; "Is your refridgerator running?"  To which I replied; "Nope, it tried to but I caught it and have it tied up in a chair."  There was just silence because the kid didn't know how to reply to that. Blew his joke! ;D

[macurtis]

I love reading all of the post about times past. I wanted to share this with the board. When I was just a young boy , my mother had to drag me kicking and screaming home from my Pa Paws farm. Two things come to mind, among many.

One of our cousins told me and my brother that a 22 bullet
would bounce off of grand ma's gunnie hen's head. After the 6th one, we decided that the 22 would not bounce off of their head. We took the guinnes and threw them in the creek.
Grand ma mentioned to Pa Paw she was missing a few.
Pa Paw had only to ask one time if we knew anything about the guinnes under the bridge.  We told him what happened and he said he would take care of it. Case closed.

I was always amazed when the cows would come back to the barn with a new calf. I asked Pa Paw where Ole Betsy or Susie got those calves from. He always told me they found them in that ole stump hole along the creek. I guess there were a few things Pa Paw did not want to tell me about. I looked in every stump hole I could find and I never found a calf.
But those old cows could find one every year.

macurtis

[Tom]

Welcome back Mike.

[etat]

Hey mike, noticed the flag you was flying.  So, what part of the state are you from?

[macurtis]

Tom------Long story---I will call you on the land line leave me your number.

ckate----Prentiss,MS about 60 miles south of jackson, 40 miles north of Hattiesburg

 what town for you?

[etat]

macurtis, Ellistown, purt near between Tupelo and New Albany, just off to one side a little.