Return to Milestones Vol. 3, No. 1
The following story was provided for Milestones by Bob and Betty Brodmerkel, of Frankfort Springs. The author, George A. McDonnell, was a resident of the Florence area. The operator of the system was Jim Finnegan. The Arnolds and the Ralstons in the story are the families of the late Cavett Arnold and the late Geolge Ralston. Frankfort Springs and surrounding area is now served by the Murdocksville telephone exchange.
It must have been about 1908 when dad and a number of the local farmers decided they needed a telephone. No major company would build a line into the rural sections since it wouldn't pay them to do so. The only way to get a telephone was to build your own line and have your own company.
With that ultimatum facing them, the farmers got together on a number of evenings, drew up a charter, by-law and all the necessary papers, and the telephone company was under way. Dad seemed to have most of the paper work to do since he was the local Justice of Peace, a school teacher and farmer, He never seemed to mind and entered into the non-profit (how true) businedd of being president of the company.
The first thing to do was to build the lines and that poles. I recall that dad and four other men went to a place they called the "locust grove" over near New Cumberland, W. Va., where they stayed a Couple of weeks and cut the poles. It was less than 15 miles but it was too far to travel in those days, so they sort of camped in a vacant house. I seem to recall that the land owner charged them 15 cents per pole, the poles later hauled and scattered where they would be needed. The members of the company showed up in force to build the lines, the lines using two wires and the wires anchored on a glass insulator which was screwed on a spiked wooden bracket which some called a "flicker pin", probably because it resembled a flicker sitting on the side of a pole.
After the lines were built, they had to locate a switchboard or "central" where the operator transferred calls from one line to another. There must have been 6 or 8 different lines and each person on a line would have a number or call which we called their "ring". You could call a person on your line without bothering "central", but if you wanted to call a person on another line, you cranked but one ring, Central would answer and you would give him the number you wished. If you didn't know the number, you just gave the name as central knew the ring of everybody. I remember that we were on line number 13 and our ring, or call, was 19. The rings or calls started at two and went up to 12 or 15. The long ring meant the equivalent of 10 and the short rings were one. So a long ring followed by 3 short rings was 13. At first thought, our ring would have been a long plus 9 shorts. However, it didn't work that way. Dad said it was on the Roman numeral system and our ring was the same as XIX, or a long, a short, and a long, ten plus nine. Occasionally someone would not understand, and would ring a long followed by nine shorts. We would lose count but were usually right in figuring it was our ring and answer it.
"Central" was quite a character and had a trying job. He had the switchboard in his home and wasn't paid much. He opened service at 7 a.m. with a real long ring on all lines and closed service for the day at 9 p.m. the same way. He had a night bell which any touch of the crank would set off but this was used only in dire emergencies.
After the whole system was in operation, everybody was happy, but then came the job of repair and upkeep. The company had subscribers who were not members of the company, but paid a little more and demanded better service.
Members bought their own telephone, the wall, cranking type, but subscribers were furnished a phone by the company. Each telephone took two or three dry batteries and, I recall, they were bought in barrels. When the batteries got weak, the 'other person couldn't hear your conversation. Service consisted of replacing these batteries, replacing broken poles and repairing lines where trees or limbs fell over the wires. The biggest headache was lightning damage and sometimes it was extensive. It might shatter a pole or it might knock your phone off the wall.
I recall a number of times, during a bad electric storm, of our phone letting off a blast equal to a shot gun. No one in his right mind would use or go near the phone during a storm. The line into the house, from the main line, did have a gadget called a "lightning arrester" and a heavy charge was supposed to burn off the lead fuses and then jump between two copper plates and finally go into the ground by way of an iron rod for that purpose. However, lightning often had different ideas and the arresting system was only partially successful.
Lightning would often disable only one or two phones but if a limb or tree fell over the wires, the whole line went out. One office or job which was apparently overlooked in the organization was trouble shooter or service men and that payless job fell on anyone who would do it. After I became old enough to shinny up a pole (we never used climbers because the locust poles were too hard) it seemed to fall on me to repair the lines. Naturally, I gave better service to line 13 than to the rest but I got around to all of them, if I had time.
When a line was out, you started out the road on foot, on a horse or in the Model T, looking up at the wires and poles. We had a test set, merely a small size telephone which we carried unless somebody else had it and nobody knew where it was. With this set we would hook up on to the line and start calling, just anybody, and often could pinpoint the break. If we could get Arnolds but couldn't get Ralstons, then we deducted that the line was broken between those two points. Many times, I would find a broken wire and have no wire or blocks, which we called "come alongs," to make the repair. In that case, we just hitched the telephone wires to a top strand of a wire fence and came back when we got around to it. It worked surprisingly well and some of us thought barbed wire worked better.
I recall one major catastrophy, whatever it was, when 3 lines went out all at once. I wasn't having any luck finding the trouble so I went to the main pole near the switchboard and hitched all three together. Everyone had service but what service! When a number would be called, three people would answer because their ring had sounded. They would then sort out just who was wanted; so often they would just have a three way visit. This was a common practice, especially on the same line when 3 or 4 women would all get on at once and have a real gossip session. We were also troubled with listening in or "rubbering" as dad called it in his strict rule forbidding it.
It was very usual to hear 3 or 4 clicks, indicating receivers coming off the hook, when you called a number. We got so we could recognize certain clocks ticking, babies crying or dogs barking when those rubbering failed to cover the transmitter. Dad used to get furious when too many people got on the line and weakened the message and it was not unusual for him to say "get off the line, you rubbernecks."
My brother and I had some fun putting false gossip over the line, usually talking from room to room with an extra telephone that was usually available. About the first time we tried baiting and exciting those rubbering, we told a great story about a local character, Mort, getting married. Mort never worked and never had any money, but he liked to put on a good front. We told the story that he had gotten married to a rich widow from Pittsburgh. We went into quite a bit of detail such as her wealth, holding, hotel and so on, ending with the happy thought that we would have to give them a rousing serenade.
Well, it was less than a week that the story was all over the country and it grew with each telling. We just sat back and chuckled at the way the gossips grabbed the bait. After a few wild stories, the gossips must have gotten wise because they ceased to repeat what they had heard.
Everybody soon learned that you never recited any secrets or confidential deals over the telephone. If you did, it became public knowledge with a lot of frills added. However, nobody ever seemed to get angry and the telephone did a lot to make a more closely knitted community.
The old Frankfort Mutual is no longer in existence under that name. However, it is still carrying on and furnishing service to the same community. It was purchased by an individual who hoped to improve it and make it a lucrative venture. The original iron wire has been replaced by copper, but many of the original locust poles are standing. None of the incorporators or subscribers are living, so far as I know. I hope the various lines are still giving the satisfaction to the scattered families, gossip and all, that they once did.