# Describe The Phone In Your Home When You Were A Kid



## fmdog44 (Mar 15, 2018)

My home when I was six was a black phone with no dial and a party line. I don't recall when we got a dial phone.


----------



## Aunt Bea (Mar 15, 2018)

When I was a kid we used our grandmother's phone, we lived in part of her house.

It was a rotary phone similar to this one and it was on a party line.

I remember that we were never allowed to use the telephone during an electrical storm.


----------



## Mrs. Robinson (Mar 15, 2018)

This was ours. My parents had an extension in their room like the one in the first post. Our phone number was JUno 8-6206.


----------



## Ruth n Jersey (Mar 15, 2018)

Our phone was just like the one Aunt Bea posted. It was located in a small entrance to our front door. It sat on a telephone table like the one in the photo only ours was red mahogany. We kept the phone book and numbers underneath. My Grandma lived next door to us and every month she would come over to make a phone call to her 3 sisters. My Mom had to dial. For some reason she always forgot what was the o and what was the zero. We had a party line with the lady down the street. When I was a teenager I got in trouble for tying up the line by playing my new 45 records to my girlfriends. I'd hold the phone to the speaker on my record player so they could hear them.


----------



## Mizzkitt (Mar 15, 2018)

Oh the old black phones and party lines. And not area codes, we dialed CL for Clearwater. Listening on the party line, an education in itself.


----------



## applecruncher (Mar 15, 2018)

Black rotary dial exactly like the one Mrs R posted.
Party line.


----------



## rgp (Mar 15, 2018)

Black rotary, like most of the others..we had a party line for a while, then my mother went to a limited line, after my 1/2 sister got to be  a teen.....gee, can't imagine why <grin>

When we lived a short time in Michigan, we had a wall-mounted crank [generator] phone. I never used it, but my mother or father would pick it up, and often times just ask for the person they wanted by name...the operator knew everyone . But they would sometimes ask for a 4 digit number. Maybe a temp was working...?


----------



## SeaBreeze (Mar 15, 2018)

We didn't get a phone in my house until I was in my early teens, and it was like the black rotary in Aunt Bea's picture.  Never had a party line.


----------



## Gary O' (Mar 15, 2018)

Had wunna these







and a 'number please' when picked up


----------



## C'est Moi (Mar 15, 2018)

Black rotary.   Our number was YUkon 2-4213.


----------



## jujube (Mar 16, 2018)

Black rotary.  Telephone numbers in my town were only six digits until about 1960 or so.  We were on a 4-party line and there was an old biddy who always would pick up her phone and listen to people's calls.  My dad would say, "Mrs. _________, hang up the phone" and she'd screech, "I'M NOT ON THE PHONE!".  Every time.


----------



## Ruthanne (Mar 17, 2018)

It hung on the wall in a little cove in the kitchen and was beige and had a long tangled cord and was a dial phone.  My dad had it for the longest time until he finally got a touch tone phone and then a cordless.


----------



## SpicyTweed (Mar 17, 2018)

We had a black rotary-dial phone, and it sat on top of a bookcase in our livingroom.  We lived in the city, so didn't have to put up with a party line.  I can still remember our number:  5-2204 (which later became 455-2204).


----------



## hollydolly (Mar 17, 2018)

This is the identical phone we had in our house...   like you Spicy tweed..we also lived in the city and we DID have  a party-line, for quite a while



I disliked the green..we could have red , cream or various other colours, but I think the green came as standard and the others had a premium rental cost 

I still remember our number which was 9212 (in the late 60's and early 70's)

The phone sat on a wrought iron and glass half moon table attached to the downstairs hallway wall ... identical to this one...


----------



## Giantsfan1954 (Mar 17, 2018)

Tan rotary on the kitchen wall.
Yukon 7-0727


----------



## Seeker (Mar 17, 2018)

We had a rotary wall phone with extra long cord...It was a party line.

The long cord came later, I remember how excited everyone was to get it, because then you could be in the kitchen, it was in the laundry room.


----------



## ProsperosDaughter (Mar 17, 2018)

We did not have a telephone until AFTER I started working for the local tel co


----------



## MarkinPhx (Mar 17, 2018)

The first phone I remember was this 



I remember how excited we all were when Ma Bell upgraded the phones to this


----------



## C'est Moi (Mar 17, 2018)

I remember that the "updated" phone we got after the black rotary was a turquoise wall phone for the den (that was a new addition to our house.)   It was still a rotary dial, though.


----------



## SifuPhil (Mar 18, 2018)

Basic black rotary like Aunt Bea's. Sat in a little niche in the wall, along with the latest phone book and one of those little plastic address things. YOnkers-9-6323.


----------



## moviequeen1 (Mar 18, 2018)

We had a black rotary phone like Aunt Bea's with no party line located on a table in living room.The extension phone was either off white or beige,mounted on the kitchen wall


----------



## tortiecat (Mar 18, 2018)

Wooden box on wall with speaker on front and earphone  hung on side.  Originally we lifted the earpiece and the
operator would come on and we would give the number we were calling, and yes, it was a party line.  This is
back in the mid 40's and we were one of the few in our village to have a phone.


----------



## oldman (Mar 19, 2018)

Same as Bea’s. Our first phone number had five numbers.


----------



## Widdle3 (Mar 20, 2018)

I know we had 2 phones. One was on the wall in the kitchen and I believe it was green with a long cord. The other was black. It was upstairs on the end table in the master bed room. Both rotary.  The number was LA 7-2178. LA was the town we lived in called, Laurelton. 

When I was 18 we moved to another house and we had a pay phone in the hallway.  Mom was able to get that because besides having 5 kids of her own, she rented out a few rooms, so it was considered a boarding house.  It was 10 cents to make a local call back then.

I worked for the phone company for over 30 years.  Know what my last job was?  Collecting money from pay phones.


----------



## Capt Lightning (Mar 21, 2018)

Quite simple - we didn't have one.  Not many people in the town did.  However my aunt May ran the 'telephone exchange' from the front room of her apartment.  It was one of those with a patch panel and loads of cables with jack plugs.  I expect that she knew all the gossip in town.  This was in the very early 50's and then the first proper exchange was built.

I didn't have a home phone till I got married and move to our own home in 1973.


----------



## Aunt Marg (Jun 5, 2020)

Here is the style we had, same colour, too. Was wired right into the wall, and conveniently located within earshot of the kitchen table, so no privacy was afforded to anyone carrying on a conversation.


----------



## Lizzie00 (Jun 5, 2020)

Just like Aunt Bea’s rotary and also with a party line.
I can hardly remember what i had for dinner last night but do recall that childhood phone number.


----------



## JaniceM (Jun 5, 2020)

C'est Moi said:


> I remember that the "updated" phone we got after the black rotary was a turquoise wall phone for the den (that was a new addition to our house.)   It was still a rotary dial, though.


The one in our house was like this  ^  only beige.


----------



## Aunt Marg (Jun 5, 2020)

I used to view the table top versions as sophisticated... formal.


----------



## Lewkat (Jun 5, 2020)

We had a black phone on the hall table.  No dial, just an operator.  That lasted until I was about 12, then we had one on the wall in the kitchen, one in the den and one in the living room.  All the same number.  After I got out of college, I had my own princess phone.  Now I no longer own a landline phone.


----------



## Ken N Tx (Jun 5, 2020)

Black dial type


----------



## fuzzybuddy (Jun 6, 2020)

I remember a black, rotary phone. It had a kind of like a black cardboardy cord. It was a party line. I remember the phone number, it was "321". Then the phone compay got a lot more customers, because now you had to dial "4-7321". OMG, how was anybody supposed to remember all those numbers?????? Then we got a black rotary wall phone.
Strange I can remember the phones and the phone numbers when I lived at home, but I can't remember anything of the phones when I was on my own. I know I had one????????????

I do remember getting on a cleaning kick, and my phone was all cruddy. So, I took the rotary phone off the receiver, and started cleaning the dial, starting at "0", and going around the dial. Then I could hear  a foreign voice say "hello, hello". I hung up. Next month I had a bill for a phone call to either Libya, or Liberia ( I forget which). the number was like 0-1-2-4 -3-5-6-6-7-8-9.


----------



## muffin (Jun 7, 2020)

We never had a phone when I was growing up ,I used to use a phone box in my teenage years.


----------

