Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I thought it was pretty exciting when the landline phone rang. You could hear it from down the hall, but you had to pick it up to find out who was calling.
If you had a party line, sometimes the phone didn’t even have to ring for you to find somebody on the other end. You’d pick it up to make a call and hear somebody from another house already talking. Several households shared the same line, so if someone else was using it, you had to wait your turn.
I might or might not have listened in on a few of those conversations.
I hadn’t thought about party lines in a while, but those memories came back when I read that AT&T can begin discontinuing traditional copper-based phone service in parts of Alabama as early as Sunday, Nov. 15. Depending on what’s available at their address, customers can still have a home phone through a fiber broadband connection or a wireless service. The Federal Communications Commission notice covers certain residential and business phone services in parts of 18 states, including Alabama.
WSFA reported that parts of 25 Alabama communities could be affected, including Courtland, Hanceville, Moulton and Red Bay. The timing of the copper-service shutoffs can vary by customer, and AT&T says it will contact affected customers directly about their options. AT&T said in an October update that it plans to phase out copper service across most of its service area by the end of 2029.
Thinking about all those years of picking up the phone and wondering who was calling, I had to laugh. Sometimes I was the one on the other end of a call nobody was expecting.
“Is your refrigerator running?”
If they said yes, I’d tell them they’d better go catch it. I thought I was pretty funny. And if I got tired of that one, I had another joke ready to go.
“This is Red Pepper. Doesn’t that just burn you up?”
By middle school, I had other reasons to tie up the phone. When a friend came over to spend the night, sooner or later one of us would end up talking to her boyfriend of the day. I remember lying on the hall floor, twirling the phone cord around my fingers, my friend right there with me. One of us would be doing the talking, and both of us would be trying to get through the call without giggling.
I couldn’t tell you what we talked about. I can still remember twirling that cord, though. Back then, I had no idea how much life would change in the next few years or how precious a memory as simple as giggling with a friend on the hall floor would become.
Sherri Blevins is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You may contact her at [email protected].
