By the early 60's, just about everyone in central Indiana had a dial phone except us.... The Big Springs telephone system was a little enclave of crank phones surrounded by newer technology. There were perhaps 100-150 homes in the system. Crank phones on the wall, lines and poles in such sad shape that service was intermittent on rainy days. The switchboard was in the front room of an old house that looked like it might fall down. The switchboard was only open from 6:00 AM until midnight. In case of emergency, you could keep ringing the operator in the wee hours of the morning until she finally woke up! The people on the system were divided into two camps: (1) We need a decent phone system! and (2) These old phones are good enough! For several years, my Dad and others who were trying to get the system upgraded went to court, appealed to the state public service commission, and tried (unsuccessfully) to get Bell on three sides of us, and GTE, on the other side to buy the little phone system. The system was so small and in such bad repair that neither company wanted it. At one point, there were 14 on our party line! That included a man who hauled livestock for a living, the schoolhouse, a guy who ran the "stink wagon" for a rendering plant, several farmers, and more than a few busy-bodies who tried to listen in on everyone's conversations. When too many people were listening in, the signal was so weak it could barely be heard, not that it was much better at any other time. My Dad once actually bought 110 head of cattle from a guy in Wisconsin without ever talking to him for more than a few seconds. The operator talked to each of them, and relayed each side of the conversation so each could hear! It was like speaking through an interpreter! By the late 1950s, shares of stock were selling at increasing value as individuals such as my dad and a few neighbors tried to gather enough of them to challenge the majority stockholders who wanted no change. Emotions were running high in the community. Two individuals got in a heated discusson at the local general store, and it turned into a fight. One guy hit his head when he fell. A few hours later.... he died. That put a grand jury in motion to determine if charges should be filed against the other individual, his neighbor. What a mess! Meanwhile, the majority stockholders (who wanted no change) managed to find a buyer. New ownership, but no improvement. Then a freak late-spring ice storm brought down the lines and poles. We were without a phone system for over two months. Finally, the system was "upgraded" to underground cable instead of overhead lines. This wasn't much of an upgrade, however, as we still had the crank phones on the wall, and there was another problem.... The company didn't have the funds to BURY the underground cable for most of the installation! They buried it under driveways and roads, but for the rest of the way, the cable was laying open in the side ditches, or sometimes even looped over the fence posts along the road! The system was later combined with a few other independent phone systems to the south and west of us. The cable was all eventualy buried by 1966 or 67, and dial phones replaced the old crank units. Within a matter of another year or two we actually had a decent phone system, and it has operated as a quality system since the early 1970s.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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