My grandparents had the only phone on the farm.

When there was a call for my dad, Grandma would step out onto her back porch and yell across the yard “Babe, telephone.”

That phone was an eight party line, there were seven other phones on that one line. It didn’t ring in each of the other homes ( we would hear two different rings, ours was two short rings, the Larkin’s was one long ring) but you had to listen before you started dialing because someone might already be using the line.

When I’m part of a large gathering of people I laugh when I realize that everyone in the room has a phone in their pocket and contrast that with the good old days when one phone line serviced eight different farms.