The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
The following is a chapter from a book of memories written by former resident of Stronghurst Mrs. John (Bonnie) Giffin, who recently passed. They are being shared by their daughter Julie Giffin Ashton of Omaha, Nebraska, director of the Washington County Museum located near Omaha. Her father John Giffin was of the Stronghurst High School Class of 1942 where Bonnie came to teach. John's father was a pastor at The United Presbyterian Church in Stronghurst. Julie writes: "I pulled together a few writings from my mom, my dad, my grandfather and grandmother – all now buried in the Stronghurst Cemetery... If nothing else, they put some life and faces to the names on headstones (in the Stronghurst cemetery) and are touching to read."
(This is the 4th of a short series and will continue next week)
by John Giffin
When I was growing up, both in Morning Sun, Iowa and in Stronghurst, Illinois, telephones were big oak boxes about two and a half feet high that were screwed to the wall.
They had a crank on the side for arousing the operator and two bells on the top front to arouse the recipient of a call. The mouthpiece was on the front about in the middle, and the earpiece was a separate cone shaped object on a long cord hung from the left side. To use this beast you cranked the handle on the right side vigorously and the operator answered with the word "Operator" if you were lucky. You then told her the number that you wanted.
The telephone service in Stronghurst was provided by a small company called Illinois Commercial Telephone Company. Their service area covered a considerable part of central Illinois. Most of the lines in town were private so our number was 185. However most of the lines to farms in the country were party lines with several farmers sharing the same line. These were galvanized wires strung from locust poles cut from the adjacent woods with green glass insulators bolted to them.
My best friend, Charles Heisler, lived about three miles out of town and his number was 20F21. This meant line 20 with two long rings and a short. When the operator rang two longs and one short, everybody on line 20 knew the Heisler were getting a call. It was not considered proper etiquette to listen in on someone else's call, but everyone did it.
In later years when Charles was in college and called home for money, everyone in town knew it by the next day.
Even though there was a number system, in a community as small as Stronghurst, the operator knew everyone so that numbers were used infrequently. You just asked for whom you wanted by name. Frequently the operator would not even ring the asked-for party because she knew they were not at home.
I remember one time asking for Lyman Fort, the local attorney, and getting the reply, "He just went down to the restaurant for a cup of coffee. Do you want me to call him there?"
The telephone operator sat at her switchboard behind a large glass window looking out over the main street of town and could see most of the activity, such as it was.
This system had its advantages too. It had a personal touch that computerized push-button telephones lack. The night operator didn't have much to do after 10 o'clock at night, so she kept a cot behind the switchboard and caught her forty winks all night long only to be awakened when the switchboard buzzed.
Marietta Mickle was the night operator when I was young. She was of somewhat ample proportions and unmarried and it was popularly assumed that she was entertaining gentleman friends when she was very slow to answer whenever someone had to make a late call.
I know for a fact that she slept more soundly than she was wont to admit. In 1946 my father had a stroke in the middle of the night. At that time there was no doctor in Stronghurst. The nearest medical doctor was in La Harpe, about fifteen miles away. I tried several times to arouse Marietta with no success. I finally ran the short two blocks up to the telephone office and pounded on the door to wake her up. She then called the doctor who arrived about 45 minutes later. I don't think getting him sooner would have made any difference, so no harm was done.
Those old telephones were fascinating devices to a young boy. The telephone company repair men always had junk telephones and telephone parts in the back of their trucks that they would give you. The telephones were powered by two large No. 6 dry cell batteries. When they would get a little old and weak, they would be replaced. They still had a little juice left in them and the repairman would give them to me to power all kinds of little electrical experiments.
When I was about eight years old I answered an advertisement in Popular Mechanics for a kit to build your own electric train. I think it cost about 25 cents. It turned out to be the metal parts and wire to construct a little battery powered electric motor that was printed to look like an electric locomotive.Those old telephone batteries powered that little motor for years.
The best part of the telephone was the generator. This was the part with the crank on it that was used to ring up the operator. It had to have a pretty good kick on it in order to buzz an operator over fifteen miles of rusty galvanized wire. These generators had a wound rotor and four or five large horseshoe magnets for a field. If the generator was too far gone to produce such voltage, the magnets could be unscrewed for all kinds of projects, but the best thing was obtaining a telephone generator in good working order. You could attach two wires to it, spin and crank, and draw an arc about an inch long. In later years I estimated that they would put out close to 15,000 volts in order to draw that long an arc. Of course there was practically no current involved so it was much like a static charge. It could give you a real jolt but could never do any real damage.
In those days Stronghurst had a shoe repair shop which was the last store on the east side of the two block long business section. Like most stores then, it had a long bench outside under the awning. Here reposed what my mother referred to as the town loafers, country gentlemen otherwise unoccupied at the time. They sat and whittled and spit and discussed various things including Marietta Mickle's love life.
Right at the corner of the sidewalk was the town pump. There was a shallow dug well covered by a wooden platform on which was the pump. Hanging from the body of the pump was the usual hook made from No. 9 wire and hanging from the hook was a rusty tin cup. The proper procedure was to remove the cup from the hook, pump the handle two or three times to rinse the cup, pitching the water in the street, and then partaking of a cool drink. There was only one problem: every male dog in town liked to announce his presence by anointing the pump. There were lots of dogs in town and they all ran free. I don't think I ever saw a dog on a leash until I was 20 years old.
One afternoon when I was about 12 years old, I was hanging around the loafers at the shoe store when the discussion settled on what we could do to discourage the canine use of the town pump.
Somebody told a story about the local chapter of Woodmen of the World who were having their monthly meeting. The members were seated on a couple of wooden benches which the president had fixed up by running a small copper wire down the center. The bench was then slightly damped before the members arrived and the wires were connected to a telephone generator under the table. When a motion was presented to give some financial aid to a local needy widow, those approving the motion were asked to please rise and the telephone generator was given a vigorous spin. All rose. The motion was carried unanimously.
The narrator of this story mentioned that it was a pretty good story even if he didn't know if it was true or not, but maybe it might be applied to the current dog situation. I mentioned that I had a telephone generator in good working order, so I was instructed to run home and get it.
While I was gone, some volunteers went over to Benny Tweed's hardware store and scrounged some copper wire and a sheet of galvanized iron along with some roofing nails. The galvanized sheet was tacked to the pump platform just to the rear of the pump and one wire was run from this to the telephone generator mounted under the bench in front of the shoe repair shop. The other wire was connected to the pump itself. Then we sat and waited for the first dog to show up. It seemed an interminable wait, but I suppose it wasn't more than half an hour.
Anyway, it worked! As soon as he got a good squirt started, the telephone generator was spun and the dog departed with a yelp and his tail between his legs. From then on the best entertainment in town was provided around the town pump. This lasted for a couple of weeks and then died because every dog in town was giving the pump a wide berth. I guess it accomplished its purpose and after a while I got my telephone generator back.