My dad had a way to call the rest of us without ever getting out of bed.
On Saturday mornings, Mom and Dad were sometimes still in bed while the kids were already awake. As you might imagine, rowdy boys can make quite a bit of noise.
Instead of getting up, Dad would reach for the telephone sitting on the headboard behind their bed. He had discovered that he could dial our own home telephone number, wait just long enough for the telephone company's switching equipment to begin routing the call, then hang up before it actually connected. A moment later, the telephone in the kitchen would begin ringing.
One of us would answer the phone the way we always did.
"Jaspersons."
Dad could hear that we had answered, so he would simply pick up the bedroom receiver again.
"Could you kids quiet down a little?"
Or sometimes...
"Would you bring me a glass of water?"
To this day, I have no idea whether other families knew that little trick, but Dad certainly did.
I was recently looking through some old baby pictures when I noticed the telephone that made Dad's trick possible. Sitting on the headboard behind Mom and me was the phone from my parents' bedroom.
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| Mom and me around 1968. Sitting on the headboard behind us is the phone that inspired this story. |
Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never wondered what kind of telephone it was. A little internet research suggests it was an Ericofon, one of the distinctive one-piece telephones that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
I asked Dad about the phone. He told me Uncle Jake, who worked for Mountain Bell, had installed it for Grandma and Grandpa when they lived on the ranch. When Mom and Dad later bought the ranch, the phone stayed with the house. By the time I was born, it had simply become part of our family, always sitting on the headboard of Mom and Dad's bed.
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| This isn't our actual phone, but it looks almost identical to the one that sat on my parents' headboard throughout my childhood. |
The Ericofon was the extension in my parents' bedroom. Our main telephone was a green rotary wall phone in the kitchen, and both were connected to the same telephone line.
If Mom was talking with one of her sisters or with Grandma, she would sometimes ask one of us to pick up the bedroom phone so we could join the conversation. I remember sitting on my parents' bed talking with Grandma while Mom stayed on the kitchen phone. Those conversations are some of my favorite memories of that old telephone.
The kitchen phone created its own set of memories. The rotary dial remained mounted on the wall, while the handset was attached by a long, curly cord. If Dad was sitting at the kitchen table or in the living room and wanted to call someone, he would sometimes ask one of us to dial the number and bring him the phone.
That was easy because most local calls required only four digits. If Dad asked me to call Delbert, I would dial 2556, wait until I heard the phone begin to ring, then carry the handset over to Dad.
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| The rotary dial was built into the bottom of the phone. Dad discovered that if he timed it just right, he could make the kitchen phone ring without ever leaving bed. |
Of course, once I understood how Dad's bedroom telephone trick worked, I had to learn how to do it myself.
It turned out to be trickier than it looked. If I hung up too soon, the call never made it far enough into the telephone system. If I waited too long, the call completed normally and I got a busy signal because I was calling my own house. The timing had to be just right.
I still remember the satisfaction of finally figuring it out. I wasn't trying to call anyone. I just wanted to master Dad's little trick.
We kept those old rotary telephones for many years after touch-tone phones became common. Because of that, they stayed with us through several changes in how people used the telephone.
Star Valley is often described as a single place, but it is made up of fourteen small communities stretching almost forty miles from north to south. Growing up, we thought of it as two parts: the lower valley, where we lived, and the upper valley to the south. Although the upper valley was south of us, it sat at a higher elevation. The two parts of the valley were connected by a narrow canyon we simply called the Narrows.
Until around 1980, the upper and lower valleys were served by different telephone companies. Anyone in the lower valley was considered a local call. Anyone in the upper valley was long distance.
That distinction affected how we dialed the telephone.
To call someone in the lower valley, I dialed only the last four digits of the number. Everyone on our exchange shared the same first three digits, so there was no need to dial them. Calling Delbert meant dialing only 2556.
Calling Grandma Jasperson was different. She lived in Afton in the upper valley, and calling her was considered long-distance. Her number was 886-5703, so reaching her meant dialing 1, followed by all seven digits, and paying long-distance charges.
Around 1980, the two telephone companies merged, creating a single local calling area. Suddenly Grandma was no longer a long-distance call, and everyone in Star Valley began dialing all seven digits for every local number.
For my children and grandchildren, seven-digit dialing probably sounds old-fashioned. For me, having to dial seven digits instead of four felt like a surprisingly big change.
By the summer of 1986, our dependable rotary phones finally became a limitation. BYU's computerized registration system required a touch-tone telephone. Since we still hadn't replaced ours, I drove to Grandma Jasperson's house and used her push-button phone to register for my classes before leaving on my mission.
At the time, it felt incredibly modern.
Looking back, this story really isn't about an old telephone.
It's about Mom handing me the receiver so I could talk with Grandma. It's about dialing 2556 and carrying the kitchen handset to Dad. It's about Dad figuring out a clever way to call the rest of us without ever getting out of bed. It's about the satisfaction of finally learning how to do it myself.
Funny how an ordinary object in the background of an old photograph can end up holding so many family memories.
If you enjoyed this story, you might also like my earlier post, Two Short Rings, about another memorable telephone experience from my childhood.
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