In the early days of January 1952, a monumental moment in American communication history occurred.
I know, I know, you weren’t even sent a notice about it — but it happened, nonetheless. Metal Keypad
What was that monumental moment, you ask? Well, the last hand-cranked telephones stopped being used in Broome County. The last location to still use those telephones was in the Town of Maine, and the process to move away from one where the user had to connect to an operator by cranking the telephone to get connected went the way of dodo bird.
For most of the readers in the region, they never had the opportunity to use a hand-crank telephone. In many instances, most of you may never have even seen an actual telephone. Maybe you have seen a replica that can be purchased as something “quaint” to decorate our homes. Yet for many in the community in the last part of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, this was the type of telephone that could be found in nearly every home across the region.
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I can attest to this firsthand. My grandparent’s home in Oakdale was built in 1917. It was described as a semi-bungalow style and was considered modern for the time. I was always intrigued by the hints of arts-and-crafts style with touches of days gone by. I would still love to have the floor-to-ceiling cabinets that were built into the second-floor area around the bedrooms. I also found the pantry with similar cabinets off of the kitchen as a wonderful place to “hang out” in the 1960s.
Just off of that pantry was the entrance to the dining room, next to the kitchen. That entrance had one of the familiar swinging solid doors of oak. You could swing it open in either direction if you were carrying a trayload of food or returning the dirty dishes to the kitchen sink to be washed. I remember that there was a thick plate-glass piece over the location where your hand would go, to keep the door clean of the grunginess that would come from the many hands using the door.
My grandparents never really used that room as a dining room, but called it the middle room. It was adorned with a china cabinet, dropleaf table, desk, and several chairs — including my grandfather’s recliner. Thus, that oak door was always propped up into the kitchen with a doorstop. Despite my natural inclination to snoop and see what was behind everything, I always respected that space.
Yet on one occasion, my grandparents had reason to close the door between the two rooms. It may have been at the time that they were preparing to sell their home in late 1968 after living there for 50 years. Things were getting packed up, and areas were getting cleaned. On that day, as I stood in their kitchen, I finally saw behind the door. There to the left of the door on the wall was an old oak hand-cracked telephone.
In all the years, I believed the only telephone they had was a standard black dial telephone that sat on top of their desk in the middle room (and I still have that desk today). Yet, there stood one of those old telephones where I could imagine my grandmother cranking up to connect to “Central” to ask good old Blanche to ring up one of the neighbors. That may be a bit simplistic, but the idea is basically how the telephones worked.
Of course, they also had a party line where you had to listen to make sure no one else was on the line so you could make your telephone call. We still had a party line in the late 1950s and early 1960s — which went the same way as the old hand-cranked telephone. Yet, from the early days when telephones were introduced until the 1950s, they were a part of our culture.
I wonder how my grandparents would react to cellphones or FaceTime or Skype. In that one moment in 1968, their past met the beginnings of my future. So it goes.
Wall Mount For Landline Phone Gerald Smith is a former Broome County historian. Email him at historysmiths@stny.rr.com. Support our journalism and become a digital subscriber today. Click here for our special offers.