Looking out my Backdoor: Two Longs and a Short

It hung in the kitchen in the house in which we lived, on a farm outside New Winchester, Indiana, the first telephone of my memory, a wooden oak box which hung rather high on the wall. My Dad took down the ear piece which hung onto the right side of the box, connected by a short cord and leaned toward the black Bakelite cone and shouted into the mouthpiece in the center front. He turned the handle on the right a few turns.

A grinding noise alerted the operator that somebody wanted to be connected, either on our line or the dreaded long distance.

Our ring was two longs and a short. Every ring o...