The Palimpsest

The Palimpsest, vol.75 no.3, Fall 1994

Hawbacker, Becky Wilson

Early Television for Iowa's Children

Magnuson, Landis K

Clarinda Seeks 'the Thrills of Human Imitation': The Evelopment of Theater in an Iowa Chautauqua

Swaim, Ginalie

Ballet and Traveling Clothes, Manhattan and Bongalows - All the World's a Palimpsest

Acton, Richard Lord

A Remarkable Immigrant: The Story of Hans Reimer Claussen

Dyson, Robert L

English

Cleaning the Fires and Working the Wires: From Railroad Engine Watchman to Station Agent-Telegrapher in 1940s Iowa

The Palimpsest, vol.75 no.1, Spring 1994

The Palimpsest, vol.74 no.3, Fall 1993

Peterson, Becki

A Farmer-Photographer's Harvest of Rural Images

Carpenter, Vern

A first-hand account o f  the 
impact o f  an operator s jo b  on 
a fam ily  in Fayette County.
Making the Connection
The story of a
small-town telephone operator
by Vem Carpenter
1
LIYE IN Indianola, Iowa, fourteen miles 
south of Des Moines. Recently, I wanted 
to telephone a man living in a small town 
southeast of Indianola who trims trees, 
but I could not recall his name. Obtaining his 
name years ago would have been easy. I would 
have stepped to the telephone hanging on the 
wall, rung the telephone operator in the town, 
and asked her the name of the tree trimmer. 
She would have known. Before dial systems 
were installed, telephone operators in small 
towns were a fountainhead of information.
How do I know this? Because my mother, 
Nellie Knight Carpenter, operated and man­
aged the telephone office at Randalia, in 
Fayette County, Iowa, from 1920 to 1942.
My father died in the flu epidemic of 
1919/20, leaving my mother with four children 
and no means of support. To make matters 
more difficult, during the period of high infla­
tion following World War I, the cost of living 
nearly doubled. My maternal grandparents 
encouraged my mother to place her two youn­
gest children — my sister Frances and me — in 
an orphans’ home. Although this was a com­
mon practice of the day, my mother could not 
bear the thought.
About this time the job of telephone oper­
ator-manager became available in nearby Ran­
dalia, where my maternal grandparents lived. 
The switchboard was installed in a small house 
that the telephone company rented to the 
operator. The company had-been experiencing 
difficulty keeping an operator for any length of 
time because the pay was low and the job too 
confining to suit most families. My mother took 
the job.
The hours of work were twenty-four hours a 
day, seven days a week, with neither paid vaca­
tion nor sick leave. The pay was $40 a month, 
but $5 had to be paid back to the telephone 
company for house rent plus $1 for electricity. 
This left $34 a month for the family to live on. 
Out of this $34 our family of five bought coal for 
the two potbellied heating stoves. As 1 recall, 
the telephone company at first paid a small 
amount towards the coal bill, but in later years 
it discontinued the practice, to my mothers
dismay.*
My mother took the job, she told me, 
because she had no other means to support her 
four children. (Although my brother, Irvin, 
could work as a hired man on farms when not in 
high school, Mildred was just starting high 
school, Frances was five, and I was just under 
three.) M other also told me that getting
14 THE PALIMPSEST
Nellie C arpenter operated the Randalia switchboard for over two decades from the home she rented from the telephone 
company. The job involved her four children as well, who learned to handle calls, collect telephone rent, and to deliver 
messages to citizens without phones. The photo was taken in 1939.
approved for a widow's pension from the 
county at that time was extremely difficult. My
mother was not trained in anv vocation. In the¥
1890s her father had not believed that women 
needed to be educated, and he had not allowed 
my mother and her sisters to complete high 
school.
O
UR FAMILY MOVED to Randalia 
from Maynard, a distance of six miles. 
My mother began work on March 11, 
1920, amidst boxes packed full of 
household goods piled high in the small room 
used for the telephone office. The switchboard 
stood in one corner, with a wall-type telephone 
nearby for customers to use. A coal heating 
stove stood in the center of the room.
The one-story, five-room frame house, 
which was both home and office for Mother, 
still stands. Although small by today s stan­
dards, it was adequate for us. In addition to the 
room used as the telephone office, there were 
two small bedrooms, a combined kitchen-din­
ing room, and a parlor. (During winter months 
we kept two rooms closed off to save on heat.) 
Our family was permitted to use the garden 
space at no cost. One of us kids carried water 
from a neighbor s well for drinking and cook­
ing, and for baths and laundry when our cistern 
was empty. Nevertheless, the job of telephone 
operator turned out to be a good one for our 
family for years to come, and we appreciated it. 
It provided the security we needed. Randalia 
was a good place to live even if you were poor.
My sister Mildred was first in our family to 
learn to operate the switchboard. Beulah 
Brown, the former operator, showed her how
COURTESY THE AUTHOR
SPRING 1993 15
Author s draw ing of his childhood home in Kandalia, w here the local switchboard was located.
to process incoming calls while my mother was 
learning the necessary bookkeeping. There 
was no formal training, nor was any training 
material provided.
After Mildred learned, she taught my 
mother and my brother. My sister Frances 
answered local calls at age five but not long­
distance toll calls, which required slightly 
more skill. By the time I was five, I, too, was 
able to answer local calls. Within a year or two 
my mother would send me to businesses 
around town to collect monthly telephone 
rent.
From that day in March 1920, when my 
mother started the job, until September 6, 
1942, when she resigned, there was never one 
minute when the house was unoccupied. For 
twenty-four hours a day someone was on duty, 
awake or asleep. Although telephone hours 
were from 6:00 a m . to 9:30 p .m ., emergency 
calls were answered at all hours. Occasional 
incoming calls after 9:30 that were not emer­
gency calls were put through without any com­
ment on the part of the operator.
Someone was always in the house tending
the switchboard. We seldom left the house as a 
family group, but on those rare occasions when 
we did, we always felt we needed to hurry 
home because we were paying a substitute we 
could not afford. My sister Mildred had com- 
Duted our family’s net income at five cents an 
lour, so this is the amount my mother offered 
to women who would substitute. Several sub­
stituted at this rate and were glad to get the 
opportunity to do so.
T
HE TELEPHONE had been intro­
duced into Fayette County in 1873. 
According to a 1910 county history, 
fhe Bell Company was the first to 
invade the county, but soon local organizations 
of a rival nature were organized, and for a time 
there was hardly a town in the county that did 
not have a telephone company. There are now 
fourteen of these companies in existence whose
16 THE PALIMPSEST
lines reach every town and hamlet, besides 
fully one-half of the farm homes occupied by 
their owners.” The county history acknowl­
edged that “this modern convenience has 
become almost a necessity.
By early 1908 the independent Farmers 
Telephone Company had incorporated as the 
Fayette County Mutual Telephone Company. 
It operated out of three towns situated geo­
graphically in a triangle: Randalia, Fayette (five 
miles east of Randalia), and Maynard (six miles 
south). Because it was a mutual company, each 
“subscriber (a household with a telephone) 
could own one share of stock. Telephone rent 
was one dollar a month for renters, but onlv 
fifty cents a month for stockholders. Part of my 
mother’s job was to collect rent payments and 
income from toll calls and file monthly reports 
to the telephone company secretary.
The Randalia telephone service covered an 
area three or four miles beyond town in all 
directions. In 1920 there were 131 telephone 
subscribers; 101 of these lived on farms. At that 
time, rural subscribers often had to maintain 
their own telephone poles, wire, and glass 
insulators (if they were lucky enough to have 
them). Subscribers living on farmsteads well 
off the few main mud roads often needed to 
string their own wire for the half-mile or so 
between their farmhouse and the trunk line. 
Number 9 wire was the best size; it is sturdy 
but workable with a pair of lineman pliers. In 
time, however, it rusts and becomes brittle. 
Heavy, wet snow and sleet made it belly down 
between poles and break during high winds — 
often when isolated farmers in emergencies 
most needed telephone service.
Thirty of our subscribers lived in Randalia. 
For the ten town families and two businesses 
that felt they could not afford telephones, mes­
senger serv ice was available — one of us kids 
would walk to the home of the person being 
called and have the person go to a nearby tele­
phone. The messenger fee was usually only ten 
cents, because in our small town we didn’t have 
to walk very far to reach the most distant house. 
Occasionally, in an emergency in the middle of 
the night when a household did not answer, the 
caller asked my mother to send me to the 
party’s home in town to awaken them, which I 
did. For this service there was no charge.
More than fifty years have passed and it is 
difficult for me to estimate the number of calls 
processed each day. Nevertheless, I still recall 
several of the individual telephone numbers, 
perhaps because in our “family business’ we 
realized it was necessary to know the names of 
every person living in the home of every sub­
scriber. Callers counted on this. Most often a 
caller would not say “Would you ring 0111, 
please? but rather “Give me the Rob Claxton 
farm, please. The operator was expected to 
know the Claxton’s number. Or a caller might 
tell the operator that he or she wanted to talk to 
Howard Hoepfner, for example, and did the 
operator know Howard — or if Howard was the 
son of Herman Hoepfner. (There was no 
charge for information, as there is nowadays.)
In case of emergencies or special announce­
ments, the operator would alert all subscribers 
with a “general ring,’ consisting of ten to fif­
teen short rings. After most of the subscribers 
had picked up their receivers, the operator 
might report that a barn was on fire and the 
farm family needed help. Neighbors were good 
about dropping their work and responding to a 
fire call. Not all general rings were so urgent. 
For example, on another day my mother might 
announce that Chubb Bronn’s truck farm at the 
west edge of town had strawberries for sale at 
five cents a quart if you picked your own.
A
LTHOUGH several local businesses 
had private lines, most households 
were on party lines. The number of 
subscribers on a party line varied with 
the length of the line in miles. If too many 
telephones were on one line, people could not 
hear well, so linemen took care to not overload 
any one line.
Another complication arose from the ten­
dency of people on party lines to listen in on 
others’ phone calls. When several subscribers 
picked up their receivers, the extra drain on 
the electrical current made it difficult for the 
two original parties to hear. In these instances, 
the operator would come in on the line to 
interrupt the conversation and ask the others 
listening in to get oil the line. Those listening in
SPRING 1993 17
Telephones connected Iowa’s rural and often isolated households to businesses and services in town.
usually responded favorably and hung up.
Nevertheless, it’s probably safe to say that 
many conversations were heard on party lines, 
overloaded or not. Sometimes this served a 
purpose. After trying several times unsuc­
cessfully to call a party, the caller might ask the 
operator whether the party was at home or not. 
If the operator did not know, a “helpful neigh­
bor might break in on the line to report that 
“they re not home — they’re over at her 
mother’s in Fayette. Other times the operator 
asked whether anyone listening in knew where 
the party being called was at the time.
With limited social contact because of poor 
roads (especially in the country), subscribers
sometimes used their telephones for very per­
sonal conversations, even on party lines. They 
did this even though they were almost certain 
others would be listening in and would repeat 
the information as common gossip, some of 
which was vicious and unfounded.
I might eventually have heard most of this 
gossip anyway through the local gossip mill. 
But because of my mother s job, I became 
aware of aberrant behavior within the commu­
nity perhaps earlier than most children did. As 
one would expect in any community, there was 
venereal disease, extra-marital affairs, and bad- 
check writing. During the early years of the 
Great Depression there were a number of
18 THE PALIMPSEST
thefts. I was aware that someone hootlegged in 
town, but I never knew' who it was. Two mar­
ried couples traded partners. There was an 
instance of wife-beating, another of mother- 
beating. Nevertheless, my mother drilled into 
us four children time and again that we were 
not to repeat any information outside the office 
that we had heard on the telephone lines or in 
the office.
S
WITCHBOARD operators played a 
key role in the public and private 
events of a community. When a baby 
was due, our family kept a close ear to 
the phone after bedtime in case a doctor was 
needed during the night. When a death 
occurred in the community, the operator was 
sometimes asked to make a number of calls to 
notify relatives. If the relative did not have a 
phone, we were the messengers. I remember 
at least two occasions when my sister Mildred 
or I walked to a household to inform the family 
about a fatal car accident involving the loss of a 
loved one. And I remember — during the 
Great Depression — my mother putting 
through a call to a doctor from a distraught farm 
woman whose husband had just hanged him­
self in an outbuilding.
One night after my mother had closed the 
telephone office to the public at 9:30, an upset 
young farmer knocked on the door. Apolo­
getically he said he knew it was after business 
hours, but he needed to call the county sheriff 
at West Union, eleven miles away. Appar­
ently, he and his sweetheart were attending 
the local dance when another fellow stole his 
girlfriend from him, in a manner of speaking. I 
never knew the details, but I suppose some 
young man danced with her and asked her to sit 
with him and then asked her to go home with 
him. I do not remember the outcome that night 
— except that the sheriff could not help him — 
but the farmer eventually married the young 
woman.
Sometimes the operator was an active third 
party in a conversation by repeating words if 
noise interfered, or if one party had a hearing 
problem or a phobia about not wanting to talk 
over a telephone. Then there were times when
the operator provided compassion and under­
standing for the needs of her customers. I 
remember an elderlv woman who would call0
my mother. Hello, Nell, she would say to my 
mother. Is Paul there?’ (Paul was the 
woman’s deceased husband. Although he had 
been dead for several years, she would often 
leave home alone at night on foot to go looking 
for him.)
My mother would reply, He hasn’t been 
here today, so far. ”
“Well, he left here after breakfast and said he 
might stop in to pay the telephone rent
I see,’ my mother would say. Well, he 
hasn’t been here yet. He may have been 
delayed uptown on some business.
I in so lonesome for him,’ the caller would 
say thoughtfully.
M
V SIBLINGS and I continued to 
help my mother tend the switch­
board and answer incoming calls 
with the customary word “Ran- 
dalia. When my voice began changing, I prac­
ticed saying Randalia’ in as guttural a tone as 
possible. I tried to lower the pitch of my voice 
each time. (I had read that this was an excellent 
method for developing deep timbre in one’s 
voice, and that it was also an excellent exercise 
before going on radio. Who knew what my 
future would bring?)
I was twenty-five when my mother resigned 
her job and went to live with my sister Mildred 
for health reasons. (My mother suffered from a 
serious heart condition most of her life.) For 
two decades she had played a vital part in the 
communication network of Fayette County. 
Telephone service in a rural Iowa community 
was extremely important to the subscribers. 
Besides the mail, the telephone w'as their main 
connection with the outside world. Telephone 
operators like my mother provided the tech­
nological link of plugging in the right jacks and 
handling toll calls. But they also provided a 
working knowledge of the community. Their 
skill, compassion, and personal touch facili­
tated communication between Iowans in the 
early decades of telephone use. □
SPRING 1993 19


Making the Connection: The Story of a Small-Town Telephone Operator

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