THE BARBED WIRE TELEPHONE

"Quiet everyone, how many rings was that? I can't hear with all the chatter going on." commanded one of my older sublings as she raised her hand for silence. "That sounded like two shorts and a long," replied one of my brothers.

Another sibling added, "That's Freeds ring number, they were up early this morning because smoke was rising from their chimney when I got up." They lived about a mile from our farm. At that point one or more persons could be heard picking up their phones to listen in. If too many picked up, the quality of the sound was affected. "Please hang up so I can hear better," the caller would say and they usually obliged. That's the way our barbed wire telephone worked back in the late nineteen twenties, most of a century ago. Of course anyone in the community could listen in to these conversations and those not too busy with farm duties often picked up their phones for any of the ring signals to catch up on the general neighbourhood news. The phone line extended only as far as the barbed wire fences did. It would be two more decades before the official tall telephone poles dotted the roadsides in the Orion, Alberta area.

My oldest brother, Paul was considered the genius of the community and seemed to be able to create or fix many of the unfixables. At six foot four inches, his long legs could be seen striding the long fence lines looking for a break where an animal had managed to crawl through creating the problem. He carried tools and extra wire so the fence could be fixed to keep the telephones working. Or it might be a heavy snow that laid the line low. Paul was a very modest man who pointed to help from his younger brothers and from others, a neighbour who had a tool or extra wire needed where the break in the line occurred.

There could be exciting news as well when a new baby arrived. In the spring the news of a chinook wind could mean the Manyberries and Ketchum Creeks would send the spring run-off from the Cypress Hills. The barbed wire telephones could get the news around fast when a bridge was washed out that could cause a road accident. About that time cars were beginning to arrive on the scene. With our present day official telephone sevice we seem to feel the need to have "call display" before we take time to answer it.