Marge Kimble has told me a story about the old days on the Walker farm. It seems that when telephones first made their appearance in rural Louisa County, grandfather Sam Walker, living in Newport (never a booming metropolis) smack in the middle or slightly to the left of the middle between Wapello and Morning Sun, needed to be able to call people in either of those local bergs. In the beginning each town had their own telephone system and, well, competition being what it was, they weren't connected. So Sam had solved the problem by having each of the towns install their own phone in the family farmhouse. The Wapello phone was over here; the Morning Sun phone over there. Both phones were of course party lines back then. They had a different ring sequence but people quickly learned when their own phones rang (and how to muffle noise while listening in on other peoples' conversations as well). Each phone company had their own operator and they were always helpful at giving out information beyond what was required by their job description - they could tell you where the fire in town was, what the time was, and so forth. One time when he was a kid, Paul Walker went over to the Morning Sun phone and asked the operator for the time, which she dutifully provided him. I guess he was feeling uncertain about what she said, so he proceeded over to the Wapello phone and did the same thing. When he got two separate times, he decided to cause some mischief so he went back to the Morning Sun phone and rang up the operator just to tell her she was wrong and that Wapello gave him a different time. Whether or not this escalated into a small town war is unknown, but it's doubtful.
| Next yarn: | The Snowstorm (from Pot Luck) |
| Author: | Marge Kimble |
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