Growing up in Pittsburgh

[Fred W. Schneider III]

While we're reminiscing off the subject of Pittsburgh Railways, let me add another.
About ten years ago, Don Duke and I were vacationing together (I just looked at a
slide and discovered how fast time flies ... it was actually October 1983) we
managed to flatten a tire on a rental car out in the Mojave Desert ... we were
reduced to driving 50 miles per hour on one of those damn doughnuts.
Stopped in Ludlow, California to call the car's owner in LA to make arrangements to
get a new tire.

Guess what?  There was no dial on the pay phone.  No buttons either.  An
honest-to-goodness operator run switchboard system where the operator comes on the
line when you life the handset and asks, "Number please."

Dave Garcia told me it was the last or second last non-automated phone system in the
United States ... had about a dozen lines on the switchboard.  Was in use 24 hours a
day if you let it ring long enough at night to wake up the owner-operator.  How did
you dial in from the rest of the world?  There was a number in Barstow that was
connected to the switchboard for incoming calls.

And how am I going to connect this back to Pittsburgh?  As a nine year old in Penn
Hills, our number was 1416-J.  The city had rotary dial phones but we still had
operators.  I think it was changed a few months after we moved out in August 1949.

Kenneth and Tracie Josephson wrote:

> "Dietrich, Robert J." wrote:
>
> > Apologies but you guys started the off-topic stuff.
> >
> > My dad also had the cheap coal dumped on the front sidewalk, for the same
> > reason.  But he didn't bother shoveling it into the basement, he gave me
> > that privilege, err job.
> >
> > Never had a draft blower, they cost money; but I know we didn't use good
> > coal because I had to haul the ashes/cinders/clinkers out.
>
> Just in case anyone cares to know (this is waaaaayyyy off topic), residential &
> business use of coal (both hand fired and stoker) was still prevalent in some
> Southern Utah communities until just about four years ago. So was open wire
> telephone line construction with crossarms, glass insulators, etc.
>
> A new natural gas pipeline and population growth made both of these old
> technologies recent memories. At least Salt lake City reintroduced electric rail
> transit on the innermost section of the former Salt Lake-Orem-Provo right of
> way.  Ken J.