Long before Piedmont folks had cell phones glued to their palms like a second layer of skin, we had the party line. Now, if you are too young or too fortunate to know that term, let me paint you a picture.

A party line was a telephone connection shared by several households. This meant if you picked up the receiver, you might hear your neighbors talkin’ before you ever heard a dial tone. It was like livin’ in a small town, inside another small town, inside the nosiest barrel of fish you ever imagined.

My first memory of the Piedmont party line was my mother pickin’ up the phone only to hear old Miss Lottie Thornton already talkin’. Mama froze, then motioned for me to hush, which I had not yet begun to do. Miss Lottie was describin’ the love triangle down on Morgan Street with such flair that you would have sworn she was narratin’ a soap opera television show. Mama hung up as carefully as a bomb technician and sat there starin’ at the wallpaper like she was afraid it might tell on her.

Now, if you are wonderin’ whether folks listened in when they should not have, the answer is yes.
Always yes.
Forever yes.

There was an art to it, though.
A code.
If you wanted to eavesdrop properly, you first lifted the receiver slow and light, like you were tryin’ to trap a lightnin’ bug without bruisin’ its wings. Then you held your breath and leaned in so close your ear nearly slid through the holes in the handset.

Some families in Piedmont developed a reputation for this practice. The Picketts on the south end of town were infamous. You could call the pizza joint in Gadsden and order a large with pepperoni, and by the time you hung up, Miss Pickett had already told three neighbors you were treatin’ yourself because you were “feelin’ a little lonesome.”
You could ask the school about report cards, and she would have your grades wrote on a pad before the principal did.

One time, I swear on a stack of Bibles a foot and a half high, she even sneezed while eavesdroppin’, which caused old Mr. Mathis at the hardware store to think the devil himself had appeared on the line. He hung up and unplugged his telephone for two full days.

But not all party-line mischief was innocent.
Some of it was downright chaotic.

I remember a time when half the town heard Mr. Henry Runnels tell his wife he had bought a “birthday gift” for a woman whose name was not his wife’s. The line lit up like a Christmas parade. Folks ran from porch to porch whisperin’ like the fate of the free world depended on it. Turns out the woman in question was his sister, and he had simply forgotten the word “sister” at a crucial moment. His wife forgave him eventually, but only after wringin’ the truth out of him like water out of a dish rag.

Then there was the evening the preacher called the deacon and said he wanted to discuss “that situation with the youth choir.” Three households heard it. By mornin’, they had invented three entirely different scandals. By noon, the scandals had grown offspring. By supper, the preacher had to hold an emergency meetin’ to explain he was only concerned about the off-pitch altos.

As a child, the party line taught me two important lessons.
First, adults are far more interested in each other’s business than they pretend.
Second, secrets in Piedmont are like chickens. They tend to wander, and half the time they roost in the wrong yard.

But for all its chaos and calamity, the party line had a strange charm to it. It tied folks together.
You learned who was sick.
Who got a new job.
Who needed prayer.
Who ran out of sugar and was too embarrassed to ask.
Who had good news but felt shy about announcin’ it.
Who argued.
Who made up.
Who laughed.
Who cried.

And sometimes, late at night, after the town quieted and the whippoorwills took over, you picked up the phone by accident and heard some old soul tellin’ their sister in Georgia that life was hard, but they were alright. And you hung up real gentle and real grateful that people could still be soft with one another.

The Piedmont party line is long gone now, buried under fiber optic cables and apps that can tell you the weather on Mars. But every now and then, when I hear folks talkin’ too loudly into a cell phone in the grocery store, I think to myself:

Well, now, the party line ain’t dead at all. It just learned how to walk around.

And that, my friend, is the honest truth.

*****

New Yesterdays can be found at: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.