KINDLING CONVERSATION

How does technology shape the way we build community?

SINCE MARCH, we’ve almost all become experts in the technologies that support virtual connection. Whether you use Google Meet, FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom, it’s likely that you are videoconferencing now more than ever. These platforms are influencing the way we connect with our families, at work, and as communities.

And yet the question, “How does technology shape the way we build community?” is not new. In these pages, you’ll find images of artifacts and transcripts of oral histories from the Pratt Museum’s archives in Homer that show the ways the telephone influenced their community connected during the first half of the 20th century. How does that history help us better understand the technology changes we’re experiencing today? How were they able to push past the limitations of the technology of the day, and how might that inspire us now and into the future?

IMMOBILE DEVICES: Homer had a cooperative telephone system as far back as 1923. In addition to this “party line,” some residents set up private systems strung up between several houses or for children to call home from the end of a long driveway. Those hand-crank telephones were “dialed” by different combinations of the length and number of rings.

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General Alarm

“Oh, we had a phone, it was a community affair, everybody had a phone but when everything was really important going on in the little village, they used to ring one long, long ring. And then everybody would come listen in, and we knew what was going on in town and if there was a big dance or something coming up. Everybody knew about it because everybody would go to the phone, because it was kind of a general alarm you know. But we had our phone, it was quite unique I think because you could talk to each other and, like I say, everyone knew what was going on because everybody listened in.” —Buddug Waddel

CONVERSATION

PRIVATE NETWORK: The Thorn and Seppi family homes were connected by a private phone line in the early 1960s. Although it only served two buildings, the families enjoyed the novelty of self-publishing their own phonebook, including an extensive classified advertising section, for such services as pie-baking, rodent control, saloon music, and general gossip (all directed to either the Thorn or Seppi households). LONGS AND SHORTS: Homer Telephone Subscribers (ca. 1919) This listing of the Homer area telephone exchange lists 21 subscribers and their “phone number,” comprised of a combination of long and short rings. This is the earliest telephone directory in the Pratt collection. The original document was treated by a paper conservator to mitigate ink stains and general degradation, but is unfortunately too fragile to display.

Lifeline

“The one convenience we had was a telephone—the crank-up kind, you know, three longs and two shorts. The fellows got together and kept the lines up, as the moose used to tear them down with their antlers as they walked across the fields. The telephone was our lifeline. Three longs was the emergency ring. One ring: a state trooper just landed, so no one without a license plate drove their car into town. Two rings: Fish and Wildlife officer just landed, so everyone buried their out-ofseason moose meat in the snow. And four rings: the dreaded house fire.” —Elva Scott

By the People

“There were phones in Homer when we first came here, but it was just one line that was put up by the people and then taken care of by the people. It was just one of those old-fashioned phones where your ring would be one long and mine would be three long and one short, and that was our first phone...”

—Marion Waddell