![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/rotary-phone.jpg\" "\\"rotary-phone\\"")
<\/p>\nA decidedly mixed bag today.<\/p>\n
A few days ago blog follower Judy Gusick alerted me to a historical, innovative and ingenious use of barbed wire fences that I’d never heard of but found absolutely fascinating. Judy knows that I’m not a fan of the “devil wire” for its nasty effects on birds and wildlife but she also knows that having grown up on a Montana farm I understand its practicality for livestock control for ranchers and farmers. I was intrigued enough to spend the next few hours researching this “homesteader hack” of barbed wire and in the end decided to share on my blog.<\/p>\n
First a little background and if you haven’t guessed already it relates to telephones.<\/p>\n
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1931 Rotary Dial Telephone – Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n Rotary dial telephones like this one were the first telephones I remember my family using, from when I was a little kid in the very early 1950’s through the mid-1960’s or so. Back then we were on a ‘party line’, meaning you shared the line with a number of other telephone users so every time the phone rang everyone on your party line could hear it and anyone on the line who picked up the phone could listen to the conversation.<\/p>\n In a practical sense, privacy just did not exist.<\/p>\n Each family had a specific ring, perhaps one long and two shorts or two shorts or two longs, so everyone on the line knew who the call was meant for but that didn’t mean there weren’t a lot of snoopy folks who listened in anyway. You could hear the phone ‘click’ when somebody else picked up so perhaps the most common refrain heard on party lines was “Get off the phone!”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1917 Magneto Crank Wall Telephone – Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n The magneto crank wall telephone preceded the rotary phone. My family never had one but my maternal grandparents did who lived just over the border in the tiny town of Glenwood in southern Alberta. I clearly remember my grandparents cranking that old relic to generate the “juice” needed for transmission and to alert the “operator” that they wanted to make a call. Like most folks back then my grandparents were also on a party line.<\/p>\n By the late 1800’s telephones were gaining widespread use in the cities but telephone exchanges and related infrastructure were too expensive in remote areas with very few customers to pay for them so farmers and ranchers, primarily homesteaders in many areas, were left out of the loop.<\/p>\n But rural folks are nothing if they aren’t innovative so they came up with their own solution and most of the ‘infrastructure’ required for it was already in place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n They used barbed wire fences for their telephone lines.<\/p>\n Typically, a smooth wire was strung from a telephone in a house or barn to a barbed wire fence. From there, it hooked into the top strand of barbed wire (most fences had at least three strands) and the telephone signal would follow the length of the wire to a second telephone that was connected to the barbed wire down the line. Sometimes as many as 20 or more telephones at various rural homes were connected onto a single barbed-wire system.<\/p>\n Bingo, instant party line.<\/p>\n The telephone wasn’t only a lifesaver in the case of medical emergencies, range fires and the like – it was also a source of news and entertainment. Often one appointed person would read the news to others on the line. If one person on the line had a radio, programs could be listened to by everyone else along that top strand of barbed wire. Loneliness and resulting mental health issues were a big problem on extremely isolated homesteads so the telephone was huge for those folks.<\/p>\n Surprisingly perhaps, one of the most significant advantages of the telephone to homesteaders was that it helped them to escape the scrutiny of the government land inspector, who made frequent trips to individual homesteaders to make sure they were obeying the letter of the homestead law. ‘Neighbors’ down the line would alert them of an impending visit from the inspector that was meant to be a surprise so they could be prepared for it.<\/p>\n “The system, while workable, was imperfect. Barbed wire fences didn’t run seamlessly throughout the countryside, so overhead or buried wires were used to bridge communication over roads, ditches and other gaps in fencing. And there were frequent outages brought on by cattle breaking through fences, or by rain that grounded the signal. And insulators, which ranged from porcelain knobs to broken bottles, were used to keep the barbed wire from touching the fence posts, but those weren’t always effective.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n By 1912 ranch households were the most well-networked in the nation – more rural farm homes had telephones than did urban homes. After World War II those numbers began to fall significantly but some remote areas continued to use barbed wire telephones well into the 1970’s. Judy Gusick’s husband Joe remembers them being used in the Highwood area of Montana in 1947, the year I was born.<\/p>\n Anyway, maybe this telephone history lesson isn’t new to some (many?) of my readers but it was new to me and I found it fascinating so I thought I’d pass it along.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In a far from smooth segue from barbed wire telephones to birds I’ll end today’s post with a Red-tailed Hawk photo I took yesterday morning. After all, this is “Feathered” Photography.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1\/2500, f\/8, ISO 400, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n The immature red-tail was feeding on what I presume was a duck near the shore of the Bear River. We didn’t see this bird along the road until the last second so I just had to stop, fire off a few photos, and then go on my way when another vehicle came along from the east to add to the two vehicles that were already there as their occupants watched and photographed the hawk. I was closer to the bird than I wanted to be anyway and was fearful that if I stayed any longer it would abandon its meal. It didn’t, not while I was there, but other folks in a Jeep got out of their vehicle just before I left so who knows….<\/p>\n For those who may be wondering – no, I didn’t alter the colors of the photo during processing. The icy river in the background was naturally this intense blue, in part because of the reflected blue sky.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n Some readers may have questions about barbed wire telephone lines so here are links to a couple of the articles I read while researching this post:<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/1917-magneto-crank-wall-telephone.jpg\" "\\"magneto-crank-wall-telephone\\"")
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