This is a story from Bob Sobotka, like all the other stories I post here it's really hard to imagine a long distance call earning this much attention, but then again I only use a cell phone and don't even have a landline now. The times they are a'changin....
In the 1950’s, 40’s, and possibly even late 30’s, our family (the Leonore and George Sobotka family) farmed land on the river bottom southwest of Cainsville, which was owned by Beth and Russell Lynch. My mother told me that when my Dad started farming the land (about 240 acres I believe) it had never been plowed and grew only prairie grass. They hired someone to plow it for the first time, with a large tractor or steam engine and a special heavy duty plow, I suppose. This land would become valuable largely due to the sacrifices of folks in the 1920’s who took on the tremendous task of straightening the river to prevent flooding. Many farmers lost their land because of the extremely high river tax levied to pay for the project. We stopped farming, I believe about 1959 or 1960, probably to try to do better raising turkeys. I liked farming “down on the bottom” and felt a bit sad, riding by on the school bus the following spring, and seeing one of Harold Doty’s John Deere 830’s pulling 5 or 6 plows where our Ole John (1940 John Deere A) and I had pulled to bottoms for several years before. It was this exact area, where my Dad first lined me up with the disc, explained how to control the tractor when it was pulling hard over plowed ground, and started me working in the field.
Occasionally, maybe once a year, Daddy would call Russell Lynch to discuss matters pertaining to the farming of the land. Beth and Russell and family had moved from Cainsville to Republic, Missouri and then to Baltimore, Maryland. Then, at least it was my perception, telephones were used almost solely to talk to people only around Cainsville and it was very rare and expensive to talk to someone as far away as Trenton or Chillicothe, Missouri. So it was a momentous occasion for sure, when one of these calls was made.
The first such call that I witnessed happened like this:
One of the girls (my sister) said, “Daddy’s gonna call Russell Lynch-----in Baltimore.” We scrambled to the kitchen and gathered around the phone (crank type) which was mounted on the wall by the front door.
It would have made a good Norman Rockwell painting, 5 or more children gathered around the old wall mounted telephone in wide-eyed amazement. As if witnessing one of the modern marvels (someone actually speaking to someone so many miles away over a wire) wasn’t enough, it was happening in our own house, with our own Dad, who was talking to our very own uncle who lived near the ocean. To me just knowing someone who lived near the ocean made me feel special in some way. And now this extraordinary occasion was happening right before our eyes.
Mama’s in the background working in her kitchen and trying to keep the girls quiet (boy’s don’t make noise). Daddy has collected his thoughts and grabs the receiver and reaches for the crank. Suddenly he pulls back, hangs the receiver back on the hook, turns to us and says, “Now you kids be quiet!” Sometimes it was very difficult to hear on the phone in those days.
With that he turns again to the phone, picks up the receiver, grabs the crank and rings one long. One long, that’s the operator’s number. The phone numbers were in longs and shorts. Your number might be 2 longs and 1 short, 1 long and 2 shorts, or 2 shorts, and so on. Also, every phone on the line would ring so if you were the nosey type, you could pick up the receiver and listen in when you heard someone call a number that wasn’t yours.
Bertha, the operator in town, answers and Daddy says, “I want to call Russell Lynch at such and such a number in Baltimore.”
After a short time someone answers and Daddy says, “This is George how are you? We’re all ok.”
Then the conversation begins. I don’t remember how it went, but maybe something like this: “We got all the corn picked and beans cut, and it done pretty good this year.”
This call was a pretty big deal for Daddy too. It was always a big event when we had contact or a visit from some of the folks who lived away. There was a little tension in Daddy’s voice. He chose his words carefully and used the word “were” in a sentence. It was almost as if he was speaking with the president himself.
“We’ll put up an electric fence and put some cows down there again this winter. “ We would drive cows down there every fall, and they thrived on corn stalks and ears of corn that had dropped from the picker.
“I think we should put soybeans on the north patch by the road, next year.” The ground in parts of this section was very tough “gumbo”, and it was all the tractor could do to pull those two 16 inch plows in low gear. Then, when you disced it, the disc would kind of bounce over it and bust up a few clods, so you would have to double disc it several times to get it to the point where it could be planted.
“Let’s sow wheat on the south part.” The south part was largely sandy soil and it worked up beautifully. Ole John could pull the plow in 4th (almost to fast to work) over much of it, and if you double disced it once it was ready to plant.
“We can plant corn on the “island” next year.” The “island” was the furthest away from the highway, bordered by the main river channel on the east and surrounded by the windey old river on the west and south. The north side was bordered by a drainage ditch and fence between us and Lester Hudson’s land with a point extending north at the river all the way to Jack Graham’s place. We had to cross a small wooden bridge to get to the “island”.
Conversations must be kept short, so the end would come soon.
I couldn’t keep from thinking about what had happened until I fell asleep that night. And I imagine we all told our friends about it at school the next day. I know I did.
