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where everyone was, not only because they placed calls from various places in town but because people would ring up and tell them so that their calls could b^trans. ferred. It was an accepted fact of small-town life that the switchboard operators knew everything that was going on. “When there was a bridge club meeting, sometimes the hostess would call and ask us who was coming,” Mrs. Verner said.
A round-the-clock phone service meant that someone had to, be minding the switchboard at all times. “Usually I slept on a cot in the room,” Phyllis said. “We didn’t have too many night calls, but we had to be available if someone needed the doctor or the sheriff. And of course, the farm people started calling at 4:00 a.m.”
It made sense for the fire siren to be right at the home of the switchboard operators. “At one time we rang it every day at noon,” Mrs. Verner said. “This was to test it. But if only one of us was there and couldn’t ring it right at noon, we'd be late and it would confuse people. So we stopped testing the siren.”
After the siren rang and the firemen'were dispatehed to a house fire, there would be a flurry of calls to the women asking them where the fire was and how much damage was done.
The switchboard accompanied the Verner family as they moved several times within the town. It was originally at the James Leake Powers house, operated by Daisy Fox Partlow and her assistant Lottie Burton. Then
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