Home at Last
person to person
Dialing up the past of party lines, rotary phones, and directories that listed your occupation and the ages of your children recalls a world of fewer connections but a more comforting connectedness.
This article first appeared in Winter 2005 Su Casa
Someday we’ll talk by wireless. Indeed it will be fine! But in the meantime don’t you think you might drop me a line?” So reads a Santa Fe postcard, circa 1900. By the time we’d moved to Santa Fe, talking by wireless was commonplace, but in our early days here, it was accomplished via that odd holdover from an earlier era: the party line. The party line had nothing to do with “parties,” although when the two-long-one-short ring of someone else’s phone blasted forth in the middle of the night, one did suspect that somewhere a soirée was in full swing.
Five parties shared our line, which is a whole lot of telephone action. Not only was the phone forever singing out in five different patterns, there was also the wait for the line to be free, as well as the inevitable series of impatient clicks as our party mates urged us to wind up our calls.
Fortunately, we didn’t know many folks to call back then, and we certainly couldn’t afford to call long distance. Nevertheless, we waited for what felt like eons to move up the list to acquire our very own telephone line. It seemed there was a certain parsimony, as with liquor licenses, to the bestowal of such a privilege. Now, this all seems very quaint and odd, especially in view of the discarded cell phones piling up in the cupboard, victims of the next, more competitive wave of offers and deals.
In our kitchen hangs a very red, very old rotary phone, a throwback to the past. To slow time and regulate heartbeat and breath, there is nothing quite like the Zen quality of such an instrument. It takes the hurry out of life in a most peculiar way. Now that we are all connected—even those of us living in that land once so remote, New Mexico—and now that “someday” is here, yesterday has a definite appeal, particularly in Siren Song Red.
Despite, or perhaps because of, its remoteness, New Mexico was among the first in line for Mr. Bell’s fabulous invention. Las Vegas had service by the 1880s, followed by Albuquerque and, later, Santa Fe. By the time this outback achieved statehood in 1912, New Mexico was one of the few states that had a patched together long-distance service from coast to coast. A year later, the Montezuma Hotel on Water Street would boast “Electric Lights, Steam Heat, Hot & Cold Water, Telephone in Every Room.”
Even though there were 1,800 telephones in Santa Fe by 1928, the first telephone directory didn’t come along for another four years. At a whopping 24 pages, including advertisements, the first directory was full of information for those wanting to stay in touch with their neighbors. Oddly, the number for Sayre’s Funeral Home—the mother of all emergencies—was 911.
I am old enough to remember, before privacy became sacrosanct, when the local telephone directory in my small hometown in Ohio listed the dad and his occupation, as well as his wife’s name and the names and ages of all the children—a treasure trove of information both then and now.
Santa Fe had similar city directories that predated the telephone book. By 1928 the Little Mill on the Acequia, where we now live, no longer served its original function; it had become the home of “Irving B. Parsons, architect,” and his wife, Pemela S. The 1932 directory described I. B. Parsons’ residence as the “oldest mill in the USA,” heady stuff for history buffs like me.
Subsequent directories tell us that Pemela had become a widow and served as the manager of the Native Market, an early and successful effort to employ craftsmen and save the unique Hispanic folk art of the region. Soon, she became one of the famed couriers to the Pueblos in a tourist business run by Hunter Clarkson. Bruce Saville, a sculptor, lived on the property, probably in a back studio apartment. A few years later, in 1942, one Tom Dozier moved into the studio, a man remarkable for his ability to live in the Anglo and Indian worlds with equal ease—he was also a driver for Clarkson. Soon, Pemela would remarry, only to be widowed again and to marry once more.
All this information can be parsed from these richly detailed city and telephone directories. This stream of information would eventually cease as the age of privacy took hold. But before this occurred, the directories would chronicle the gradual accretion of houses filling in the newly created roads surrounding the Little Mill. The alfalfa fields and apple orchards gave way to adobe cottages and garages, street lamps and telephone poles.
The first phone number of our house, El Molinita, was a terse 313-J, not much of a workout for a rotary phone, but then, perhaps operators were doing all of the connecting at first. Even though we now talk by wireless at a pace that likely would have appalled early users of the telephone, there are limitations to being so easily, carelessly connected. I, for one, long to pick up a phone connection to the past.
Dialing . . . . “Hello, Pemela? Excuse me, I meant to say Mrs. Parsons. You don’t know me, but I was hoping we could chat for just a moment. . . I can call you Pemela? . . . Thank you. I guess I do feel I know you. I was so sorry to hear about I. B. Can you tell me, did he die of tuberculosis? . . . Yes, I thought so. He was so young . . . an architect, yes, yes. But I can’t find out where he was from, and I was wondering, could you tell me your maiden name? . . . What did you say? . . . Excuse me? . . . I can’t hear you. Hello? . . .Hello? . . .Please, Pemela, could you phone home?”
From the perspective of her home on the Acequia Madre, Christine Mather takes a backward look at life in Santa Fe. She is a museum curator, as well as an author of Santa Fe Style, Santa Fe Houses, Native America, and True West, volumes that explore design and lifestyle.
Christine Mather is a museum curator, as well as an author of Santa Fe Style, Santa Fe Houses, Native America, and True West, volumes that explore design and lifestyle.