Broughton Telephone

Vacle Lasswell. she was the last telephone operator of the Broughton switchboard.

Stories about the switch board! I will have to think about that as it has been many years, however one  thing that stands out in my mind!  was the lighting storms! behind the switch board which you can't see in the picture was rows of fuses about 4 inches long and they were there of course for  protection! to keep the lighting from running into the house and burning up the switchboard! and they did serve their purpose, however in the process of the lighting tripping the fuses they would also cause what we called the drops to fall showing you had a call coming in and the whole board would start ringing, so mom was afraid that the lighting would run in on us, so she would stay across the room and watch and when their was a break in the lighting  she would run over to the switch board and reset all the tripped drops just in case there was an emergency call that someone needed to make. then either me or my brother John would go behind the switchboard and reset the fuses.If you notice on the switch board there was one dialing unit, and we had one line to Eldorado! If someone wanted to make a call out of the community we would connect them to Eldorado and dial the operator, and continue the long distance connection, you could only have one out of Broughton call at a time. we received a lot of calls from all around the world and we placed calls to places all around the world, and after I went into the service I also called back home to the switchboard from Manila Philippines and talked to mom at the switchboard, and I still have the routing slip someplace of the call I made. Of course it was a 24 around the clock job, and was confining and we had no inside bathroom, If mom wanted to go shopping or to the doctor someone had to watch the switchboard, If us boys were at school Mr. Wilson would come over and monitor it while we were gone. but most people that knew Mr Wilson didn't refer to him as Mr. Wilson he was always called "Preacher"  And he was my best fishing buddy, he didn't have a car and I had a drivers license and we spent a lot of time cat fishing around Hamilton and Saline counties. Most people new the operation of the switch board and they wouldn't usually call after about 10:00 P.M. unless it was an emergency. and like I said I remember going out and cleaning phones and connections in businesses mostly and changing batteries. a lot of the phones in Broughton were of the old wooden wall type and had a generator in them and when you cranked the handle it would generate power to make the drop at the switchboard fall and then the battery would take over to keep the connection, as I remember you needed one and one half volts of battery power to make a call. Gradually Brougton and Walpole began to get regular dialing telephone service and the switch board was fazed out. I remember that our first telephone only had 3 numbers, and then as it grew it had a prefix. Mr. Clarence Barker which was also my 5th grade teacher was on the telephone board! I can't be for sure but I believe when the switchboard finally closed he sold the the  switchboard to an antique collector in Indiana. If you can rewrite and use any of this you are welcome to it. We were originally Born and raised at Walpole where my father ran the Walpole  peoples bank and was the post master, he was also a school teacher his name was Palmer Lasswell, I was 14 when he died in 1959 and a couple years later mom took the switchboard job. Thanks. hope I have been of some help. James C. Lasswell.