In the early days of Ma Bell there was a system of telephone switch stations that required operators to hand connect caller to responder. The neighborhoods in the communities with telephone service were all on a small set of single lines. All of the phone subscribers were assigned to a group of phones. The groups consisted of two and more phones, up to sixteen, but usually around eight on multiple service lines that were called party lines. To get a private line of single line service one paid, and because of depression sentiment and mindset at the time, what seemed to be a prohibitively exhorbitant amount. It wasn't really. But, felt quite expensive when the service was new.

Well, Ma Bell was a monopoly and was eventually broken down into a subset of telephone service providers. The competition helped knockout the party line systems and grew healthily into the nebulae of landline systems we enjoyed for so long until McCaw, the start of Cellular One and the proliferation of satellite and cellular phone services.

The gossip line could not tolerate such wranklings back then in the infancy of modern telephone communications. So, when the party line system came along, the natural course was to encourage men to be inventive. The gossip bosses shared old outdated networking techniques with their S.O's. and voila telephone service networking was born. The party lines disappeared. What smart fellas our predecessors were! In the meantime, while we were patting ourselves on the backs for being soooo resourceful, the gossip mill churned in high gear as usual vending out all the best (worst) tidbits of non-newsmongering.

Gentlemen and fair lassies alike, don't be surprised with the swiftness of the system that has been at work since the dawn of humanity. The electric lines are fine gadgets to keep us boys and all tinkerers busy. However, the real work of news dissemanation flies along with life speed posting the latest to our dismay and tantalizing us with the possibilities of me finding out something about myself before you hear it!
OMG the gossip lines are here forever! ........ but, at least I have my diary.