The Party Line red,green,black and yellow

In the early 1950's hardly anyone had a private line telephone they were all party lines meaning if your phone rang so did the phones in 1/2 your neighborhood and who ever they were not calling had to hang up but the phone bill back then was $1.00 a month for each person. If one phone was off the hook so were 1/2 the phones in the neighborhood. Each phone had a different number but they were all on the same party line and could listen to each other's conversions.

If you ever look inside a modern landline phone jack you will see 4 color coded wires red,green, black and yellow. On one phone families the phone was just connected to the red(hot) and green wires. The black (hot) and yellow wires was in case a person wanted a second phone number.

In fact if one has a patchcord that has two alligator clips on the end and the plug on the other he/she could tap the red and green wires and plug the other end to the "input" or "aux" jack of a taperecorder and tape phone conversions which is highly illegal.

The advantage of a landline phone of course is ,there are no batteries to run low and when calling 911 your number shows up on their computer along with the address and other info; Not only that if the electricity went off the phone line will still work and even if the phone line  power goes out the phone company still has backup power.

On cellphones the location that most likely to show up is the cell tower location and not where a person is . So if you call 911 on your cellphone tell them exactly where you are.Sometimes the cellphone will display you're in a different county (actually another cellphone location).

Earlier  houses had at least three landline phone jacks but since there are cordless phones now only one jack is needed ,but the disadvantage of a cordless phone is that when electric goes off the cordless phone won't work. So in the case like this unplug the phone line from your cordless receiver and plug it into a regular phone something like the picture below or use your cellphone if you have one.

The landline phone lines carry a current of 24 volts A/C. This kind of current will not kill you but it will bite (shock you) if you touch a bare wire of either the red or black wire while touching the ground  line or being grounded.

My landline phone I now have is down below:

I might try buying a burner or disposable phone a phone with preset minutes and once the minutes are used just throw the whole phone away.  What I am planning is to call the senior bus using my landline phone and when I am at Wal-mart or something I can use my burner phone to call the senior bus that I'm ready to go home or go somewhere else. :)