I was reading an encyclopedia from the fifties (yeah I know that’s odd) and one statistic that stunned me was that at the time only 52% of households owned a phone. I always assumed phone ownership was near universal for decades. You know anyone who didn’t have a landline phone (or these days a cell phone)? Or had to share usage of a phone, like “party lines”? How did those people deal with not having phone service?
I spent quite a bit of time in the 80s without a phone. I used a pay phone when I had to call someone. I didn’t make a lot of calls.
It’s difficult to imagine not having instant access these days. When I was a kid in the late 50’s/early 60’s we were on a party line. Since one only made phone calls occasionally it wasn’t a big issue. If I remember correctly, it was a lot like sharing a phone with family members - sometimes you’d pick up the phone and find others talking. By time I was old enough to yack on the phone for long periods we had our own line (woot!) but my parents still disapproved of long conversations. Frivolous time on the phone was frowned upon.
At the time, it was quite expensive to talk to anyone “long distance.” I still hesitate when calling someone far away, vaguely unsure of the cost.
To answer the question of how you got by without a phone - friends and pay phone.
My mom was born in 1954 and they had a party line when she was little. They got their own line sometime in the '60s. Sharing one phone line with three teenage girls (my mom and aunts), two parents, and then whatever the neighbors were sounds really sucky. I know my mom said there were a lot of times she’d pick up the phone and the neighbors would be on. And you’d always have to wonder if maybe they were listening in when you were on.
I knew someone who had the brilliant idea of throwing their phone in the trash so they “couldn’t be bothered.” That friendship ended pretty quickly, although they were a flake in a million other ways so it wasn’t just about the phone.
I’ve had co-workers “without a phone” and inevitably they would just not show up one day and we couldn’t reach them. Usually led to their termination.
I understand some people may have a legitimate reason for not having a phone, usually a financial reason, but given that super cheap pay as you go plans are so easy to get now, I think not having a way to be reliably contacted is a major red flag.
There are also charities that can help people who are homeless obtain a phone if they are actively trying to change their situation and job hunt/find housing, correct?
After I got out of college in the 1970s and started my long climb to middle-class, I spent two periods of several months each without a phone.
Some in the 60s by choice or lack of means. Probably in the 50s too but I didn’t know it because I was too young. In the 70s until now I don’t remember anyone who has no phone by choice, though I heard of them. Seems like now people who have nothing else still have a phone.
Actually, back in the old days, wasn’t it the phone company who owned the phones? Or am I remembering wrong?
Yes. Around 1974, users were allowed to buy their own phones; prior to that, Bell owned the phones, which you rented. A court case allowed it (my father had wired in an extension without letting Bell know; they didn’t notice). When I was getting my first apartment, I took advantage and bought a phone. You had to tell AT&T a “ringer equivalence number” so you didn’t put too many phones on the line, but you could put in as many ringerless phones as you wanted.*
Of course, no one had phones when I was in college, even in their rooms. There was a single pay phone on each floor of the dorm. The person who lived next to the phone had a thankless job. 
*Before someone asked, you’d have a main phone that rang, and a ringerless one to pick up.
I didn’t have one for years, through most of the 1970s and '80s, in fact, except for brief periods (including one stretch of about 9 months, but a few others of a month or two) when I was living back at my parents house, and could use theirs (it was one wired handset, in the hall). I had a phone of my own for about 6 months in '84, then from late ‘84 to 89’ I lived in shared house (with four other people, most of the time) that had a phone in the hallway that was good for incoming calls only. Otherwise, I used payphones.
I have a land-line phone now, but I have never had a mobile (=cell).
This doesn’t really count but my grandparents live in “Amish country” and all their neighbors are Amish. My grandparents had a phone in their shed for the neighbors to use. Sometimes they’d leave coins as payment, sometimes not. There are phone booths on English people’s land all over the place. In some of the more insular communities with no English around, the bishop will allow for there to be a pay phone set up randomly along the road.
Now, most people just use cell phones. My grandma gets calls all day long from people wanting to hire her for a ride.
Back in the 80’s on the property next to ours they didnt have a phone. The guy would use his CB radio sometime or they would come over and use ours.
Reason was there house setback about a 1/4 mile from the road and the phone company would have charged a mint to come in, put up telephone poles, and run a phone line.
Hard to believe, but we as a society weren’t conditioned to be in constant contact with each other at all times, prior to about 1998.
Even now, in my little valley, two of my next door neighbors don’t have a landline and cell phone reception is very spotty. So, neither of them have any phone access. Occasionally, they will come over and use my phone. But I live in a strange community.
I didn’t have a phone for a chunk of my first semester of college (1986). The local phone company went on strike, and when the strike ended there was a huge backlog of new hookups. Imagine an 18-story dorm in NYC with 2 pay phones in the lobby. I had a long-distance boyfriend at the time, too.
About five years ago I had a cell phone for about six months when I needed one. After that I dumped it. All I needed before and need now is a landline — four cordless phones with a single base, an old corded always plugged in for power failures and two other old cordeds, one being a rotary, gathering dust in a closet.
If God wanted us to have cell phones, He’d have given us . . . well, something or other.
Most of them do, but in many cases the phone will also be shut off on a regular basis due to nonpayment. One guy I knew would get his phone shut off more than once a month, which was weird. Somehow he had a deal with the phone company where he had to pay every couple weeks or something (it wasn’t a prepaid deal either).
No, you’re remembering right that people used to rent phones from the phone company. A few years ago I read about an elderly woman who, it was discovered (by her kids or some other relatives?) had been paying every single month for DECADES to rent the same ancient phone. Somehow it had never gotten cancelled and the phone company just kept charging her for it.
Up until 2 years ago I lived without a phone. I simply couldn’t afford one. It did make things difficult sometimes, but it’s not impossible to do.
A friend of mine I played badminton got rid of his email address, cell, and landline phone. If he needed to make a call, he’d go to a payphone. He was a retired school principal, and said he deliberately wanted to be “unavailable.” If someone really needed to find him, they’d phone his ex-wife or brother.
He swears that it’s liberating, but I just can’t phathom it…
A friend of mine had a party-line in the 70’s and 80’s.
Calling him was a pain, the line was always busy.
For the younger folks out there, before cell phones if you called someone and it was busy you had to wait a while then call back, no text, no e-mail.
You simply could not get in touch with them until the line opened up or you went to their house.