We were on a party line until at least the mid '60s. Lots of households didn’t have one.
A Navy shipmate of mine went through a really bad divorce around 2005-2006. His wife took him to the cleaners. He lived in a trailer, in a trailer park. He could barely afford the rent, and some food. He had no phone and no cable. His official recall number was a neighbor, who understood that we were calling him for military necessity. Really crappy way to live.
I grew up in various countries in the 1960s and '70s and during all that time, we never had a phone except for one rental house in Devon, England, for a couple of years. You either walked up to the pay phone, or used your somewhat more well-off neighbor’s phone. No big deal.
Besides that, the first time I bought (actually, rented) my own home phone (a baby blue Princess phone, I felt so grown-up!) was in 1980. I was 22 years old. In the early 1980s I lived in the Colorado mountains for a few years and we had a party line, which was a: a pain in the ass and b: a way to get to know your new neighbors.
I remember being astonished the first time I ever called someone with caller ID and they know it was me calling them. Thought that was pretty cool, ha!
Nowadays you’d have to pry my mobile device from my cold dead fingers. But I don’t ever recall wishing that I had a phone on hand when I was younger, and didn’t.
One of my neighbors growing up in the seventies never got a phone. He got cable in the early eighties, though.
My grandparents didn’t get a phone till the late 70s/early 80s. It wasn’t a matter of cost - they just didn’t think it was necessary. If my grandmother wanted to call anyone, she’d go to the pay phone down on the corner. And if we wanted to reach her, we had to call her neighbor - but that was only in emergency situations.
I think it was my grandfather’s health that finally persuaded them to get a phone.
I didn’t have a phone when I was in college. I’d use the pay phone down the hall to call home or go to a friend’s room to use his phone for local calls. It wasn’t that unusual at the time (around 1980) - most students didn’t have phones in their dorm rooms.
A few years later when I started working, I had pretty much the same situation. I lived in an apartment building. There were pay phones but I didn’t have a phone of my own.
I still don’t generally have a cell phone. I have a cell phone but I only activate it during the winter when I go south. The rest of the year it just sits in a desk drawer.
For my first two years of college I didn’t have a phone, I shared one with the rest of the dorm floor.
When I got my own place I had a phone largely at my parents’ insistence.
I didn’t get a cell phone until into the 2000’s. After I landed an airplane in a hayfield due to worsening weather and had to borrow the farmer’s phone to call for a pick-up my spouse presented me with a cell phone.
For a while in the 80s, I used a pager, pay phones, and work phones.
Some kids I went to school with – their family didn’t have a phone in the 90s. According to their mother, she said it was because with so many teenagers, she didn’t need the headache of constantly dealing with so many people calling them, and having them fighting over the phone. I don’t know, they were sort of eccentric. Nice family, just a bit strange.
BTW, even before cell phones, you didn’t necessarily have to worry about busy signals, since a lot of people were getting call waiting.
I recall that until the end of the war, my grandmother got calls for one or two of neighbors. But after the war, I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a phone. I don’t know when party lines disappeared. Then around 1960 a friend of mine was unemployed and dropped his phone. Someone wanted to get in touch with him, they sent a telegram (in those days, Western Union actually delivered them if you didn’t have a phone) and he would use pay phones. In the 1950s, college dorms didn’t have phones (a pay phone on each floor) and I was astonished that by the time my kids went to college they did.
My family got our first phone in 1974 when I was 11. My parents couldn’t afford one before then.
When I was at university (living on campus) I didn’t have one - there was a pay phone I could use if necessary. After leaving uni I shared a house with some friends and we finally had enough money to have a phone connected about 6 months later. It was only about a 5-minute walk to a pay phone.
Of course all this was way before mobile/cell phones.
As others have said, there just wasn’t the expectation of easy/instant contact in those days. One of the many reasons I would never hop into a one-way time machine into the past (although “medical advances” would be the main reason).
I remember having a party line into the 70’s…probably 1973-74. We kids used to think it was funny to pick up the phone and attempt to listen to other people’s conversations and not be found out.
Didn’t have one when I was in college, and for a few years after. This was before cell phones.
I’d imagine it would be liberating. A mobile phone, which when it first came out seemed like a childhood dream of being able to contact anyone from almost anywhere seems these days more like a millstone around your neck.
I remember getting my first place and realizing that the (IIRC) $8.95 phone bill was just too much for the budget. PITA not having a phone, but I survived.
Check out SafeLink Wireless, which is a government sponsored program.
For six years in grad school I didn’t have a phone or a TV or a stereo or a car. I had no extra money to spend on anything. I don’t own a cell phone now.
I don’t have a cell phone or landline. Haven’t for a year almost now.
The only time I’ve been without a phone was four months I spent in London in 1989-1990. There was a pay phone in the stairwell, we had to buy calling cards and that was it. I had land lines with different numbers with each move since I went out on my own. I got my first cell phone in 1994 and that number’s been the same ever since. I finally dropped the land line four years ago, but still have the same cell number.