frontier
I certain this dates me, but growing up, until I left for college, our phone was on a party line with 9 other families. A call rang into all the homes. If you called or received a call and didn't hear eight other clicks of someone listening in it probably meant they weren't home or to sick to get to the phone. You had NO privacy and everything said was "community property". Didn't think much about it, as that was just the way it was.
My, how times have changed.
Charles Randall