Tappmeyer’s sleekly elegant phone allowed subscribers to speak to others in the
community and even to someone in St. Louis, a long-distance call. Our phone,
donated by Ann and Bob Kallemeier, is the 1909 version of Western Electric’s model number 317. Its box boasts well-finished oak, a Picture Frame Front, and nickel-plated metalwork. To save construction costs, this phone was designed to be used on a party line: the linemen strung a single wire from house to house, including as many as ten phones on the line before reaching the exchange.

To use our phone, a caller stood in front of it, raised the receiver, and rotated the
crank, which activated the dry magnets inside the box, sending a signal to the
central switchboard located in the back room of the Dierberg’s grocery. Some
companies allowed the signal to activate every phone on the line but others varied
the frequencies so that only the switchboard was alerted. However, when the
operator completed the call, every phone on the line was activated, so subscribers
quickly learned to recognize their unique ring and ignore the others.

Placing the call was itself a social activity. The caller would give the operator a
number or simply the name of the person she wanted to speak to. In slow times, the operator might chat for a minute or pass along news while making the connection, so even if no one answered the phone, there had been a social interaction. Once connected, the people speaking had to remember that security was nonexistent: anyone on the line could (and some did) listen in without identifying themselves.

Creve Coeur got phone service in 1906 when a group of civic-minded (and
undoubtedly profit-minded) citizens incorporated the Creve Coeur Mutual
Telephone Company (CCMT). Because it was a mutual company and subscribers
were also owners, each prospective subscriber was required to buy a share for $25 (now a whopping $769), an investment that paid off handsomely in 1931 when Southwestern Bell paid $600 per share ($11,400 in today’s purchasing power). By then, the CCMT had rented office space on the second floor of the Creve Coeur Farmers Bank at Old Ballas and Olive.

When Bell bought the CCMT, it immediately replaced the wall phones like ours with dial phones, which sat on a desk or a table. Creve Coeur, always a leader, became the second dial phone system in St. Louis County, even though there were fewer than 500 users in the area.

As Bell bought the independent telephone companies, it regularized the phone
numbers so that all began with a two-letter exchange followed by a four-digit
number (for example, OLive 6500 or FOrest 1234). In the 1960s, the phone
companies stopped printing the letters, though people continued using them
informally for years. Even now, Laura Dierberg Ayers remembers her Tappmeyer grandparents’ number: HEmpstead 4-4395. Many people remember favorite phone numbers, but listening for one’s own unique ring, standing to make or receive a call, and chats with the operator have become a distant memory.