The Strait, Harris Phone co. of New Lisbon New York: An Unauthorized Descendant of the Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company

Frank Rock, an MCS grad provides the following recollections.

A short story about a short lived "other" telephone "company" and I share this, with no accuracy whatsoever, totally tongue in cheek, by flawed memory, and title it ; "The Strait, Harris Phone co. of New Lisbon New York"
After the sale of the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company sometime ,(I believe) in Feb. 1967, the Chenango and Unadilla Telephone Company went through the area and started upgrading lines and telephones.

The linemen took down miles of phone wire, coiled it up and left it in piles here there and everywhere on the sides of the roads. The old "crank style " phones that I, and many of us, dinosaurs, remember as kids were collected and to my recollection many ended up over the bank at the "old Morris dump," which was on Otsego County 49 frequently called "the old dump road."

There were wall mounted box phones, phones with the crank handle in the middle where the "new fangled" dial apparatus was. There were crank boxes that mounted on the wall and contained dry cells for powering up each, individual "hand set"/ telephone. Well,some of you probably remember Mike Strait from school. He was best friends with Winston Harris, Jr. (Wint) and used to spend quite a bit of time at the Harris farm. You also may remember where he lived up on the hill across from the Konrad Isle farm.

Well Mike had a brainstorm and decided that all of that wire and those thrown out phones were being wasted.

He went and raided the dump (and didn't get caught by old Berr Deen).

Then he went and between he, Wint and a few others (whom I just don't remember) strung phone wires on fence posts along Rt. 51 , through and on trees and just about every where they had to to get the job done! When they got the project completed there was a working telephone system that went from the Strait home to the Place home (where Bill Stowell lived and prior to that James McNealy where Neal, Darryl, Bill and Sandy Place lived). And from there, again, along the top of fence posts and strung through the trees it finally ended at the Harris farm. Mike wired up the entire deal and it worked just like the original Dimock Hollow phone system, the only difference being the lack of an operator and, of course, no access to outside lines.

For those who do not know or remember what a "dry cell" was, here is a photo of one. These were used in most all rural telephone systems that had a wall mounted wooden box---

I was supposed to get it wired all the way to my house but that never happened as Bill Laymon (lived between us and the Harris place) wouldn't let Mike run the wires on top of his fence posts!

But, alas, the phone system was short lived. One of the technicians for C.and U. found out about it and cut the wires. When he was asked why he said, "For two reasons, one that the wire was stolen and two, that it was encroaching upon C and U's right of way!" So no more rushing home from school to get on the Strait Harris hot line to make sleep over plans or worse! Actually, when you think about it, it was quite the accomplishment for a bunch of 14 year old kids!

And as I recall the name of the C&U tech. that cut the wires was Orrin Peet. I remember him as many years later, where I live now (been here 40 years this spring) on a cold Winter night Orrin came here with his wife in tow (on the way to a function somewhere's) to repair my telephone service. He fixed it while his wife patiently waited in his truck. That was a Christmas Eve back in the late 1970's. That night it was around 20 below 0. His reasoning for coming out was two fold. One, that it was on his way, and secondly, because he didn't wish us to be without a telephone for Christmas. He was a great person! Even if he did stop the nonsense we boys were up to many years earlier!! And, of course, that was when you called for a repair and you, actually, were able to talk to a person that was local and not someone in Pakistan or Texas!

We had a private line. My Dad was with the N.Y.S. Dept. of health and also a Civil Defense coordinator and somehow we managed to get it private... Our phone # was 212! One time when my father was in New York City to attend a state convention he tried to call my Mom at the Morris/Dimock Hollow exchange using the # 212 and the City operator told him that there was no such place or listing. Somehow he finally got through but I guess that he had one heck of a time doing it....LOL-In order for us to call "out' we simply picked up the phone and told whoever the Dimock operator was who we wished to reach and she would do it from the office..

Read another story about the Dimock Hollow Telephone Company at this link.
http://ourtownnews.info/morris-ny/Dimmock-Hollow-Telephone-Co