When I was a kid, my aunt lived in South Milwaukee and we lived in Racine, WI -- a distance of, what, 30 miles?
It might as well have been on the moon, for what they charged to call station to station. My parents finally bought something called "Metroplan" that allowed my mom to call her sister "x" number of minutes per month for a flat fee that was significantly cheaper.
Because she had Metroplan, and her sister did not, they devised a one-ring signal that told my mom to call her. This saved my aunt big bucks!
Remember when the Bell System rented you the telephones? lol I remember when we added a second telephone in the back of the house, sharing the same line -- this was a big deal, because we had to rent an extra phone!
(This is something foreign to kids today, but you could have multiple phones on a single line. I remember after getting my first cell phone -- a bolt to the floor model -- asking how I could add a second phone to the same line. The sales rep had to patiently explain to me -- and everyone else -- why that wasn't possible!)
And touch tone! Man, that was space age stuff. The trimline touch tone phone cost EXTRA to rent, so my dad wanted nothing to do with it. lol
