Pockets of frozen technology persist from time to time. As a kid (60 years ago) we had a wooden telephone with a cone on a hook and a speaking horn out the front. A large D battery inside the wooden box. You took down the cone and rattled the switchhook it hung from to get the operator's attention - your light would flash on her switch board. She'd ask, and plug your line into whoever you wanted to talk to.

In the 1960's long past the time that party lines and manual operators were supposed to be extinct. But, rural Iowa.