Early phone switchboards were a real operation

(I had the pleasure of sitting down with the late Lu Hoffine and having her relate to me what her life was like in early Sandpoint. In today's article, she shares with us, in her own words with some editing due to space limitations, her memories about her family, the long winters, and her work as a telephone operator. Lu gives us a picture of a time and a place that is no more. Next week, Lu will tell us about the Indians who came to Sandpoint, the Great Depression, and some of the things young people did in their spare time.)

I was born in Tonawanda, N.Y., in 1917. My father had driven mules on the tow path of the Erie Canal. At the beginning of World War I, my family moved to Alberta, Canada. We lived there for three-and-one-half years and in 1922 my dad decided to come back to the United States. That is when we moved to Sandpoint and I have lived here ever since, which I think amounts to about 79 years.

When we first came here, my dad worked for Humbird Lumber in the sawmill that was down on Lake Pend Oreille. Two years after we moved here they shut down the sawmill so then he went to work for various people. One of the jobs he had was hauling ore from the Talache mines to the Northern Pacific. He had a wagon and team and he had to cross the real old long bridge that rattled and creaked. The few times I went across it, as a child, I thought it was going to fall in. My dad later worked for Sandpoint Ice and Fuel and he hauled ice in the summer and coal and wood in the winter.

We lived close to what was the senior high school (on Euclid) when I was growing up. One of the things I remember about that place was having a lot of snow. In those years, we had lots and lots of snow every year. It wasn't every eight or 10 years like it is now. I can remember those old days of snow storms when they piled the snow up in the middle of the street downtown and sometimes it would get as high as six feet. They would have the intersections open and sometimes they would cut a path through those big snow banks for pedestrian traffic.

We had a number of schools so kids went to school in their neighborhood. We didn't have buses and they didn't close school down very often in the winter time, for the storms or anything. We plodded our way through the snow drifts and went to school.

When I was in the fourth grade I went to the Jefferson School. We lived close behind it and at that time we lived out in the country because we were on the other side of Division Street. That was the end of town back then and we had a cow, a goat, and we even raised some pigs one year. We always had rabbits and chickens; we had a real farm.

Eventually, my dad went to work for L. D. Farmin & Sons and ran the heating plant that was down on Sand Creek behind the 300 block of First Avenue. He generated the heat for all those buildings along that part of First Street and some on Second Avenue. The house that we lived in was up over the top of the boilers. The heating plant was down on today's street level behind the stores on the east side of First Avenue and our house was up on the next level which would have made it level with the back of the Image Maker. We didn't have an outlet toward the street and the only way out was to go down and around where the Panida Theater is now. We lived there when the theater was being built in 1927.

My dad burned slabs and sawdust to generate the heat that was piped to the radiators in all those buildings. We had a great big sawdust bin and in 1929 fire got into it and our house burned down. It was at night and we barely got out with nothing but the night clothes we were wearing. My father continued to work at the heating plant until they closed it down. My family then moved to Priest River but I didn't go. I was working for the telephone company so I stayed in Sandpoint.

The early telephone company was situated in the back of the Farmin building on Cedar Street and Second Avenue. It wasn't a very big place and all of the switching equipment was in the basement. The operator had a board in front of her with a bunch of holes in it that represented telephone lines. There were numerous cords and when someone rang in you would plug the cord into the board. You would then ask what number they were calling and plug in another cord to the hole that corresponded to that number. At that time, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, Priest River and Clark Fork were considered long distance. Any calls beyond these places, we just sent to Spokane and they would forward it.

If there was a fire, the operator was called and we would contact the fire department. There was a siren that they set off and you could hear it all over town. The siren used to be on top of the old city hall. We didn't have 911, so people had to call the hospital or their doctor direct. I loved working for the telephone company.

To be continued.