"Operator, I'd like to make a long distance station to station call to my grandmother in Bucklin, Kansas. The number is: 21". Then I'd hang up and wait for the call to be placed. When it was the phone would ring. I'd pick it up and my grandmother would say, "Hello". You could also place a person to person call, which was more expensive. In that case the operator would ask the party you were calling, if they wanted to accept a call from so and so, so the receiving party would know who was calling. The operator would ring you back and tell you that "Your party is waiting". Things have changed, huh. Telephones didn't aways work very well and sometimes people had to almost scream into the handset to be heard. Telephones came into general use in the late 1870s. So Billy the Kid probably did make a phone call. Whatt Earp to, but he died in 1929 and by then everyone had a phone. they were party lines, but they were common.
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