Even in the 90s my grandfather's town in North Carolina was mostly party lines and a small switchboard office downtown handled any out of town calls. Most people were used to just picking up the phone, tapping the hook twice until an operator came on, chatting with them for a little while and then eventually asking to be connected to whoever they were calling. The women (of course) who worked there routinely listened in on calls and grandad's (5th) wife would spend most of her mornings in the phone nook gossiping with the operators and neighbors on the same party line, expressing shock at the news in her formal lilting southern debutante voice.