Dennie told me he was blind and wanted to be a DJ, and was also interested in phones. I thought that someone interested in phones was a tad wacky, but Dennie gave me a special number to call and I would be connected to a party line where up to 8 people can be on the line at once. I asked for Dennie's phone number before hanging up and trying the "Conference" line.

I called it, and just listened to it for a while without saying anything, just to hear what's going on. I caught words like "Loop round", "Tandem" and a whole bunch of other lingo that could have been Greek as far as I know at that time. I wrote some of these words down, and a note to ask Dennie what they all mean.

When I called Dennie back, I get this tone in my ear. Thinking there was problems on the line, I ask an operator to dial it. Same tone. The operator asked me where I got this number and remarked it was a special internal phone company number. At that point, I shrugged it off that Dennie might have been working for the phone company, and resumed my hobbies which was to build a small FM transmitter.

A week or so later, when I completed the transmitter, and was testing it out on an antenna, I played a few songs while driving around the neighborhood, checking out the signal. Just for fun, I announced... "Anyone hearing this, please call 264-8773", switched off the transmitter, and resumed work on other things.

The phone rang, and it was Dennie. He was blown away that I had built a radio transmitter and asked many questions about it. He gave me a signal report and reported strong reception of the signal. Then, I remembered about that tone I got, so I asked him about it.

He said it was a "loop around" and proceeded to tell me how it works. It essentially is used to measure line loss and works like this.... One calls 264-0044 and gets a tone, interrupted every 20 seconds or so. This tone is measured in Decibels by special equipment. Then, one calls the "Other side" of the loop, often called the "Silent side". In this case, it was 264-0045. The tone goes away, and both people can talk to each other.

For testing, one inserts the 1000 Hz tone, and measures the level at the other end to get the line loss on both sides.

Some loops are free. This means that when the tone comes on the line, it appears to the distant end as an "On-hook" condition (IE: ringing, busy, or just not answered) yet. Naturally, billing hasn't started yet.

Anyway, it became clear that we had to physically get together, so I planned to go over and visit this dude.... That visit literally changed my life...