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Cliffside to get new phone system

Southern Bell Now Conducting Survey in Area
The Forest City Courier, June 27, 1955

Modern telephone service is on the way to the Cliffside area.

The Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Co., following an almost unanimous request from residents of Cliffside and the area around it, are now making a survey to determine how many potential telephone customers want modern dial phones to replace the ancient battery sets of the Cliffside Telephone Co. exchange that now serve a few dozen customers with service that is sometimes fair, sometimes terrible.

A new enlarged dial exchange building at Caroleen will extend the service to Cliffside, according to M. E. Gambrell of Hendersonville, group manager for the area including Rutherford county. Southern Bell plans to have the new service functioning by late spring or early summer.

The service will be the second major changeover of its type in Rutherford county. Several months ago Southern Bell agreed to take over the exchange of the Ellenboro Telephone Co. and replace it with a modern dial system.

Work is now in progress on this project.

Ellenboro and Cliffside are the only two areas of Rutherford county that still have the antiquated battery-magneto systems. The rest of the county has modern dial phones provided by Southern Bell, with an exchange at Rutherfordton for information and long distance service. Other exchanges are automatic dial offices, without operators, as the ones at Ellenboro and Cliffside will be.

People can call anywhere in the county without paying any additional cost, with the exception of the Lake Lure-Chimney Rock areas, which has its own exchange and must call long distance to reach any other part of the county.

Editorial - June 30, 1955

Cliffside Has Good Cause To Celebrate

We imagine the folks down around Cliffside are just as happy as can be over the news that they are about to emerge from the Stone Age of telephone communication.

(The Stone Age is when you throw a rock at your neighbor's house to attract his attention, and then shout at him—not using the phone at all. This is just about the status in Cliffside, we're told.)

But everybody else in the county can share the high spirit of the people who will get the new dial phones, to replace the old battery sets. For now everybody in the county will be linked by modern telephone service.

It will be nice to have Ellenboro and Cliffside in touch with the rest of us.

Reprinted with permission from The Forest City Courier. Copyright owned by The Forest City Courier.

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