Look at my treasure!

For Polly Cunningham, the past is only a ring or two away.

Cunningham is the owner of a 1915 Montgomery Ward wall-mounted telephone which was originally purchased by her grandmother, Anna Robinson, to be used on the family farm in Davenport, Wash.

“She ordered the phone from a Montgomery Wards catalog I’m sure around the time it was made,” said Cunningham. “It hung on the farm for decades.”

Twenty years ago, Cunningham had the phone restored and now displays it proudly in her home. She remembers when she was a child and the phone was on a party line. Each household had a specific combination of long and short rings, but everyone could pick up.

“My dad figured out a way of rigging it so he could pick up the receiver and the other party wouldn’t hear the little ‘click,’” Cunningham said, “that way you could listen in for a while without them knowing.”