Here is your weekly dose of some Pasadena history thanks to The Pasadena Peninsula by Isabel Shipley Cunningham:

Today we seem to take advantage of having cellphones constantly in our pockets. Well, in 1911 that was not the case. A phone could be hard to find even in an emergency.

“Another fire showed the need for better firefighting equipment and improved telephone service,” Cunningham wrote. “When the Schramm’s farm burned in 1911, one of their sons ran to Klug’s store to call the fire department; however the firefighters’ only equipment was a horse-drawn wagon carrying a large barrel of water.

“Soon afterward, the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company bought Rock Creek and Marley Telephone Company and the Armiger exchange moved from Klug’s store to one room of the Schramm home. Lewis Schramm’s daughters, Frances and Emma, were the telephone operators from 1912 to 1932.”