I also remember the phone company owning the phones - and if you wired in another extension, you better hide it if the phone company repair guy came out.
Oh, wow - I remember that now. Each phone extension cost extra. Where I grew up, the same was true with the old cable TV hookups. People (including my Dad) would put in coax splitters so they could run the cable to other rooms in the house. And when you had the cable TV repairman out, you better hope he didn't find it or he'd report it back to the cable company and they'd increase your monthly bill.
Other things I remember:
Letters - Mom forcing us to write thank-you notes after getting Christmas, birthday, etc, gifts. She'd stand over us like a hawk making sure we took the time to write out a nice note, and not just scribble a quick "Thanks" and be done with it because we wanted to go back to playing with our new toys.
Long distance - By the time I came around, you pretty much did your own long distance calls yourself by just dialing the numbers. Operator assisted calls weren't common. But Mom would still remind us to do a "person-to-person" call when we called somebody. She also said to do a "reverse charges" or "third party charge" when we were away from home and needed to call somebody long distance so she'd get the bill.
Pay phones - I guess these are all but extinct nowadays. Almost every pay phone I see today has the handpiece ripped out and graffiti all over it. I do remember as a little kid always checking the coin return for change, and getting so excited when I found a nickle or dime in there. My Dad used to say "Go check that phone for change" and more times than not, I'd find a coin and get really excited! I suspected later he'd plant one in there and then tell me to go check it
Kids now will never know that excitement.
Dial-up Internet - I remember the slow agonizing wait to see if the modem connected after all those beeps and buzzes. And if it didn't, doing that all over again. I also remember CompuServe, my first dial-up service. I even still remember my old CompuServe ID (72330,3433). Bonus points for anybody who still remembers theirs