My CB radio, was my dad's car after he got home from work. He used it in the morning/ evening commutes, with his 8 track player installedin every car until the 1990's... I used his radio nearly every night after he got home to chat with all the neighborhood kids in town and on weekends [party phone lines weren't a thing anymore, we still wanted the group chat features]
Ah, party phone lines.
During the 50's there weren't enough individual lines so there were party lines where there was a common loop connecting phone subscribes instead of an individual line from the central station to a single subscriber.
Whether a single subscriber line or a party line there was literally a physical wire connecting phones to the central station and central stations were connected to other central stations with individual wires. Each central station had massive banks of switches that would connect a calling phone to a receiving phone. also the ring tone was generated at the receiving central station (the ring you heard in the sending handset had no relationship to the receiving handset ring — was only in the sending handset to let the sender know a call was trying to be made.
So on a party line you as a subscriber would get an individual ring pattern identifying that a call was for you but anyone could pick up on the line and listen to the conversations. Everyone in the party line loop would hear their phone ring but were supposed to pick up if their identifying pattern was heard e.g., a long, followed by two short, followed by a long may be your identifying code — these rings were actual bells ringing. If one of the parties used the phone heavily, then the inconvenience for the others was more than occasional, as depicted in the 1959 comedy film Pillow talk. Also you couldn't make an out going call if some other subscriber was on the line. If someone left a phone off hook the line would be tied up for outgoing and new incoming calls.
Prior to the massive switching schemes at each central station there would be actual operators there that would literally connect an outgoing call to the incoming phone with a wire and plug/jack switch board (See my post #12 for a picture of such). the operators, usually women, could listen into any call and have a wealth of gossip as to what was going on in the community.