There are no dates in DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. The passage of time over the course of 40 chapters and "Interludes" is indicated by the various technological innovations introduced in each chapter. In the Interlude which follows Chapter 18, a drunken Jake has a problem ringing Aven's telephone operator so in his rage he pulls the wooden telephone box off the wall of Dean's Livery Stable (modeled after Holman Mule Company) , takes the remains down to Aven Telephone Company located over a downtown building, tosses the box and receiver through the switchboard office door and yells @ the operator, "Miss Edie, here's number twenty-five." This Interlude follows the chapter where Buck explains his plan to build the Harrison House (modeled after Hotel Martin, 1907).

Dothan got it's first telephone exchange in 1897 but it was not until 1906 that modern telephone equipment described in the Interlude following Chapter 18 was introduced. From 1896 until 1906, Dothan's telephone exchange was @ 106-108 West Main.  After 1906 it was relocated to 130 North Foster when the exchange was acquired by Standard Telephone and Telegraph out of Troy (what was said to be Dothan's first telephone pole was cut down in front of this office in 1940). Standard Telephone connected Dothan to a nationwide long distance network but Dothan's first long distance line between Dothan and Hartford was established by P.M. Metcalf in 1899. I believe this was a fence wire telephone line that ran along steel fence wire from Hartford to Dothan. In 1904 W. M. Lanier put up telephone poles and built a modern telephone line from Dothan to Hartford and then connected it to the telephone exchanges he had established earlier in Graceville, Samson and Geneva. Lanier's Hartford telephone company was very successful and eventually had 400 subscribers before Lanier sold it in 1928.