For example, when I was little, I remember people referring to my home phone number as "Highland 4, w, x, y, z," where the exchange was "444." Sometimes the "Highland 4" was abbreviated as "HI 4." I also remember "Delmar 3" or "DE 3" for "333," and "Niagra 2" (NI 2) for "642."
I wonder where that came from. But then, I also remember when we had a party line too.
Mark
We had a crank phone mounted high on the wall with 12 parties - our ring was also two longs and one short. Whenever anyone’s number was rung by the operator, if you were the one who had been called, once you answered you could hear the click of everyone else picking up. Our own 1940-1950 version of Facebook. If you weren’t home for a while, you could always ring up the operator and find out if anyone tried to call you and catch up on all the gossip. Then we had dial phones. Two prefixes in our area - you had Sunset8- if you lived in a farming area, Cypress9- if you lived in the city. You always knew where someone lived by their phone prefix. This later turned into 788- and 299- We still had a party line but it was only 3, not 12, because it was less expensive. My mom hated the fact that we had no operator who kept up with all the goings on. Then we had push button phones with what my dad claimed was a waste because of all those extra buttons like the * and # which would never be used for anything. Seems like at least until the 80’s you could still tell what area someone lived in because of their prefix. With the advent of the fax machine and cell phone they began running out of numbers and started the overlay and it’s been a mess ever since.