Born in the rotary phone era - we had a four-household party line, and the phone numbers all had two letter prefixes (had to memorize my phone number for kindergarten - OX4-6168, it’s the only one I’ve ever memorized).
I never got the letter prefixes, but if you see old movies, it was always Klondike-5555, to make a phone call.
Me too. I told several of my grands about it.
Lol...I still remember my kindergarten phone number, too. And address. Our parents drilled it into our heads.
Seriously, my first family phone number was POplar 55255 and my first girlfriend’s phone number was ORegon 03143 I have an excellent memory.
Our phones looked like their “1940” model, but our number was 258. Grandpa’s number was 22. Neither were party lines. It all stayed that way until the mid-50s, if I remember right.
Long distance, (like out of town) you dialed O and asked Miss Hosmer to connect you.
Rotary phone and a two party line. If you picked up the phone and someone else was talking you just hung up and waited 10 minutes. 😉
Same here. My house had a 2-piece rotary for the first few years of my existence. Had party lines into my teens. First cellphone was a 10# bag. I still remember getting a 486dx computer and thinking I had hit the lottery - now, I have exponentially (literally) more computing power in my have right now than the entire FedGov had in my high school days. Man, where did all this technology come from?
Our home phone was 2-1166.
My grandfather would talk on the phone for a few minutes then say he had to get off the phone because “central” was listening.