Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mac Kerr]

How many other people remember their childhood phone number, but not the 2nd , 3rd, etc? Or is it just me?

JR

Childhood numbers are easy, the multitude of adult numbers not so much. Parts of the first 2 phone numbers I had growing up are used in passwords today so I can remember them.

I'd guess the 2 most famous named exchanges must be Butterfield 8, and Pennsylvania 6 thanks to Liz Taylor and Glenn Miller. NYC neighborhoods got exchanges to match, like Murryhill.

Mac

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

Yup, I remember my first phone number, exchange prefix was Colfax (CO 2- 1635). I remember that first phone number, but can't tell you the several after that and before my current one. I suspect a quirk of a young brain with a number considered important to know, burned indelibly into a less cluttered memory. Back then your phone number was your lifeline to home and safety.

How many other people remember their childhood phone number, but not the 2nd , 3rd, etc? Or is it just me?

JR

It's not just you.  Our home phone was 244W and the family business was 188.  Either was reached by picking up the handset and responding with the number when the operator said, "number, please."  Of course, all you really needed to say was, "I want to talk to Mom" and the operator knew who it was and which number to plug in.

[Thomas Harkin]

How many other people remember their childhood phone number, but not the 2nd , 3rd, etc? Or is it just me?

JR

I'm with you!  JAckson 8-1337

My brother now lives in the house we grew up in and still has that number!

[Bob Leonard]

And back then you could call a store and ask them if they had Prince Albert in a can and get away with it. Our first phone was a party line. That ended pretty quick when the old man caught the neighbors listening in on one of his conversations.

[frank kayser]

Ah... reminds me of lovely Catholic school.
We had the exchange APpelton 7...
The very first numbers were coming out without exchange names...
So when we all were standing and reciting in turn our phone number, I knew AP7 was 277...
Said that to the nun... Of course they "knew" my exchange was AP7
got smacked for either lying or being a smart ass.  Never was sure if she got it...

[Bob Leonard]

Our town was so small the cows only had 2 tits.

[Bob Leonard]

Our town was so small that there wasn't room on the sign for the full name.

[Jonathan Johnson]

Our town was so small, the power company was a kid with a bicycle dynamo.

[Lee Buckalew]

Buck White of the Bluegrass/Country band The Whites used to say that his family lived so far out in West Central Texas that they didn't get the Grand Old Opry Sunday night broadcast until Wednesday on their battery powered radio.

My grandparents had the dry cell on the phone in the converted chicken house they lived in near the Colorado front range.  They didn't get "county" water and sewer service until the late 1950s.  Had a propane tank until the end of the '70s when the "Public Service" utility finally ran gas lines out to them.

I grew up in a small town in north central NY.  No village, just a town (in NY that's the next smaller area from a county).  No stoplights, no post office, my folks house is still on propane (so is mine in rural MO), they still have a well for water (15' deep, hand dug) and just last year they started to add public sewer.  We had party line phones in the 1970's and had no choice, it was not about paying extra, just how it was.  In the late 1980's when I was in high school the closest fast food restaurant was a 20 minute drive.  Now there's one in the nearest village (also where the closest post office is) which is about 5 miles from the house where I grew up (but it's in a different town).


Lee

[Chris Davis]

Where I grew up, it was so small that all the driveways were in our town but all the houses and buildings they went to were in surrounding unincorporated areas.

Where I grew up, you could reach from one town into the next.  Remember the old Grey Poupon commercial?  That was filmed in three towns, ours was in the middle.

Where I grew up, you had the same barber, shoe salesman, gas station attendant, bartender and policeman your entire life.  Then when he decided to leave town none of them were left.

[ProSoundWeb Community]