I concur. Where I lived in West Los Angeles was 39 which was EXmont. Nearby was 65 which was OLympic which was around Olympic Blvd which was named for the 1932 Olympics.
Small towns usually had one exchange, but a city needed more numbers. Originally, they were just two letters and four numbers, but that added a number to the prefix (MUrry hill 7 in NYC, for example).
The town next door to me had up to three digits on the phone number until they standardized it in the early 60s. All calls were handled by an operator and you could say “355, please” and be connected. They added a leading zero (or two and even three) for these.
My grandparents were on one, too. My aunt was on the smae line, jus different rings. My aunt and my grandmother used to listen to each others calls.
When we got our telephone (I was a junior in high school at the time) we were on a party line, too. The son of one of our neighbors on the party line started dating a young woman in who lived a couple of hundred miles away in the next state over and he started talking to her for a couple of hours a day on the telephone in the evenings.
My parents looked at getting a private line and discovered that it was less expensive to get all four lines on the party line. So they did that. We ended up with four lines – one downstairs in the living room, one downstairs in my parents bedroom, one upstairs, and one out in the shop. So that gave us all four lines on the party line. It didn’t matter which ring, you answered it.
So four different telephone numbes. But our telephone service was out of the next state and our area code was different from the aera code in the next state where our telephone was out of. And one prefix for the handful of telephones in our state and another prefix for the telephones covered in the next state. And the telephone company’s wasn’t sophisicated enough to keep them straight so you could call any number in our exchange with either area code and either prefix. So for each telephone, you had a choice of four numbers (including the area code and the prefix). Since we had four numbers, one for each phone on our private party line, we had sixteen different numbers to call home.
That turned out to be useful. Back then, it was more expensice to call intrastate long distance than interstate. So someone in our state could call us with the other state’s area code and pay interstate charges.
The first time I ever went up to the top of a grain elevator, the man-llift inside the grain elevator was a platform that only had a chain across the doorway. Also, there was no floors except at ground level and at the very top. It was open all the way down between them.
I was in junior high and stood as far away from the doorway as possible. There wre four of us inside and plenty of room for more, but I’d hate to see that crowded.
The man-lift that I’ve been on the most time is not large enough for two people.
One cold Sunday night in the winter about five years ago, I had to go up to the top of the elevator I have to go up most.. I was the only one around and didn’t tell anyone where I was going. About half way up the grain elevator, the mam-lift came to a sudden stop when I shifted my weight and wouldn’t move. I tried calling out on my cell phone, but had no coverage inside there. I was resigned to spending the night up there but after about five minutes, it started working again.
The lights were on the whole time so it wasn’t a power issue. My guess is that when I shifted my weight, I activated an emergency brake that held it there for about five minutes before releasing.
We had a rotary phone. Back before the Internet, if you lost power, you would need to call the power company to report the outage. We lived quite rurally, so we couldn’t count on neighbors to make the call; if we didn’t, our power might very well not get fixed.
The number was something like (making this up) 1-800-988-9090, which took forever. Once, after a big storm, I kept getting a busy signal and had to dial that number dozens of times. My fingers were very tired.
I was surprised to rum across a cell phone that looked like an old style desk phone including a rotary dial. Except for the cord, they don’t look unusual.
It might be fun to have something like that to take with you when you go to eat. Set it on your table (or on the counter at the drug store lunch counter) and be ready if someone wants to talk to you. Hopefully, it would also have the old style ringer, too.
But it turns out that you can also get a portable cell phone with a rotary dial:
Nowadays it would be below the minimum dimensions for mailed items.
“Garfield one, two three two three”
Let’s see who recognizes it.
I cheated and googled it - you’d have to be local to know it.
On the other hand, Pennsylvania 6, 5000 is more likely to be recognized?
The ‘music,’ such as it was, for the ‘Hamster Dance’ was originally written and performed by 11-time Grammy winner Roger Miller in the Disney cartoon “Robin Hood” (1973). Hamster Dance speeded it up to the squeaky rendition
Is Pennsylvania 6-5000 PA6-5000 or PE6-5000, and was this unambiguous to everyone but me?
I don’t actually know, but I assume PE, since the song long predates the USPS two letter abbreviations.
Then, of course, there’s “You have a collect call from Bob Wehadababyitsaboy.”
Of the Northern Virginia Wehadababyitsaboys?
PE. It was always the first two letters. NYC has the Murray Hill exchange and advertisers had to make it clear their phone number prefix was MU.
There was a folky lament for the loss of named exchanges and the introduction of direct dialling in London:
THE TELEPHONE SONG by Sydney Carter
Standing alone in the damp and the dark
Of a filthy old phone box in Finsbury Park
I dialed Fremantle they give me a FRO,
I asked for a Primrose, they give me a PRO.
CHORUS
So, Say who you are, love, and not ‘Hello’
Give me your name and give me your number.
Say who you are, love, and not ‘Hello’
If I press button ‘A’ all my pennies will go.
My mother is waiting at Lancaster Gate,
I promised to phone at a quarter to eight.
I’ve done all the things that they tell me to do
But instead of my mother I keep getting you.
There’s many the girl that I’ve got to know
Through a fault on the line of the GPO,
I’d do it again but it wouldn’t be right.
I promised to telephone mother tonight.
When I was in college, the band traveled with the basketball team to a tournament, and we were staying in the Hotel Pennsylvania. Everyone joked about how we already knew the hotel’s phone number… until someone tried to call it and failed. Because we assumed PA.
In the States, Allen Sherman had this response…
I don’t know if America ever had “Button A” phones. In London (Finsbury Park) and Australia, there were public telephones where you loaded the coins, then pressed button 'A" to connect the microphone. If you didn’t press the button, you could get your coin back.
I believe it was based on an actual event - JJW’s stint in jail.