I just remembered that for a brief time in my childhood, if you were in town making a local call, you could dial just the 4 or the 9 and then the last four digits. I don’t know when that stopped.
Growing up in Orlando, then Altamonte Springs Florida, I moved from GArden4-5654 to TErrace8-1281. The exchange has changed, but my Mom still has the last 4 digits of that number. When we moved to Altamonte, we had no choice, we had to have a party line. We started out with a three party line, and we got on the waiting list to get a two party line or even a private line (private lines were by and large the province of the wealthy, but my Dad was an aerospace engineer at “The Cape” as we all called Cape Canaveral, so we had the readies.) The problem was lack of equipment…we literally counted the days as the linemen moved our way, installing more lines. The three party line was the worst. We each had our own ring, and we were forbidden to tie up the lines. We had an old woman on our line, and we used to have to beg her to get off the phone so we could make a call. Eavesdropping was fun though, unless my Mom caught you doing it.
I was thinking that it was EMpire in Pacoima, which is part of L.A. After checking that website, my vague recollection was true!
Maybe. She lived in Forest Hills, though. But then, I lived in Bellerose, and I had a FIeldstone exchange, so the name for me wasn’t directly related to my neighborhood name.
I grew up near you. Did you go to school in District 26?
Ames, IA: CEdar 2
Irvington, NY: LYric 1, OWens 3, GReenleaf 8
(Note: None of these were actually in use in my lifetime, except the “CEdar 2-5205” hanger papers from the Ames Laundry, who were stuck in 1960 in every other way anyway. 
I just happened to be interested, so I looked 'em up.)
We had OLympia; we lived near Olympic Blvd. in L.A. My grandparents also had a WE prefix. Memories…
Living in Brum now (0121), and it was interesting to read about UK prefixes…I never thought about it really one way or another. Moved from Devon where prefix was 0139, so =EX = Exeter (where we lived). Cool.
I remember that in my parents’ home, 467-7262 used to be HO 7-7262. The HO stood for Hopkins. I don’t know what the reference was. I think 271- used to be BU 1-, but I don’t remember any others. By the late sixties, many numbers had converted to all-digits, including my girlfriend’s, but not mine right away. By about 1970, all of the numbers were all-digit.
What’s really odd an earlier memory. Before age 10 I lived on the west side of Rochester, NY, instead of the eastside (as above). I don’t recall the number or the exchange. What I do recall is that after the number one had to either dial or tell the operator “J”. I remember thinking that it had something to do with my real first name starting with J. This kind of self-focused thinking was not unusual to me…
{Brief digression}
Probably around the same time I have a parallel early memory. When I was given a book about a boy getting his first trike, I definitely thought someone had made a book about me! The timing was perfect, as I had “finally” been given a trike. (We were rather poor when on the west side, before my father got a better job. Also my mother had to work.)
What I couldn’t get over was how different the two or three older siblings looked. The apparent ages and heights were all wrong compared to my really-life 5 years-older brother and 8&10 years-older sisters.
But here’s what I’m really writing about. There was a whole spiritual aspect that we soon became aware of. I was an altar boy, as were many of my friends. All RC masses were almost exclusively in Latin, at least in the USand other nations of the West. A phrase early on in the Latin Mass was “et cum spiri, tu tuo,” which meant in English “and with your spirit.”
See where I’m going? That’s right.
GOD’S phone number was ET-CUM-SPIRI -220!
(Not the right number of digits after the exchange? So sue us!)
True Blue Jack
Thats “Et cum spiritu tuo.”
Beats heck out of god@heaven.org.
EVergreen 9
Now my phone number begins with 330. What’s an 0 doing in the prefix? Everyone knows prefixes don’t have 0 in them.
Hey you kids, get off my lawn!
*Hey you kids, get off my lawn!
*
And pull your stupid pants up, ya moron ya.
True, we are all showing our age here. I say we geezer together and revert to the alpha exchange…my current exchange is 332, but from now on I am going to call it FErndale 2…that should screw up the telemarketers!
Okay, ya’ got me. I knew I should have tried a word search on the web before posting.
True Blue Jack
I went to school before the districts - or right before. My senior year was the year of the long strike around the local control issue. I went to Francis Lewis High School, but my brother went to Cardozo just after it opened.
When my wife was in grad school at Dartmouth, she lived in White River Jct, VT, and they still had that. I think it went away when the switches that supported this feature went away. It was pretty common in the old days, and was mentioned in the two week telephony course I took when I worked for Western Electric.