Ours was Fairbanks 4-xxxx, That was in The Bronx NY
This link has pictures of the telephone exchange buildings and exchange codes for several states.
http://www.thecentraloffice.com/index.htm
I see Little Rock had quite a few. CApital, FRanklin, LOcust, MOhawk, SKyline.
All before my time. My parents probably had a exchange code when I was a baby but I never knew it.
It wasn’t required, but it would have confused the hell out of people-“TRiumph?? Where’s TRiumph??”
Though I do remember a local plumber advertising (in song) to call PLumber 3-1919.
HUnter, I believe. I remember my mother giving people that version for our 1967-new number, but I learned phone numbers without exchange names, so it must have been right on the cusp.
Yes, there it is on the above site, HUnter. The prior one was IVanhoe.
We had a pretty cool number, though. (My sister still has it, so I can’t specify, but it was like “567-3567.”)
My parents still live at the house where I grew up, and still have the same phone number I first memorized when I was a little kid back in 1965.
The first two digits are 72, which used to correspond to “RA,” short for Ravenswood.
My grandmother lived upstairs from us. Her number started with 93, which corresponded to “YE” for Yellowstone.
Our number was MOhawk.
I remember it as PLaza but my Mom says it was PLateau. We still have the same number from 1960.
I remember my family’s telephone number starting with ME5- . I think it changed to 635- when I was in first or second grade. However, I never heard my parents use the exchange name “MErcury 5”.
HEmlock
Our family phone number ended in 9. My dad’s parents phone number was almost exactly the same but ended in 8. They must have handed them out at the same time.
Was that in Arlington? My exchange was 533 when I lived there.
Ours was QUIncy.
Mine growing up was MErcury 9. I was born in 71 and the exchange names were on the way out when I was a kid but the wall phone in our living room had that in the center. Additionally, the local dairy trucks had ME9 on the sides.
Falls Church had the JE-2, JE-3, and JE-4 exchanges, but part of Falls Church was annexed into Arlington County in the 1930s, and is still known as East Falls Church.
Ours was ATlantic.
There was also a BUtler, same two numbers (2 and 8) so the first number after the exchange was different for both cases. For example, there was an ATlantic 7 but no BUtler 7.
Amazing. I grew up in Cleveland, and when you posted that, the tune that it was sung to popped into my head. After all these years, I had forgotten the name of the business, but not that phone number. (By the way, excalamation at the end captures the essence of the phrasing in the jingle perfectly).
My exchanges when I lived there were GLenville and LUdlow.
Mine was HUnter too. Camarillo, California, from 1957 - 1970, with 5 digit numbers. Bright lights, big city
EMpire, I think. It was in the San Fernando Valley.
I can remember only dialing the x-xxxx part of my local friends phone numbers. Anything outside our local area required the entire number.
That changed when I was in high school. Irritated a lot of people that they suddenly had to dial the entire xxx-xxxx. Progress isn’t always more convenient.
You had exchanges? Luxury. In my day we had 4 digit numbers and were glad for it.
I grew up in Rosamond, just over the county line. We were BLackburn. The reason you were charged long distance to call Palmdale was because the Lancaster and Quartz Hill phone company was GTE, and Palmdale’s (and Rosamond’s) was Bell. We still had party lines in Rosamond for quite some time, so any calling out of the local exchange required the assistance of an operator.