telephone memories

[Dave Doherty]

> And the few years when the phone company tried the eliminate letters on 
> the touch tone pads?  If they had been successful we might not have text

My BlackBerry has the numbers 1-9 superimposed over the letters WERSDFZXC. 
Zero got its own key. It works OK until somebody hawks "call 
1-800-buy-more" - that just doesn't relate on a BB.

:-)

-d






--------------------------------------------------
From: "Linc Reed-Nickerson" <linc@reed-nickerson.com>
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 2:48 PM
To: "'Doug Drown'" <revdoug1@myfairpoint.net>; "''" 
<boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>; "'Donna Halper'" 
<dlh@donnahalper.com>; "'Dave Doherty'" <dave@skywaves.net>
Subject: RE: telephone memories

>
> When we moved from Maynard to Acton in December 1952 (just after the 
> Wilson School in Maynard burned), Acton had just converted to dial.  But 
> in Maynard it was still "Number Please" and our number was 1061-R, our 
> neighbor was 1097-J.  In Acton, now dial, may maternal grandparents were 
> 5540 and my paternal grandparents were 5504.  My dada had to ask my mom 
> every time, oh 4 or 4 oh.  Our exchange was Colonial 3, or CO3, which made 
> for lots of problems with people dialing C0 rather than CO when you had to 
> dial all 7 from neighboring towns or parts of Acton that had Maynard 
> numbers.
>
> Does anyone remember the beginning of "Direct Distance Dialing?"  "First 
> you dial the magic one one then two letters, five figures as you've always 
> done."
>
> And how could forget "How Many Cookies did Andrew eat, Andrew eat eight 
> thousand, what number do you call to get you rugs clean?  Call Andrew 
> 8-8000."
>
> And the few years when the phone company tried the eliminate letters on 
> the touch tone pads?  If they had been successful we might not have text 
> messaging.
>
> Linc.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.org 
> [mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@tsornin.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf 
> Of Doug Drown
> Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 3:19 PM
> To: =?utf-8?b??=; Donna Halper; Dave Doherty
> Subject: Re: telephone memories
>
> I don't go back as far as the days of crank phones, but I do remember
> our dialless wall phone, whose receiver we would pick up, click the
> cradle once or twice, and get "Central."  Dial phones came to
> Ashburnham around 1962, IIRC.  TAlbot was our prefix.  DIamond was
> Fitchburg.   I think KEystone was Athol.  Gardner, oddly, was the last
> community around to get dial phones --- it wasn't until 1965 or '66 or
> thereabouts, thus the city never had an alphabetized prefix.  It's
> always been 632.
>
> I remember party lines very well.  When I was in seminary in Bangor in
> the '70s, my landlady was still part of a party line that she joined in
> 1929.  Gradually, one by one, the other parties withdrew and sought
> private lines.  She wound up still paying a much less expensive rate
> for a party line, even though she was, by then, the only person on it.
> That's what you call Beating the System.
>
> An acquaintance of mine was the head attorney for NET&T, and was the
> person whom AT&T hired to work out the breakup of the company in the
> late '70s.  His own son has never quite forgiven him for it, nor, I
> think, has anyone else.  Life was MUCH simpler when Ma Bell ran the
> whole shebang, even if it was a monopoly.
>
> And yes, I still have home phones, including a dear, old, heavy,
> early-'60s dial phone that has been in the bedroom since the day it was
> installed.  I love it.
>
>  -Doug
>
>
>
> Quoting Dave Doherty <dave@skywaves.net>:
>> Nice article, Donna. Thanks for passing it along.
>>
>> I wonder how many of us remember party lines?
>>
>> After he retired, my grandfather lived in New Hampton, NH. He was on an
>> eight-party line.
>>
>> You could always tell who got a call by the ring pattern - a sequence of
>> short and/or long rings. His ring was three shorts. One neighbor was a 
>> long
>> and two shorts, another was two shorts and a long, and so on.
>>
>> It was not unusual to pick up the phone and hear somebody else using the
>> line, because you generally did not get an indication when another party 
>> was
>> dialing out. But if you sat right next to the phone, sometimes you could
>> hear the clapper moving with another party's dialing pulses.
>>
>> It was all magical, back in the day.
>>
>> -d
>>
>>
>> >
>>
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