Remember when?: Telephone numbers had letter prefixes.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

Two that I recall having were AMherst and AXminster.

[fierywoman]

1. Mine was PIoneer

[Floyd R. Turbo]

4. Cool!

[Siwsan]

39. Mine was, too

PI4-XXXX. That phone number has been our family phone number since around 1954. As soon as we sell Mom's house, it will be no more.

I seem to remember the PI was for PIlgrim.

[irisblue]

50. You have the right to take phone # with you now.

Check the phone company. I told my Mom, I'm taking hers when the time comes.

[ashling]

88. Too many John Wayne movies

Piiilgrim

[Arkansas Granny]

2. Yes. Where I lived we had MAyfair, SUnset and PRospect.

Do you remember party lines? We were on an eight party line.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

6. Eight! Wow!

That must’ve been wild!

[FSogol]

9. My parents had a semi-private line until the phone company broke up in the 80s.

My friends were always amazed that you had to check that the other family wasn't using the phone before making a call.

[csziggy]

66. Every body I knew was on a party line - except our family

Because my Dad had his business office in our home, the phone technically was his business line. We were not allowed to answer the phone until we could reliably take messages. And we were not allowed to tie up the phone even in the evenings.

With four daughters in the house, Dad had to be strict about our phone use or he never would have gotten any of his business calls!

[Borchkins]

3. CHerry

[Floyd R. Turbo]

7. Nice!

[samnsara]

5. i still remember mine..

...and the three minute warning on the phone? long distance rates! ( 10 min for a dollar after 10 pm!)



Remember staying up that late??

[Floyd R. Turbo]

8. Sure do!

[ExciteBike66]

10. Looks like some kind of medieval torture device to me....

[braddy]

11. Overton

[Iggo]

12. We were just getting away from that practice when I arrived on the planet.

But I still remember commercials on TV instructing me to call Richmond 9------.

[asiliveandbreathe]

13. I remember well - Mo - for Montrose in Walpole Mass..TR - Trinity in Framingham -

OL - for Olympia (could be Olympic, too) Natick,, Mass - but then, I also retired from AT&T after 30 years..New England Tel is my alma mater - I was a senior in HS..worked PT until graduation, then went FT as a cord board operator and then worked in dial bureau assigning tel. numbers..(of course I had an easy number to remember 2525)...

I saw rotary change to Touchtone..hard wire change to modular...don't even get me started on Cellphones....is tough to get old, but I always remember numbers and names...

This was a great exercise for recall.....tks

[samnsara]

58. i was a full board operator as well... omg i hated it when someone from Georgia called...

...fo fo fo.. fo fo o fo I just couldnt get thru the accent.

[Basic LA]

14. Murray Hill was a prefix in NY City

It seemed like every other commercial was like "Call now at Murray Hill 9 5421" or whatever.

[CTyankee]

69. I had a Murray Hill prefix whenI lived inNYC!

Now I feel special! My son who now lives in NYC is impressed!

[rsdsharp]

15. CApital

8-4752. The only phone number I ever had until I went to college. It started as a party line. It was the number my family (later just my Mom) had from August 1953 until 1985.

[Glorfindel]

16. We had MElrose and OXford

The neighboring town had LEnox.

[DinahMoeHum]

17. Mine was TEnnyson.

n/t

[procon]

18. We had WHitehall and 5 numbers, but my grandma had a partyline

that was accessed through a switchboard operator. We dialed O to reach our local operator and asked to be connected to the switchboard in her town. Then we told that operator grandma's two digit number and she would manually send a specific ringing cadence that was assigned to her telephone. It was confusing because sometimes another person on the partyline would mistake the ring code as theirs and pick up the phone.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

54. Another WHitehall here!

[Yonnie3]

19. I remember when we were assigned one.

CApital 9.

Our new phone had a rotary dial, but for more than a year you made your calls by picking up the phone and telling the operator the number you wanted to call.

Before that we had a 3 digit number.

[mitch96]

20. Mine was RO 4 22xx

RO stood for ROckville. The neat thing was you could kinda sorta know where the phone was by the number...
m

[Runningdawg]

21. PHL (Philmore) 5698

I'm also old enough to remember when you had to talk to an operator to make a long-distance call and when you didn't talk shit on the phone because you never knew who was listening in on the "party line".

[KatyaR]

22. The first phone number I remember was 3 digits.

We were on a party line out in the middle of nowhere. We were 401, my grandparents were 402.

[Yonnie3]

24. Our ring was one long and two short.

The line was 8 party, but it didn't ring often.

[elleng]

23. MAin 5-6521!

[Eugene]

25. At my house it was TAlbot.

Boston. I also remember AVenue, HIghlands, and the much-advertised ANdrew8.

[brucefan]

26. Mine was NEptune

[rzemanfl]

27. GLadstone. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

28. MIdway 6-8571.

I still remember that phone number after almost 50 years even though half the time I can't remember anybody's current numbers.

[Freedomofspeech]

29. KImball in Mt. Pleasant, PA

[Fla Dem]

30. Ours was CR-9-####J. CR was for Crystal. We had a Crystal Lake in our area.

Last edited Tue Mar 13, 2018, 09:46 PM - Edit history (1)

[PoliticAverse]

31. ...

[Ohiogal]

32. My childhood phone number

FRanklin-4 9389.

My husband's was RIverside but I don't recall the number.

I haven't thought about that in years! Pretty neat.

Anyone grow up in Cleveland area? Remember the commercial

"Call GArfield 1 2323!"

[Lindsay]

34. Ha, you just beat me to that!

I now live in NC, but born in Cleveland and spent a lotta years there.

[Lindsay]

33. Cleveland Indians fans of a certain age

will never forget GArfield 1-2323, a jingle for an aluminum siding company that advertised for years during baseball broadcasts.

[Ohiogal]

36. Yep!

Was that the one narrated by Jimmy Dudley? or am I thinking of something else.

[GP6971]

35. We had

GIbson
OLiver
TWlight

[Hokie]

37. DAvenport (32) was our prefix

We didn't have to use it though because you only had to dial the last 5 digits to make a local call until sometime in the early 60s.

We were on a party line too. My Aunt next door was on the same line. My Mom always suspected Aunt Mary was listening in on her calls. My Aunt was the neighborhood gossip.

[gopiscrap]

38. i remember in Grmany when one floor of 6 units shared a common phone

also in Texas when we were on a party line

[pamdb]

40. phone

We had 2/4=Cherry and 4/5 and I don't remember what that one was.

[Golden Raisin]

41. Mine was TRafalgar

and that was my first phone, in my own name, bills paid for by myself, as a young 21-year-old adult in my first apartment (NYC). I still have that landline 47 years later although now the prefix is just plain 877.

[SaveOurDemocracy]

42. CEntral 2-5515. Westchester Co, NY ...

If you were calling within the same exchange you just dialed last four numbers.

[lapucelle]

43. Pennsylvania 6-5000

[mia]

44. OLiver

Did anyone else grow up in Bethesda, Maryland?

[Grammy23]

45. Jackson, Mississippi FLeetwood

20498

Only one phone in the house. Rotary dial, Black, heavy, of course. Parents discouraged any of our friends from calling after about 8 p.m. And late night calls only meant one thing. Somebody had died.

When we moved to Texas in the 60s our house had a niche in the wall in our central hallway for the phone. It had a lengthy cord so we could move about with it but not out of the hallway. I sat in the hall many a night, chatting with my best friend for as long as our parents would allow it. No princess phone in my room.

[cyclonefence]

46. 772, please

is how I called my grandmother. I was speaking to the operator who said "Number, please" when I picked up the receiver. After I gave the number, she said "Thank you," and rang my grandmother's phone.

Telephone dials? What next--flying cars?

[red dog 1]

47. Beechwood 4-5789 was a great song by The Marvelettes

I remember my aunt & uncle's phone number because they had the same number for 30 years

Juniper 7-7970

I remember that they originally had a "party line" because there were no private lines available at the time.

Other prefixes in San Francisco were:
- Atwater
- Juno
- Valencia
- Mission
- Seabright
- Klondike
- Kellogg
- Ocean
- Tuxedo
- Bayview

[marked50]

48. Sure, as a kid my home phone was NIagra

But here's where this OP takes me. As a young child, when I was waiting for the school bus my Dad always had the radio on. There was one ad that I remember the jingle to to this day. This would be around the early 60's. In the jingle was the phone number.

"Call AD6-9105, that's AD6-9105......"

Still can't get that one out of my head.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

49. evolution

[mainstreetonce]

51. Hemlock

There was also Federal

[yellowdogintexas]

83. I had HEmlock. Out in the country in KY

Where were you?

[mainstreetonce]

84. NJ

.

[TheDebbieDee]

52. Underhill, Wabash, Jefferson, Woodland...

[The Genealogist]

53. Before my time, but the local ones here were UNiversity (86) and TUxedo (88)

There was a third central office put in a bit after they stopped using exchange names in phone numbers, but it was still called the TEmple exchange.

A the mother of a friend of mine worked for a while as an operator when she was a young lady. She said that her co-workers thought of the TUxedo numbers as being superior, as they were assigned to a nicer part of town than the UNiversity numbers.

[Binkie The Clown]

55. GLendale. Grand Rapids MI, 1949-1959. Then EMpire in The San Fernando Valley around 1960.. nt

[LisaM]

56. I remember my grandparents had one (we didn't actually call it, but they still used it).

They also had a phone like that, and the reception on that thing was like talking to someone a foot away.

[TygrBright]

57. MIdway 8 - 5737

It's amazing how stuff imprints on your brain when young.

I can't for the life of me remember my most recent landline number from when we lived back in MD.

amusedly,
Bright

[lisa58]

59. WElls..

16877

[hay rick]

60. FRontier 7-

5525. Madison, NJ in the late 50's, early 60's.

[MuseRider]

61. CRestwood was ours.

We still had a party line for quite a while after we got the exchange of CR.

[3catwoman3]

62. Rochester NY suburbs

Started out with a GL8, and later had a CLearwater4. 8 party line initially, then 4, then private.

In the greater Chicago area, there are so many phone numbers that we have to use the area code even to call someone across the street.

[VOX]

63. Some West Los Angeles area vintage prefixes: CRestview (Beverly Hills); GRanite (Westwood & WLA)...

EXmont (Mar Vista); EXbrook (Santa Monica and Venice); GLadstone (Santa Monica, Malibu and Topanga); VErmont Culver City; HOllywood (Hollywood, duh); STate (Sherman Oaks); ORchard (Westchester); OLive (West Hollywood); FRontier (Manhattan Beach).

[Tikki]

64. Ours was WHitehall....but, I don't remember the numbers..

Tikki

[lkinwi]

65. Liberty 2-1337 was the number I memorized for kindergarten.

[mpcamb]

67. Originally 642 back in the '50s- under a thousand phone in town (Ever.They didn't reuse numbers).

Later TRinity 6-3262 when we were forced, kicking and screaming, to join full-fledged American Life.

[sinkingfeeling]

68. I don't remember what it was , but we had an operator, Sally, until 1960.

[lillypaddle]

70. Jackson

and there were a few others but my memory fails me.

[annabanana]

71. VOlunteer-2-5406

My childhood number.
You never forget the first one you learned...

[Ohiya]

72. TRinidad...

I think.

[crazycatlady]

73. Nope :-)

In fact I barely remember dialing 7 digits. I last used a landline circa 2000.

[bif]

74. TUxedoGrosse Pointe, MI

Naturally.

[ProfessorGAC]

75. Saratoga

The numbers were 7 and 2. When i was a kid though, EVERYONE had the same 2 numbers at the beginning. In fact, there was 722, 723, 725, 726, and 729 and the 5 and 9 didn't hit until i was probably 9 or 10. So, you didn't even get all the choices for the 7-2 start.

Then we got the 7-4 series in the very early 70's.

Today, everybody in the town in live in has numbers that start 47. That's an odd set of letters. I can see GR or IS, but there are some combinations that wouldn't be much of a word. I can't think of a word that begins in HP or GS. We moved there LONG after the word thing went away.

[KT2000]

76. PArkway - with party line!

[ramblin_dave]

77. Does BR-549 count?

[jmowreader]

86. It does

This is how an old-timey telephone exchange worked...

The fewer digits in a telephone number, the fewer of these switches they needed to install in the dial central office.

[Soxfan58]

78. GReenwood4

Skowhegan , Maine

[Number9Dream]

79. FUlton-1-2492 in New Jersey

Bet they were glad to get rid of "FU".

[Chipper Chat]

80. Indiana:

MElrose
GRidley
AMhearst
NOrth (I remember our number in 1956 was NOrth 2-2622)

[ploppy]

81. North Dakota

ADams 51526.

[yellowdogintexas]

82. HEmlock. Another town in our county was INgersol.

How did The Phone Company come up with these names?

[mac56]

85. Minnesota: TRiangle 9-5583.

Then HAmilton 5-4213.

[Rhiannon12866]

87. Mine was JU, stood for Juno, I think. Ticonderoga, NY.

I was pretty little, but I did know my phone number.

I also remember when my grandmother had a phone where you'd get an operator when you picked it up, like they had on Andy Griffith. My brother and I gave that phone a very wide berth...

[ashling]

89. I was born in Henrietta Tx

My brother and I were baby sitted by the Hawkins (teens) girls down the street. When we wanted to go over there my brother would pick up the phone and gurgle and the operator would connect the Hawkins'.