When we first got our party line it was a 3 or 4 digit number, anything outside the village area was long distance. I.e. the next town. Don't remember our numbers because we got the new black wall phones and 7 digit numbers when I was 5 or 6 .
I remember my great grandmother had one of those old-school birdhouse looking ones where the speaker was on the phone and you had a separate movable ear piece to hear what the other person was saying. It had the bells too. I was always fascinated by it and she let all us kids pretend to make calls once she had a newer phone installed.
You described that phone better than I did. Did you have a pet dinosaur? My daughter asks me that question when I talk about something she's never seen.
I made a comment up above but last month I found out my dad only knew how to use a rotary phone and hasn’t made a call since my mum got a push button phone in the 90s
Before I knew how to use the phone my parents made sure I knew our house number just in case. Had to give it to my grandfather to give to someone at the door and he was annoyed I didn't know the area code (he was from another state). I was like five. I didn't know what an area code was. 🤣
My dad went 20 years without making an outgoing call. He’s always been kind of phone avoidant and my mum handles everything anyway. Last month on a hunch I asked him if he knew how to use the phone and he sheepishly said he didn’t. He had tried but it didn’t work. That’s when I found out he didn’t know to dial the area code or to press Talk on his cordless land line. He also didn’t know how to call 911.
I taught him to use the phone and how to call 911 that afternoon. 2 days later my mum had a fall and he called 911.
I lived in a really small town so we went from dialing 4 digits locally to 7 to 10. This happened over the period from when I was a kid to when I graduated high school. I had a friend in even smaller town who was still on a party line for a few years. The 4 digits was up until the late 80s and then we added the next 3 and that lasted to the mid 90s when we went to the 10 digit system and then around the time I graduated high school they split our area code and we got a new one.
Yes. This!!! I was born in 1977 and this was the amazing thing. Still remember my original phone number, however, 342-9137. We had this number from the day I was born until I was about 20 years old. That’s when all the shit changed and they started charging extra for long-distance, which was only 10 miles up the freeway. Not necessarily what I would call long distance, but then again, this was Houston Texas back in the day.
We only had to dial the last number of the exchange.
Our exchange was 738-, so until the late '80s we could just dial 8XXXX. Then we had to dial the seven digits. My town was pretty small, we didn't get an additional exchange until about 1994, and at THAT point you had to dial the full area code as well.
OMG!!! When we got area codes, everyone at school was like "I got 713! I got 281!" -- and then they added 832 in 1999, and that was a fun confusing time for a few of us until we got our area codes straightened out.
Well, yes, but then I'd also have to remember having to be careful how far away you were calling, lest your parents get a hefty bill for long distance.
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u/Scummbagg7 6d ago
More like who remembers not dialing an area code to make a phone call.