I am so old... [View all]

I was just asked to explain the following to a young cousin. Maybe you might find it interesting.

I grew up in a small town (less than 500 people) a long time ago. To make a phone call from the large wooden telephone on our wall I would first have to pull up a chair to climb up to reach it and crank it.

I would crank the handle until Mable (the operator) picked up. The switch board was in her home so she could be anywhere in the house. Sometimes when we made a call we would say the phone number and sometimes we just said the name. Usually, I was calling my grandmother so I would just say - Grandma please.

We tried not to make any calls after 9:00 pm because Mabel went to bed early. On Wednesday night we usually did not make calls after 7:00 because she was up at the church playing the piano for choir practice. On Sunday mornings we could not make calls at all.

I don't remember what year we moved on to making our own phone calls.

I just remembered - our post office box number was 24 and our phone number was 240. This was by design for everyone in town. Not sure how they assigned phone numbers to people who received their mail by rural delivery so they had no post office box.

Note: We had to go to the post office to get our mail as there was no home delivery if you lived in town.

We moved to the city when I was in junior high.

Now we all have those mobile phones that constantly invade our lives. I think I would rather talk to Mable.