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From: "Punto" <[log in to unmask]> > Apologies for prolonging this interesting, but off-topic and NY-centric > thread, but there is a lot of info on the web about the rise and fall of > the phone exchanges and the coming of area codes (as there is about > everything else). The fact that I became aware that my living in 516 > was not quite the same as if I was making it in 212 around the same time > I was spending my allowance on my first few LPs might somehow make this > somehow ARSC related if you don't think too hard about the logic of it. <snip> > Actually, I taught myself to read at the age of 2-1/2; as a result, I would often page through the Chicago "white pages!" looking for odd names (like one "Hattie Screws" for example...!) I dimly recall that Chicago had a very few FIVE-digit numbers (LL#-nnnnn) in the late forties! When I was 11, we had to move to a much smaller central Illinois town...Waynesville. It was one of the first places to get dial service; everyone had a 4-digit phone number...and folks like ourselves had to settle for "party line" service (our numbers started with the same three digits). You listened for your "ring" ;ours was "a long + two shorts! There was one old lady who "listened in" by waiting until the called party had answered (the phone quit ringing!) and then picking up her phone. Fortunately, she had an old clock next to her phone...the tick-tocks and chimes could easily be heard when she was listening in...! Waynesville started as 94*-*...when exchanges became "it," we became "YEllowstone"...! My Toronto number was for MANY years 466-1726; I redesignated that as HOMewood 1726 (which it may have been?). My current number is 438-1065...this MIGHT be IFTon 1065 (or HETley 1065?)...any more ideas...?! Steven C. Barr