A Monday Memory....

Anyone remember these?  My mother had a white one, which hung on the wall in the kitchen next to the dining room doorway.  The longer cord afforded her the ability to cook and clean in the kitchen while chatting with a friend, as well as occasionally starring down the hallway to see what her three kids might be up to.

(I wisely followed my mother's example and purchased an extra long cord for my kitchen when I became a mother. It worked fabulously until daughter #3 realized there was an area just beyond its reach where she could get into trouble.)

Back in the '50's, many phone numbers began with words, such as my parents number, "North".  That stood for the first two numbers, 66, under the letters "NO" on the rotary dial. I was surprised as I gained friends and their phone numbers in grammar school to discover their phone numbers simply began, "391".  It made me think our number was special.

Those of us old enough to remember the rotary phones can recall how long it would take to dial certain numbers, especially when they contained numbers past 7.  You had to wait until the dial returned to its starting point before putting your finger in and going round again.  And you had to memorize all the phone numbers you used.  Automatic dialing didn't come along until there were push button phones with storage capacity.  

I've probably dialed my parents number thousands of times over the years - from calling home to see if I could stay at a friend's house for dinner, to calls after eleven pm on a Sunday night from my college dorm pay phone in order to get the cheaper rate, to daily calls to my Mother after I married. Today, after fifty eight and a half years, that phone line is to be disconnected and that special number will no longer belong to our family.  

If only we could "retire" that phone number, the way they do for sports figures. It just might lessen the sadness I'm feeling today.