On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 01:45:54 -0500, wrote:

When I was young, phone numbers has a WORD at the beginning.
If you're over 60, you'll probably remember this:

For example:

Hilltop5-5555 = hi5-5555 which is 445-5555
Spring2-5555 = sp2-5555 which is 772-5555
Worth8-5555 = wo8-5555 which is 968-5555
Orchid3-5555 = or3-5555 which is 673-5555
Victory1-5555 = vi1-5555 which is 841-5555
Tiger4-5555 = ti4-5555 which is 844-5555

I don't think we need the middle step, but maybe I'm smarter than the
rest of them.

These seemed to make it easier to remember phone numbers, and the words

Especially in Chicago, where the exchanges were MIdway, HYde Park maybe,
and a couple others I forget that related to the neighborhood.

were usually simple words that were easy to remember. The word was
assigned by the phone company. It seems they stopped doing this around
the mid 1960's. I wonder why they stopped?

Anyone know the reason?

I'm guessing because some pairs of numbers had no good words to go with
them, and they didn't think we could handle it to have a mix of words
and numbers. As the head of AT&T said, "You can't handle it!"

Of course you can assign your own words. But no one will know what
you're talking about unless they are at least 60 years old.

For example,

762----- can be SOund2 or POny2 or SOuth2 ROund2, POlice2 etc.....
536----- can be LEmon6 or JElly6 or KEndra6 .... and so on....

My exchange is WAllabee-2. I really should try that. But I need to
meet someone who doesn't know my number. .... I got a call today from
a guy I haven't talked to since his wedding, 31 years ago. He got my
number from WhitePages.com . We talked for an hour.

He had been looking in Facebook, but I'm not there under my real name.
He's there but only under his first and middle names, so why he thought
I'd be there, I don't know.

If your number is 536-1234 Just tell your friends to call LEmon6-1234.

I have to tell you about when my mother moved to western Pa. in 1945,
from Indianapolis. While NYC and probably some other places had dial
phones already, we didn't. So my mother would tell the operator,
OLiver 4-1383 please, or Oliver 4-3343 please,and after a couple days or
weeks, the operator told her, You don't have to say Oliver 4, Ma'am.
They're all Oliver 4.

I remember when I came home and they had installed dials. They changed
the phone in my parents' bedroom entirely, but the wall phone in the
idtchen they took the top off, connected a couple wires, and attached a
top with a dial.

One time I called my best friend and I heard click click, click click
click. I hung up and our phone rang. He had been calling me. The
phone didn't ring at his end when I called.