In 1876, some years before my birth, Alexander Graham Bell changed the world of human communications when he received the patent for the acoustic telegraph now called the telephone. Soon after my father was born, someone improved it with the rotary dialing system. That was in 1919, although rotaries didn’t make it out to our part of Kansas until sometime in the 1950s.
My first memory of the phone was a black rectangle affair with a combined ear and mouth piece on a cloth-covered cord. It hung in the breakfast room and had a very small number printed on it, our number that I no longer recall. The phone seemed magical but not so much as the older model at the farm. Watching Grandma Pink on that phone excited me so much I wanted to join in the fun, waiting for the neighbors on the party line to quit gossiping, then cranking away on the handle on the side of the old wooden box, and finally yelling into the mouth horn, “Central, Central.”
We, too, had a party line in town but one with fewer phones connected. We never had to wait so long as Grandma. Of course, young people today would be scandalized to learn that people, namely your neighbors, could listen in on your calls. Where is the right to privacy?
Then we got a rotary phone and a private line. The new wall phone looked much the same as its predecessor, except the black box now had a dialing apparatus with numbers and letters and in the middle was posted CE (for Cedar) 8-2533. I can remember Mom going to that phone to call Santa Clause when we had misbehaved. My favorite memory though, is of my sister Holly who at mealtimes sat with the phone immediately behind her. She was used to answering it during meals. But that day she was just ready to say grace when the thing rang. Picking up the receiver, she began her prayer: “Our Father in heaven….” When she realized what she had just done, she turned red, nervously laughed, and said, “Who is this?”
We still had to dial “0” for the operator to make a long-distance call, but before too many years automatic dialing of long distance became a possibility and with it the introduction of Area Codes. The prefixes tell the rest of this story for AREA CODES began to indentify the important places and phone events in my life.
913 Junction City where I grew up, Clay Center where I went to high school, and eventually Manhattan, KS where I went to college all had the same Area Code. The college dorm had a pay phone in the hallway downstairs. When Myrna and I married our apartment had no phone. If we needed to contact anyone, we walked one block to a convenience mart where we could use a pay phone if we had a quarter.
316 Three years later, we moved to Wichita, KS where I had my first full-time job. There we owned our first phone and began paying Ma Bell for the convenience. From its 316 number we made such announcements to the family as: “It’s a boy.” “It’s a girl.”
817 Some years later we moved to Ft. Worth, TX where I attended seminary. From that area code I eventually asked: “Ed, could you come to my ordination?” I wanted Ed, the minister who had influenced me to attend seminary, to deliver the ordination prayer.
314 One afternoon I received a call, my first one from Area Code 314. Jack in Jefferson City, MO asked many questions about my work in religious education. The congregation where he was senior minister extended a call, and we moved there to join him in ministry. Some seven years later I received another 314 from Jack’s wife. “Phillip,” she said at 4:00 that summer Sunday morning, “Jack’s had a seizure that knocked him out of the bed. The ambulance is here. I don’t think he is going to make it.”
505 A couple of years later there were many 505 calls to and from Albuquerque, NM. We moved there to a good job in an excellent church. But one day my good friend Ted called with news related to his AIDS illness. He told me, “Dr. Gold says it’s now a matter of months or weeks.”
970 Before too many months passed I began making calls from Area Code 970, Montrose, CO where we lived briefly to help out my aging in-laws. There I talked with editors, friends from many places, and eventually with the minister of another church where I would work.
918 Tulsa, OK. Months later, when we moved to Tulsa, we got an answering machine to go with our push button phone because I needed to know if people were going to miss choir rehearsals.
303 I brought that answering machine with me to Denver, Area Code 303, where it was useful as a tool for fielding massage appointment queries. I’d call my machine from the phone at the spa to see if I needed to get right home or if I could dawdle, shop, or visit the Public Library or Denver Art Museum. Some five years later, when I moved in with Jim, I quit using that answering machine. He and his mother were so private; I didn’t want to have the phone ringing with appointment requests. I bought a cell phone. That was almost ten years ago.
These days I’m beginning to feel somewhat like my partner Jim who long fantasized retiring to his home behind a high fence that would keep out the encroaching world. In my retirement I, too, am cutting off my accessibility related to a group of fine people. It’s not to block them out completely but, rather, to limit what I am available for. At the end of the year, 2013, I’m retiring from my massage practice but not at all from my life. I will be happily social but not available for either instant communications or for massage giving. I won’t have texting but will have a home number and will be on line with Email, Facebook, and Blogs. Surely the loss of the cell phone will spell a quieter, less bothered retirement. I am looking forward to that. Even though I won’t be available for giving massages, I’ll still be up for coffee, tea, or meals with lots of laughs. And I hope never again to change my Area Code unless to 720.
(Note: I never have got rid of my cell phone.)
Denver, © 2013
Denver, © 2013
About the Author
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot
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