I was just reading a 1971 adventure/thriller and the bank robbers were talking about dialing a long distance number, saying it was a small town so you had to do it differently. Reminded me of our telephone service when I was growing up.

When I was very young, maybe up to the age of 6, our small town in northern Colorado had a telephone exchange with live operators. You cranked the phone and when the operator said 'number please' you gave her a four-digit number and she connected you. We could also ask for 'grandma' and she'd connect us.

Then, automated telephones came along and my dad salvaged some of the old crank phones and made an intercom system from our kitchen to the back bedroom down in the basement.

This is like the one in the kitchen:


The one in the bedroom had a box like this. Those arched things are strong magnets.



My grandmother had a candlestick phone like this in all black. It didn't have a dial because she had one of those crank boxes like above.



But for long distance, we still had to talk to a live operator. Of course, at my young age, I didn't make long distance calls, so I don't remember not being able to dial the number myself, but I can remember in high school, and maybe even college, dialing a long distance number, and having to tell the operator the phone number I was calling from so we could be billed.

Back in those days you could still dial zero and get a live operator who could help with directory assistance and in an emergency, or calling collect. I don't know when 9-1-1 service became available in our area, but we even have reverse 9-1-1 now, so we're right up there with the big city folk.

We weren't on a party line in my town, but when telephones finally became available to our cabin in the mountains (where I live now), it was a party line. I think my dad paid some outrageous sum to get a private line when it first became available, but eventually they were all private lines. It was long distance to call from the cabin to our house in Berthoud, and we went through that number please business for the billing for a long time.

I don't know if it's still the case, but in Berthoud, the automated telephone service allowed everyone to dial just the last four digits of anyone's phone number, like you see in a big company where they have the same exchange number. For example, our number was KEllogg2-21348 (532-2148) but you could call us from another in-town phone by dialing 2148.

Now, cities like Denver have had to go to ten digit numbers for local calls, so every number now requires the area code. For example, my phone number there was 303-773-1864, and my neighbor's was 702-291-4532, all ten digits required to make a local call. This complicates advertising because all the older numbers on billboards and trucks, not to mention placards hung on light poles advertising landscaping services have to be spelled out.