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Life, actually…

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PLaza 8-2932

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 The first phone number I ever knew by heart was the number my father and mother acquired when a rotary-dial receiver was installed at our little asbestos-shingled home on 26 Eastwood Avenue, back in 1944.

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The number was 2932. That’s it. 2932. No area codes, no “first, dial 9 to get an outside line,” no winding a lever to ring up an operator, no “pound” keys or *’s or other secret combinations.

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Just publicize the number 2932, and you could receive calls from anywhere in the world.

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Later, as the phone company became more successful and the population increased, an “8″ was added to the beginning of our number. From then on, you had to remember to dial 8, then 2932.

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I can still hear the mechanical clicks and clacks as the rotary wheel advanced and retreated with each number.

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A sure sign of additional progress was the day the phone people increased the digits again, so that the number became 758-2932. I guess the hyphen was placed there so that the number could be memorized in increments, much as your social security number is broken up. Or, during one spell of trying to seem more cosmopolitan, the phone company wanted us to dial PLaza 8-2932.

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That, of course, went the way of postal zone numbers, which were replaced eventually by ZIP codes, which were increased from five digits to nine digits—with the obligatory hyphen in between the five digits and the four digits.  Apparently, Ma Bell wasn’t sure we subscribers could remember a long stream of uninterrupted numbers.

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So, most of my life, from 1944 till now, I’ve had implanted in my brain the numerical sequence 2932, and its prefixes. It was the one number I never had to program into one of my newfangled automatic-dialing telephones, since I could dial it (excuse me, PUNCH IT) practically in my sleep.

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Well, we kids grew up and left home my, parents grew elderly and eventually died, and, not so long ago, 2932 simply disappeared from the phone lines of Tuscaloosa, the phone service discontinued. No need for a phone in a home now long emptied of its occupants.

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Some nights, when I’m tossing and turning, tormenting the Sandman with insomniac ravings, I get the urge to get up, go to the phone, and access 2932—in case I’ve accidentally tripped back in time, just in time to catch my mother’s cheery voice in the midst of singing a household song as she meanders among her flowers and plants and dusty keepsakes.

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Reckon I’ll just have to keep such imaginings to myself, lest they come and carry me away prematurely to a place full of extension phones I can’t use to dial out except on Sundays and special occasions

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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