Pete, the system you're referring to was common in the Bell System in that era. When Area Codes started being assigned, the local phone company would designate any suburb, including near-in suburbs, with a different Area Code in order to classify a call from the city to the "suburb" as a long distance call, and charge LD rates. Even within a city with a single Area Code, the phone company might designate some neighborhoods that were "far" from the city center as being outside the unlimited monthly calling area.
How about party lines? I remember my mom having to wait to make a call until the other person hung up. Some people got pretty testy.
We had party lines in my neighborhood in Brooklyn into the early Fifties. And, remember when the round "button" in the center of your phone (where your phone number was) said, "Please Wait for Dial Tone"? Both were remnants of WWII, when all of AT&T's output was for the war effort, and no home phones were manufactured or installed.
Calling person to person and asking for yourself was used in my family as a code for "I arrived safely." That way you don't pay long distance.
We used that dodge, too.
When my father in law, in Brooklyn, called his son, in Paterson NJ, he always shouted--as if he needed to have his voice carry across the Hudson.
