When I was a kid in the City of Pittsburgh in the late sixties, we had to let the phone ring one full time before answering it. The reason was that my sister might call. She lived 10 miles up the Ohio River from Downtown Pittsburgh. The phone rates from her house to the city were apparently about the same as calling from Timbuktu, so she would call, let it ring once, and hang up. Then my mom would call her back. If mom wasn't home, when got back we would have to tell her who had called, then add, "...and it rang once." I'm pretty sure that the system continued into the early 70s, after we had moved to a suburb on the other side of the city.

Did anyone else have a system like this? Anyone know how the phone company came up with a rate system like that?

Pete, that was exactly our experience with phones. Cool memory. For you youngins', long distance was a very big deal because it was so rare and so expensive. Every family had its procedure just like Pete's and mine.

Pete, do you remember this one? If someone was flying in and you were to pick them up at the airport they would call person to person and ask for themselves. You'd say no, they're not here right now. Then they'd say I'll call back at 2. That way you'd know they were arriving at 2.

To beat the long distance charge on a call which was to tell the other party you weren't coming to their house for dinner you'd call collect. The operator would then put the call through and asked the other person if they'd accept a collect call from Noah Cummings. That would alert your "host" and they wouldn't accept your call.

Of course you always could wait until midnight to place your call. The rates were cheaper then.

Yeah, this was kind of a ubiquitous dodge - like if someone was travelling somewhere, they'd make the call as a signal that they got there all right.

Overall, long distance was a really big deal. I remember someone getting a long distance call and then telling everyone to be quiet. On the other hand, someone unexpectedly getting a long distance would be taken as something was wrong.

Lol bunch of little loopholes for that. Reminds me of this old commercial.

https://youtu.be/9JxhTnWrKYs

Yes, always specifically identified, as in, "Tom is calling long distance," even if everyone knew Tom was all the way across the continent.

Yes, long distance was a big deal. I remember every time one of our relatives from Detroit called it was "Mom, hurry up it's Uncle Joe from Detroit." LOL I swear my mom talked even louder during long distance calls.

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.

SC

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.

TIS

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.


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.



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.

True enough TB although I never experienced a party line.

But, how many of you remember phone numbers starting with a couple of alphas? I can't remember our phone number, but I do remember my aunt's: MO (Montrose)1-9271

Oli, two letters (rather than all numbers) were a holdover from the days when all calls (even local) were made by operators, and it was easier for operators to remember two letters and four (or five) numbers than all numbers. Also, as cities grew, the number of telephone exchanges outgrew the number of "names" that could be assigned to them.

Thanks, TB.

They have all these little TV channels now showing old shows, and it's not uncommon to hear a number given as Klondike 5-xxxx. That would be 555-xxxx, which would route to information if any idiot at home would dial it just to see where it went.

Oh yea, in Grand Rapids it was either "Cherry" or "Glendale". Sounds SO old school. Ha ha.

Btw, a little off topic, speaking old school. on my 5th/6th birthday, my Godmother from Detroit sent me a savings bond. She sent it Special Delivery. I still have the envelope. Not only my kids, but my grandkids asked "What is special delivery."

TIS

Indeed TIS, I remember special delivery AND Airmail. Remember that. While we're remembering, how about 1 cent stamps.

"MElrose 5-5300, MElrose 5-5300"--attention, SC!

Before my time. That number was for a place up in the Bronx, where they had all those old toilets; ya know the ones with the chains.

Filmore 8 7243 my old Italian Harlem number.

Since we're posting about 60s "the way it used to be" telephones, how about expanding the discussion to include other 60s "used to bes"?

Any body here ever ride streetcars? I did, to and from just about everywhere in Pittsburgh. How about the Miss America contest? It used to to be real big.

The only time I ever rode a street car was in Brooklyn when I was a little kid. Daddio got a place in Brooklyn on Brighten beach for the summer. It got my brother, mother and me out of the Harlem tenenments. It was a block walk from brighton beach and the board walk to Coney Island. It was the first and only time I rode a street car I remember the streets were cobblestones with the rails into cobblestones. Now those street cars are gone and they put tar over those cobble stones are apartment was right near a candy store. I ate my first potato knish from that place. Funny the shit you remember.

I posted this before there was a furniture mover we knew. Interesting guy he owned his truck needed something delivered like a refrigerator he would strap it to his back and walk up the four flights of stairs and deliver it to our apartment. He was a good guy he sometimes would load up his truck full of people from my building and he took us all to Jones beach. When he was not doing that he worked for murder inc and picked up the bodies of the people they murdered and despose of the bodies.

There used to be a tv show in the 50s Queen for a day. People used to write in and say why the women they were writing about should win the prize of queen for a day. Then the show would honor her. That's all I remember about it. After all it was not a cowboy tv show.

On couboys shows they used to sell toy guns made by Mattel. One of the other guns they sold was a police shoulder holster gun the snub nose 38. Shot plastic bullets. The thing about it was you could make that gun into a one shot zip gun it shot 1 22 cal bullet. Then you could by what they call know a switch blade knife. We never called it a switch blade we called it a button knife you press the button the knife opens. You could by a button knife in any candy store. The blade size cost a dollar an inch. 8 inch blade button knife cost 8 dollars. I have seen real switch blades hard to get my friend Donato ( Donnie) had on it came with two blade straight and the stiletto blade. You could actually switch the blades in that.

Now I carry what they call a snap shot knife it's a 4 inch knife. You can snap it open faster then a button knife right from your pocket. One side of the blade is razor sharp. In that quarter of a second you could cut a throat from ear to ear if you feel your in a life or death situation. Good to have if your not carrying a gun that day. People now pay more attention to their smart phone then they are to what is going on around them.

Quite often but it was in the '50s in Brooklyn. We called them trolleys. The tracks for them (similar to railroad tracks set into the pavement) ran along the same avenues as car traffic. You'd have to stand in the middle of the street traffic while waiting for a trolley!! The service was slowly phased out in Brooklyn by the late '50s although the tracks themselves remained on streets into the late '60s.

BTW - the name of our baseball team, the Dodgers, came from the term, "Trolley dodgers". Coincidentally the team left Brooklyn about the same time as the last trolley service.

They have trolleys or street cars in Germany. So much public transportation in Germany in the cities you don't need a car. But most of the time I prefer taking taxis.

The old streetcars from mid-century held on in Pittsburgh's South Hills until the 90's. As a kid in the East End, I remember we'd take a whole roll of caps and put it on the track. It would go off like a bomb* when those heavy iron wheels ran over it. The driver would come out every time, looking for us.

*Technically, I guess it was a bomb.

That last sentence is so true.

The last streetcar (a trolley that ran on tracks in the street) in Brooklyn, where I lived, was on Church Avenue, and quit in 1956. The "car barn" where the trolleys were serviced was turned into an indoor "farmers market." For several years, Brooklyn had electric buses--regular buses that were powered by overhead electrical lines.

Many of the streetcar routes in Pittsburgh were operational well into the 70s. Some still are. All of ours were powered the same way.

Another significant change from the 60s: remember when the new TV season began right after Labor Day and the summer was nothing but repeats? Well, we all know that that went out the window some time ago. The summer has become a three month experiment for some new shows and some shows won't begin this fall until October or later.

How I do want my Cocoa Puffs!

...and new American cars were introduced in October of the previous year.

... and the absolute fascination we had with trying to be the first to find pictures of the new models.