I miss the fact that the numbers were tied to a geographic location. You always knew what part of town someone lived in by their phone number.

Also, remember the old county codes on the license plates? You knew where someone got their car tagged by the first couple of letters of the tag number.

Nebraska still has county codes for license plates outside of Douglas and Sarpy due to their size. The other other day I saw a Nebraska license plate starting with 20 and knew they were from Cass County.

Can't you still tell what area somebody is in based on the exchange (first 3 digits)? I was in the Spencer exchange (771). The only problem is, I lived in OKC with Edmond mailing address, but our phone service was out of Spencer and still is.
C. T.

C.T. .. I think generally speaking, if someone has a land line, you can still tell the approximate area in town in which the number resides. The problem now days is that more and more folks are giving up their land lines for mobile phones. We gave up our land lines about 10 years ago. It didn't make much sense to pay for two phone services when we carried one of them with us most of the time.

C.T. .. I think generally speaking, if someone has a land line, you can still tell the approximate area in town in which the number resides. The problem now days is that more and more folks are giving up their land lines for mobile phones. We gave up our land lines about 10 years ago. It didn't make much sense to pay for two phone services when we carried one of them with us most of the time.

And when you add VOIP numbers to the mix it gets even more difficult to tell where they may be located I think.

C.T. .. I think generally speaking, if someone has a land line, you can still tell the approximate area in town in which the number resides. The problem now days is that more and more folks are giving up their land lines for mobile phones. We gave up our land lines about 10 years ago. It didn't make much sense to pay for two phone services when we carried one of them with us most of the time.

And now you can also transfer your old land line number to your mobile carrier. My mother still has her Jackson exchange number, but it is on her AT&T mobile phone now.

Thanks to all of the above, I have learned a few things. I knew that I could keep my cell phone number if I changed companies (I/we pay a monthly charge for that option that I have never needed) but I didn't know that the land line number could be moved to a cell. I wouldn't have done it, but it's nice to know that I can. By the way, I no longer have a land line.
C. T.

I went to OSU in 1976 -1980 and don't know anything about it.

The Stillwater beep line goes back to at least the early 1970s when a kid at high school told me to dial just a single number and after waiting for a short while two beeps would start followed by a second or so pause and then a repeat of the two beeps. So you would talk to a stranger between the beeps, if somebody was on. However, that beep line would sometimes get overloaded and an operator would get on and tell everybody to hang up. Possibly the phone company found a way to put a stop to that beep line. So to get around that problem there was a second beep line discovered. That was where you called your own number and attempted to talk between the beeps of the busy signal. It was a weird way for straights and gays to find hookups in Stillwater.

Sometimes some of the beep liners would hold a beep line party at Couch Park. One of the frequent female beep liners went by "Not So Innocent". She found her husband on it. The O'Colly did at least one story about the beep line. The beep line went on for a while longer into part of the 1980s, until the Stillwater phone company went digital and that change in technology destroyed the beep line. 1976-1980 was possibly the prime time for the beep line.

From my grandpa's hardware store. I still have boxes of unused pencils and bill of sales, and his old cash register.

127571275812759

From my grandpa's hardware store. I still have boxes of unused pencils and bill of sales, and his old cash register.

The MElrose 28121 would have been just 28121 in the late 40's to the early 50's when they added the exchanges. The first home number I remember was 85941 then changed to ME 85941. They actually changed it one more time to ME 45941 and that's what it was till my mother moved in 1977.
C. T.