Just A Phone Number

My mom disconnected her landline on Monday. It sounds strange, but it caused a rather visceral, emotional reaction in my brain. That number, 863-9794, had been our family's phone number since we moved to Walburg in the summer of 1981, forty years ago. I was quickly taught to memorize that number and, if I was ever in trouble, I knew I could call that number or give it to an adult to call Mom and Dad for me. I wrote that number countless times for friends, teachers, and oodles of paperwork over the years. 

I called it even more. When baseball practice ended early, I fished the quarter ("Always carry a quarter in case you have to call home!" Mom taught me) out of my shoe. I knew the number to call. When I forgot my homework, or my pants ripped at recess, or we made it to the State marching contest finals so we'll be late getting back home, or the car didn't want to start, I dialed on auto-pilot. When I went to college and got my own landline phone, those seven numbered buttons got shiny from use. I called home to cry, to brag, to hear a friendly voice, to ask for a little extra money in my account. When our kids were born, I called that number long-distance to say "Grandma and Grandpa" for the first time. The morning my Dad died, I didn't have to see through my tear-swollen eyes to call Mom back - my fingers knew what to do.

Originally, it was a party line. If you don't know what a party line is, you literally shared a telephone line with other people. If you were stealthy, and picked up your receiver very carefully, you might get all sorts of useful - or totally useless - information about the neighbor's teenage daughter's newest interest. Of course, she might also hear what you were saying, so you had to keep a sharp ear out for a slight "click" that meant a new listener was on the line. If the neighbor was on the line, you had to wait 'til they were done, or if the conversation drug on and on, you would start picking up your receiver and replacing it less and less gently. It was a passive-aggressive form of telephone road rage that only party-line users understood. 

Our phone was '70s goldenrod color, almost the size of a shoe box, mounted to the wall, and had a 6 foot spiral cord (which could stretch to about ten feet) that connected the receiver to the main unit. It was heavy plastic and when you held that thing to your ear for too long, your arm started to go numb and you would switch hands - and ears! - to let circulation flow. To make a call, you picked the receiver up from its cradle, listened for a "hum" called a dial tone, and dialed the number. Yes, dialed - as in "turn." Our phone was rotary - no buttons at all. You stuck your finger in a hole correlating to the needed digit and turned the disc clockwise. As it cycled back around, counterclockwise to it's resting place, it made a slight "whir" sound and a series of clicks. Somehow, these magically and mysteriously translated into someone - my friend, our other neighbor, the lady selling eggs, Mickan's shop, or school - knowing we were calling them and then answering. And, if you were angry - really angry - you had the satisfaction of pounding that receiver on the counter, slapping it against your open palm, or even slamming it back in the cradle so that the person on the other end of the call knew just *how* mad you were at them. Nothing punctuated a conversation's end like a slammed phone.

When I was in college, Dad upgraded to a private line and then to a push-button phone that made tones, not clicks, when dialing. It sounds corny, now, but that was about a fifty year tech leap in our house. The phone was sleek and low profile, with an LCD screen that told you both the number you were calling or the number calling you, and sat on a cabinet. And when he added an answering machine, we thought we were in high cotton. 

After Dad passed, Mom built a house in the same town and moved her number with her. Come to think of it, I think the same phone moved, too. It was a comfort knowing that, even though there was a new address to learn and some new directions to follow, if I got lost (not likely in our small town, but you get the idea) I knew who and what to dial.

That number is now in the hands of someone else, I guess. Unlike fruitcake, numbers don't get saved by phone companies for special family members who are only seen at Christmas. Numbers get repurposed, reused and recycled. Maybe some day I'll call and find out who has it, now. Maybe I'll tell them about the five people who called that number "ours." Maybe I'll tell them about the phone calls made from and to that number. Maybe I'll wish them best of luck in making and getting their own memory-making phone calls.

But not today. Today, I'm in mourning. It'll never have the fame of 867-5309, but 863-9794 will always be a special place in my memory, my finger tips and my heart. But, I guess I best get busy learning Mom's cell number. It starts with an 8. I think. Only six more digits to go. Gotta get that committed to memory in case I get locked up for reading an unlicensed copy of Dr. Seuss or something.

So, I'll sign off the way my Dad did from that number: "Take care, now. Um-hm. 'Bye."