RING-A-DING, RING-A-DING......

I was just sitting here and suddenly remembered our phone number from when I was a kid. Yeah, I'm sure this is a classic sign of impending Alzheimer's!  Anyway, when we first moved to our house in Easton, our phone number was 4813.  FOUR NUMBERS!  How amazing is THAT?  By the time I was a teenager, the number had changed to 34813....and then as I moved away it became BL (Blackburn) 3-4813 or 253-4813.  No area codes at that point.
 Pat and I were just talking about what a big deal it was in those days to make a long distance call.  Before dialing you knew it would cost big bucks.  Then you had to dial "0" and ask for the Long Distance Operator.  After a series of buzzes and rings she connected you.  You had to choose either person-to-person or station-to-station.  "This is long-distance collect call for Alice or Charles Brower" was how it sounded when I was calling my parents from my dorm hall in college. "Will you accept the charges?".  Most of the time it sounded  like a long distance away. Other times someone would comment "wow you sound like you are right next door!"  At our house we had one phone. When high school rolled around the parental units got a second phone in their bedroom. I spent hours talking and giggling to my friend Andie while stretched out on their bed.  "Susan, get off that phone NOW!" was a familiar phrase.  We had a three story house so when the phone rang I learned how to get from one floor to another in split seconds.   I don't remember when the colored phones came to be - or for that matter the little princess phones, Mickey Mouse phones, the see-thru novelties etc.
But I do remember sticking my finger onto the holes on that rotary phone to call my friends! 
When I met Pat we spent SOOO much money on our phone bills! That was before unlimited minutes, Vonage, etc. I think our bills before we married were in the $300 a month range - an amount I surely couldn't afford! We tried only calling after 9 California Time but that was midnight Georgia time.  Poor Pat didn't get much sleep for months!!
It is AMAZING how the phone biz has changed - now we have our phones in our pockets - and can send pictures and watch movies on them!  But those phone bills?  AAAARGH!