In North America it was common to add a number after the exchange name. So, when giving out your phone number you would say “Walnut2 1234”, for example. In the UK you would answer the phone with the number, such as “Amhurst 7651”. That way, if it was a wrong number there wouldn’t be a charge.
The exchange name also told people the kind of area you lived in. Plaza was ritzy and Stamford Hill was Jewish.
Karen lived in Toronto, in the Bathurst & Eglinton area, but we met in London, UK. in 1968. Another one of those weird coincidences where her friend’s cousin in London, was my cousin’s cousin, who was also my friend.
When Karen went back to Toronto, she left me her phone number. Back in those days, transatlantic calls were very expensive. Probably a minimum 3-minute call was around £3. My income was around £20 per week. All calls went through an operator until STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling) became available in the 70’s.
Somehow, I learned of a dialing code that could by-pass the operator and go directly to the receiver, in this case Karen. The first challenge was that it only worked if you managed to complete your dialing as a transatlantic call was ending. The second challenge was that you had to dial about 14 numbers to complete the dialing sequence. 14 numbers on a rotary phone. What a chore, but worth the money, if it worked.
I remember sitting in my living room in London. It was around 11pm and mum was in bed. I started dialing. After many attempts I got a ringing tone and a sore finger. Yay me! The phone was answered and I said “Hi, this is Russell in London, who’s this?” A lady said, “this is Russell too.” Huh? “No, no”, I shot back “I’m Russell, who are you?” I got the same reply, “this is Russell too.” It felt a bit like “Who’s on first”, I put the phone down quickly. Bloody hell! Crazy people in Toronto.
Oh well, start again. I dialled again and after a while the phone started ringing and was answered by Karen. I started to tell her about my previous attempt and how the lady kept saying that she was Russell too. That’s when I learned that the exchange name for the Bathurst-Eglinton area was RUssell 2. The only good thing was it cost me nothing to find out.
Chiswick Empire Theatre
Our number was AMH 7651 and every winter, until the Empire closed in 1959, I would start getting calls from people wanting to buy tickets for a show. Very annoying! I did some investigating and found that the Empire’s number was CHI 7651, only one digit away from our number. It got to a point that I was so fed up with all the calls that I started “selling” tickets. Looking back, it was not a very nice thing to do, even though I was only a kid.
There was a period of time when our phone would ring as if someone was dialling out. You know what the rotary phone sounded like when you dialled a number and then released the dial. The dial returning to its place would cause my phone to ring.
It seemed to be coming from a call box in the area. Very annoying, but it did allow me to listen in on calls. One call I listened in on had two women discussing how their children’s driving lessons were going. It was right out of a Monty Python sketch. One of the women was trying to remember the name of the driving school. She tried several names before I realised what she was trying to say and finally I said, “It’s BSM. British School of Motoring”. There was a silence before one said, “Oh yes, thanks. Who is this?”. I put the phone down quickly.
This incident occurred during the London bus strike of 1958. The tube was running, which meant I could get to Manor House tube station. From there I would phone my mum to come and get me.
On this occasion I was at the tube station with my friend Tony Denoff. I phoned my mum and her line was busy, so I waited outside the phone booth for a few moments. While I was waiting, the phone in the booth started to ring. I stepped back into the booth to tell the person they had dialled a wrong number. There was a lot of static on the line as I picked up the phone and before I could say anything a man’s voice said, “Is that you”?
To this day I don’t know why I did this, but I answered “yes”, in a high-pitched girl’s voice. I’m not going to relate what I remember of the conversation; it was too sexually weird. Suffice it to say that it appeared that he was dating the girl I was impersonating and he was asking all kinds of personal information. Finally, he asked if he could come to “my” house and pick me up for a date. I said “yes” and we agreed upon 6pm. I put the phone down and started to tell Tony what had just happened. There are two school kids laughing hysterically in a tube station, what the passersby thought was anybody’s guess. I often wish I could have been at her house at 6pm to see the outcome.