When Ron and I came home from school, for one reason or another we would usually want to get in touch with Mom. If we weren’t in a hurry, or just wanted to go downtown anyway, we could tell Puddles to “find Mom.” But if we were in a hurry, or wanted to let her know we would be at a friend’s house, we used the phone.
“Number, please?”
When we were little, we used to just tell the operator the place we were calling – “Motel, please” – instead of the number. Now that we were big, we used the numbers.
“36, please.”
“Mike, your mother isn’t at the Motel,” Pearl might say. “I just saw her walking up the street. I think she was going to Disotelle’s. I’ll ring the bar for you.”
The telephone switchboard where Pearl worked was in a building in the center of downtown Point Arena, next to Titus’ Sweet Shop, with a big picture window that overlooked Main Street. Between keeping track of everyone by their phone calls, and watching their comings and goings on Main Street, Pearl usually had a pretty good idea about where most of us were at any point in time.
Today we have cell phones, and pagers, and all sorts of other sophisticated electronics. None of them work worth a darn in Point Arena. After more than sixty years have passed, and after all our progress in electronics, we still got better service in Point Arena when Pearl came on the line: “Number, please?”
1 comment:
I haven't thought of Pearl Warren in years. She used to occasionally babysit my sister Irene and me when our parents went to dinner. I remember being scared of Pearl's sister (can't remember her name) because she had been badly scared by burns. Kids are so judgemental.
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