It’s funny to many of us who remember when we really did talk to a local telephone operator once in a while. Now, sadly, there’s no one manning the CenturyLink lines in Downtown Lorain.
(Strangely enough, I also remember party lines, dialing to get the time and temperature in Lorain, as well as calling Dial-A-Prayer just to see what we would hear.)
Apparently the days of using an operator to call Long Distance were numbered back in January 1971. The ad below, which ran in the Journal on January 30, 1971, encouraged Lorain Telephone customers to do it themselves by dialing direct.
The ad is somewhat provocative, with the face of the attractive woman who apparently is supposed to represent a telephone operator. I guess they wanted to get the reader’s attention (the men, anyway) before giving them the news that they should get used to doing it themselves – much like pumping gas and (today) ringing up your own purchases.
Maybe Lorain Telephone should have used its friendly anthropomorphic telephone mascot instead to deliver the message.
