Here's a vintage ad for the Lorain Telephone Company that really drives home the fact that times have changed in the last sixty years.
The ad ran in the Journal on August 14, 1962. It shows a young lady looking rather wistfully at her non-ringing phone and has an unusual theme: "If they don't call maybe they don't know where to reach you."
"Dates missed can quickly become a thing of the past when you are listed personally in the telephone directory," the ad notes.
"Every member of your household will benefit from this low cost individual listing service – teenagers, relatives, or other folks living with you."
It's odd thinking back when most people had a land line and were listed in the directory. When the children living at that address reached high school age, they were included in the listing as well.
It was unusual for someone to have an unlisted number. All my school friends' families were in the directory. In fact, the other day I made a list of the numbers that I still remembered more than 40 or 50 years later and then double checked them in a vintage city directory. There were quite a few. (There are also a few numbers like Yala's Pizza that I still remember.)
Nowadays, with most people relying on their cell phones, it's amazing that a directory is still printed. I'm one of the few idiots people who still have a landline, as well as a listing in the directory. But my current directory address is wrong (it's one from five years ago) and I can't think of a single time that someone called me as a result of my being 'in the book.'
