Discussions

My boyfriend and I have a bet.  
He said “no one has EVER had a five number phone number since the 40s.... I told him that Brandon had 726-4*** that you could dial as 64***.....  
Who is right here?

I was born in 1956 and for the 12 years I lived on the farm we had 327-r-23 ... That means our party line was 327 and our ring was two long, three short. We moved to Hartney in 1968 and we had a 3 digit number for quite awhile, although must say Hartney was near to the last Town to get dial phones. Sooooo I would think most places didn't get 7 digits until the '70s.

In the late 60's, I believe Brandon's only prefix was 728- , and I don't remember just using 8- and the number.  
Sadly, my memory is getting bad these days, so I will do the Canadian thing and apologize now.. just in case I'm wrong.  
 
Edited by loeog, 2017-11-04 08:33:12

Our first phone number was PA6-2611. Then it was 728-****. This was in Brandon.  
 
Edited by saltnpepper, 2017-11-04 08:36:34

Not in Brandon, but when I was a kid in a small town we only dialled the last 4 numbers. So instead of 123-4567, we’d dial 4567, and that was well in to the 80’s.

saltnpepper said "Our first phone number was PA6-2611. Then it was 728-****. This was in Brandon.     Edited by saltnpepper, 2017-11-04 08:36:34"

Not that it makes a big difference, but PA is also 72 on the phone.

We lived in a small town. We always dialed 5-0000. It changed to a seven digit in the nineties.

At one time you could just dial the 7 or the 8 and then the next 4 digits. I am well over 50 and grew up in Brandon. I remember using our original PA number, and remember getting our number changed to 728-XXXX.

Gosh, I must be getting old, our old numbers on the rural party line were 811-2 and 813-5, if you were ringing someone on your line you did so without making contact with the operator, someone not on the party line meant contacting the operator and asking them to connect you to the party, some numbers in the town of Souris were short numbers as well, not sure if there were single digit numbers, but there were two and three digit numbers. If I remember correctly my aunts and uncles number was 457, and we were taught to alway to be polite to the operator by stating the number followed by the word "please".  
 
Edited by don brown, 2017-11-04 17:01:18

my parents phone number was a 7 digit number in 1972 or 3 in the Hamiota area. that was also around the time they buried the phone lines. my grandparents move off there farm in 69 from the Kenton area. they had buried cable phone line but still had the old wooden box hand crank phone on the wall till they moved out.

My old furnace had a sticker from a brandon hvac business that had a 5 digit phone number, i wish I had paid more attention to the name at the time.