Elmwood 68231

I heard a couple of people answer their cell phones recently by simply saying, "Yeah?"  That got me to thinking about my maternal grandmother who always answered the telephone with a cheery "Woods' residence." That was back in the day when people didn't carry phones on their person, answering in the grocery aisle, the bathroom stall or across the restaurant table from you in the middle of a meal.  A telephone was a stationary device that required a certain decorum when answering it. There was usually only one telephone in the house.  If you were a teenager and wanted to talk with a friend, the length of your phone call was monitored because there was just the one phone, just the one line going into the house.  That was also in an era when party lines still existed but were quickly going away. As a child, I lived in the country in a home that was part of a party line.  In other words, several households shared the same line, each with its own telephone number, but still shared so that you could carefully pick up the phone and listen in on others' conversations, if you so desired.  That might have been the beginning of viral communication, now that I think about it. Our telephone number was a word followed by numerals: Elmwood 68231, which was abbreviated to EL68231.  It was later changed to 356-8231, with the letters being replaced by their associated numerals.  When the party line went away, our home number was changed to 356-3877, a number my mother had until the last year of her life. So, when I hear people answering their cell phones today in such casual ways and in such strange places, I can't help but think of Grandma Carrie, answering their telephone with grace and decorum, in a lovely voice that invited the very best of conversation.