25-11 150th Street;
150-12A 26th Avenue;
194-01 37th Avenue, Flushing, New York.

Those were my three addresses in New York City from 1947 to 1961.

FL 8-6178;
NE 2-6272;
BA 5-1806.

Those were my phone number, my Aunt Gert’s phone number, and my best friend Allen’s phone number during that same period.

How on earth, and why, do those things still stick in my head after seventy-plus years? In fact, my phone number and Aunt Gert’s were the first ones I ever learned when we got our first phone in New York. I was eight years old. That was seventy-eight years ago.

I also remember my Kindergarten and First Grade teachers at Stevenson Elementary School in New Rochelle, New York. Miss McMahon and Miss Kellner. (We didn’t know about “Ms” then.)

Yet I can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday. Or what I’m supposed to do today without checking my list. That’s the part that feels eerie to me. The recent stuff slips away, while certain details from childhood stay put. Those are the memories that stick.

Maybe it’s because the world I grew up in moved slower, and details mattered more. You had to remember things. You couldn’t just look them up.

So here’s a little history lesson that might explain why those memories took hold.

Growing up in Queens in the 1940s and 50s was different. People weren’t nearly as mobile as we are today. An automobile was sort of a luxury. My dad had a 1941 Oldsmobile when he died in 1943. I learned that later from my mom. She never drove, and I assume she sold it after he passed. New cars weren’t even produced during the war years, from 1942 to 1946.

Most grocery shopping was done on foot. Because of that, there were all kinds of “men” who delivered things to your door. Almost everyone had a milk box outside. The milkman delivered milk, and sometimes cream, very early in the mornin. (Hence all the “milkman” jokes.)

The iceman delivered a block of ice for your “ice box.” Not everyone had an electric refrigerator. There were breadmen, coalmen, and eggmen. My Uncle Ted owned a chicken farm and delivered eggs throughout the village of Wurtsboro, New York, where he lived and worked. Pardon the sexist titles. It was eighty years ago.

And then there was the telephone.

It hung on the wall. We had a party line, which meant more than one family used it. You’d pick up the receiver and someone might already be talking. You were supposed to hang up immediately and not listen in. You’d try again later. Common courtesy was to keep calls short.

When you did get a dial tone, you dialed the alphanumeric number. FL8-6178. No area codes. If you were calling outside your local area, you went through an operator. Many phones didn’t even have dials. All calls were made through an operator, like my mom or my Aunt Gert.

Those numbers mattered. You memorized them. You used them. They connected you to real people, in real places, at specific times of day.

Maybe that’s why I still remember them. Maybe that’s why they stuck.

So how on earth did we survive without all the things we take for granted today? I dunno. But I’m still here.

And the memories that stick are still with me.

So there.

Enuf.