Very Old School

Today I'm departing from the paranormal to wax nostalgic. I'm actually a very nostalgic person and get everything from homesick to downright sad about some things that used to be and aren't any longer. Maybe, as counselors say, I have "trouble with transitioning," a bit of a struggle letting go of the old and going on with the new. Maybe it's because I have this weird memory function that holds onto details and colors and sounds from my past (ask me the name of every grade school and high school teacher I've ever had and I already know I can name them all.) So sometimes I do miss things that most people probably don't even think about any longer.

Today I'm missing phone books. Yup, good, old-fashioned, thick-as-a-brick phone books. It occurred to me a few minutes ago that the information I was seeking on the Internet about my particular financial institution (i.e., what time does it open today?) I would at one time have sought by using the phone book. In the old days, I would have called and gotten a voice mail message telling me they weren't open yet and then listing their hours. In the VERY old days, I would have gotten no answer at all and thus would know that the place was still closed. And then I would have been calling back until someone picked  up on the other end and I would know they were (finally) open for business. Anyone else remember doing that?

Remember when there were actual phone books in actual phone booths? Even in The Terminator, a movie from not that long ago, Arnold Schwartzenegger's terrifying mechanical killer found all the Sarah Connors listed in a phone book and ripped that page out for reference. It's been a long time, but I think that phone book was in a phone booth.

But phone books - huge, honking things, if you lived in Chicago - could be incredibly versatile. I knew someone who killed cockroaches by dropping her phone book on them. Well, actually I don't know if the phone book was enough to kill the things, or if it just stunned them enough that she could take proper aim with her heavily-shod foot. I don't normally kill things like beetles or spiders myself, but I could definitely see dropping a phone book on a cockroach.

They functioned very well as doorstops and paper weights.

I remember that when the new books arrived, I would take the old one and put it in my car for easy reference, in the days before cellphones. It was great for looking up restaurants, spur of the moment.

In grade school, did anyone else ever try looking up their teachers? Just for the heck of it?

And remember entertainers who could memorize pages of a phone book and then spit the information out on demand? I mean, who can do that kind of thing???

But one of the things I miss the most about the big White Pages was having the handiest resource around for character names. Last names, sometimes first names -it was a five-pound list of names, something that every writer needs to be able to come up with, and so frequently needs help doing. Sometimes I went through all the names under a specific letter just for fun, to see what came up. I think "Johnson," "Smith," and "Jones" literally had pages of listings. But if I needed an Irish-sounding name, I knew where to look (see: "Mc"). Ditto for German (try under "Sch-"). 

Street names were also presented in copious lists, and that was sooo helpful.

I liked the Yellow Pages because they suggested possible occupations or career paths for characters. Or, when I was writing as a kid, occupations or career paths for my characters' parents. And some of the ads were just interesting. In the days before clip-art it was fun to look at carefully drawn ants in the exterminator ads, or the happy, smiling heads that might frame an ad for carpet cleaning.

These days out here in my suburb, we still get local phone books delivered, but all of them are pretty small and they're actually sad-looking things. I guess someone still prints them for people like me who are nostalgic, or for people older than me who really don't like looking up things online or on their phones. But these new books are not as much fun. I do miss the old ones and wish I had hung onto at least one copy of the White Pages, but in a moment of responsibility, I recycled the last of them. I was being green and doing the right thing for the planet. 

But dang it.