Someone left a new telephone book on my front porch this week, and I was surprised for a couple of reasons.
First, I don’t have a landline phone. Haven’t for more than a decade. I decided long ago that I didn’t need two phones, and my cell phone has proven to be more than adequate for my needs, so I canceled the landline.
Second, I don’t know very many people who use the phone book anymore. Google, it seems to me, is the preferred way to find information these days, and it’s quicker than looking up a number in a phone book.
I don’t know when people actually started using phone books. I know there were around when I was a kid, but I’m not sure how long after the telephone became popular that phone books came into use.
I know that nobody on “The Andy Griffith Show” ever used phone books. They just picked up the phone and told Sarah who they were calling.
“Sarah, get me Juanita down at the diner,” Barney would say when he was trying to set up a date for that evening.
“Sarah, get me my house,” Andy would say when he was trying to reach Aunt Bea about something or other.
It seemed to be the perfect way. Let the friendly local operator do the hard work. After all, you were paying for the service. No need for you to have to do all the work.
Like so many things involving customer service, that changed. Suddenly there was no friendly operator and you had to find your own phone numbers. That’s probably when the phone company started printing directories.
As a young reporter, the phone book was an indispensable way of tracking down my sources. I made certain that I had the most recent edition on my desk at the office and at my house. At work, we also had phone books from all the neighboring cities and from Atlanta in case we needed to find someone in one of those cities, too.
I remember one of my favorite scenes from “All The President’s Men.” Woodward and Bernstein were attempting to find a man named Kenneth H. Dahlberg. All they knew was that he was the Midwest finance chairman for the Nixon re-election campaign.
Woodward spent hours in The Washington Post’s library going through phone books from all around the country when he finally found him listed in Minneapolis, Minn.
Of course, it’s a whole lot easier today. If you want to find Kenneth H. Dahlberg – or anyone else – you just Google him and you can find out anything you want to know.
Most people today have cell phones, but there isn’t a cell phone directory. So if you need someone’s number, you have to ask someone if they have the number you are looking for. If they do, they give it to you and you can call the person you are trying to find.
Of course, you don’t have to remember any phone numbers anymore because you store them in your phone. Instead of remembering Chelsea’s phone number, you just look up her name and call her.
In fact, you don’t even need to look numbers up on your phone, anymore.
“Siri, get me my mother,” I say to my phone, and it immediately dials my mother.
Maybe we haven’t come so far after all.
