Ringing up the past for the future

In the old days, you could ring up your neighbors in a jiffy to chat about the latest goings on in town.

More than seventy years ago, local numbers had just three digits instead of today’s seven, and Beaumont’s portion of the phone book was a whopping 2 ½ pages long.

Many farmers, ranchers, and merchants knew important numbers by heart and often dialed:

• 844 for Dr. Howard A. Wood

• 656 for M & M Market

• 501 for Armstrong Dairy.

• 832 for Cox Seed and Feed

• 332 for Stewart Ranch

• 363 for Union Ice Co.

• 722 for Zook Hospital

Calling up history

As we flip through the 1939 Telephone Directory that belonged to former mayor Guy Bogart, it reveals a snapshot in time. He underlined important numbers like Annis Drug Co., the Justice of the Peace, City Hall, and names like F.S. Hirsch, Bill Hale, and W.C. Sutter. This harkens to a bygone era in Beaumont, when agriculture was king and you could set your watch by the passenger trains arriving at the depot.

(Bogart’s vintage telephone book, preserved by the San Gorgonio Pass Historical Society, is a window into the days before push-button phones, texting, voice mail, and Skype. In those days, you dialed 696 for the Fire and Police departments and 01 for long distance. The pamphlet-sized directory with 71 pages covered a dozen communities, including Banning, Beaumont, Elsinore, Hemet, Moreno, Murrieta, Palm Springs, Perris, San Jacinto, Temecula and Twenty-Nine Palms.)

Party lines and Person-to-Person

Inside the phone book, there’s a half-page advertisement on the back cover for typewriters. For $5, you could rent one for two months. Or if you’re horse needed shoeing, you could call a blacksmith in neighboring Banning.

Back in a time when there were “Party Lines,” and “Person-to-Person” calls, staying in touch cost a lot more. In the late 1930s, a three-minute daytime call between Beaumont and Los Angeles cost 70 cents, including federal tax. (With a “party line,” several families shared the same line. A “Person-to-Person” call was where the operator dialed a number, asked for a specific person and you were connected only if that person answered.)

And while this might seem like a long time ago, especially today when the phone book for just the Pass itself stretches to more than 400 pages, it’s a reminder about where we’ve been and where we’re headed. In our region, progress and even better days are always just ahead.