Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – David Wainland

March 29, 2007

TREMONT 8-5283

By David Wainland

Email, David@DavidWainland.com

The earliest phone I can recall was a heavy black backlight instrument that sat on a table in the entrance foyer of our Bronx apartment. That unit was part of my mother’s exclusive territory and nobody answered it but her. Dad seldom used it. He disliked long phone calls, as did my mother. In their minds the, “Ameche,” as my father forever referred to it, was for important messages and emergencies only.

In the Bronx of the forties if one wanted to contact a neighbor, you simply walked to their apartment, since the majority of your friends lived on the same block. Sometimes it was as simple as banging on the wall, floor, ceiling or tapping out a coded message on your radiator.

Perhaps this is why my parents did not object to the party line installed by the phone company. It was 1943 and wartime. We were lucky to have any kind of unit.

Tremont 8-5283, the first combination of numbers I ever learned, drilled into my brain by a fretting mother and permanently locked in my mind by her dire warnings. I could no more forget my first phone number than my mother’s name.   

The next most important number, should I get, God forbid, lost, was our address, 1859 Walton Avenue, apartment 2b. That was it except for our mail code, Bronx 52.

Things were numerically simpler in those days. I did not even have to memorize channel numbers since we did not get our first TV until 1952. Even then it was easy, five stations and some did not even come on line until after 5:00 PM.

Imagine that, one phone, one radio, one TV, maybe one car if you were lucky and only two sets of numbers to memorize.

By the time I reached eighteen, I had a driver’s license number, my social Security number, a five-digit zip code, a combination ten-digit / letter, Air Force serial number, and a six-number / letter combination, Air Force Specialty Code. In addition, there was my rank, flight and squadron numbers.  All of which are still lodged somewhere inside my grey matter.

I was discharged in 1961, another number wedged into my subconscious. My parents were now living on Long Island and had two phones, more numbers to remember, and a new address. Then my first car arrived accompanied by a license plate and insurance card, which of course had another number.

As the years scrolled by, it got worse. Today I have two home phone numbers, one fax number and two cell numbers, all with area codes beginning with a 1. There is a nine-digit zip code, four different pin numbers, eleven password combinations, license plates on two cars. I have to know the ages of my children, son-in-law, grandchildren, wife, sister, their birthdates and phone numbers and dear Lord, our anniversary.

Throw in bank accounts and a Medicare number and I feel like I am numerically drowning.  

Not to mention, I have to commit to memory 125 stations playing on five TVs, plus the programming numbers for five forever breaking remotes, and, oh yes, the code for my home alarm system.

I cannot even write all these numbers down for fear of somebody stealing my identity, so I try to commit them to memory.

It does not work.

Sadly, I have reached the stage in life, when called upon; the only number that I can readily quote off hand is …Tremont 8-5283.

David Wainland

david@davidwainland.com