Charles Kuralt

Making a telephone call in America today can take a little time. you have to say, "Operator, I'd like to charge the call to a billing code number in Area Code 212. The number is 555-4114. My name is K-U-R-A-L-T. I'd like to call Area Code 212, 555-43211. Extension 3613." In Georgetown, Mississippi, things are a little simpler. you just give the phone a crank and say, "Patricia, get me the drugstore."

MRS. PATRICIA BEASLEY: You want Georgetown Drugstore? The number is 8; shall I ring? Thank you.

Patricia is Mrs. Mallard Beasley, the operator for the eighty-office-phone Georgetown Telephone Company.

MRS. BEASLEY: Tommy, come here. What did you do? Listen, run in there and wash your hands for lunch. Run on.

TOMMY: No.

MRS. BEASLEY: Go on now.

TOMMY: They ain't dirty.

MRS. BEASLEY: Yes they are.

The switchboard is in her living room. It has been in somebody's living room since about 1890 when the company was founded. There may be a couple of hundred of these little magneto-operated telephone systems left in America, but they are going fast. The Georgetown Telephone Company switches over to dial phones next month, and Mrs. Beasley will no longer be needed to say...

MRS. BEASLEY: Number, please. I think he's downtown, Juanita. Okay, goodbye.

KURALT: Do you know everybody on the telephone system?

MRS. BEASLEY: Yes, I know everybody here in town, yes.

KURALT: What kind of requests do you get from people?

MRS. BEASLEY: Well, a lot of them, you know, ask me to take messages for them and they go and visit their friend and say don't ring me over here for the next hour or so. I'll be over a so-and-so's house, ring me over there. There's a little girl, Karen, she rings up and she just says I want my Grandmommy. So I just ring her grandmother for her. I just know who she is, you know.

KURALT: Karen won't be able to do that when the dials come in.

MRS. BEASLEY: No, I don't know what she'll do then.

Georgetown is eager to have dial telephones like all the rest of us; it is a mark of modernity, and every town likes to feel modern. But you wonder if Georgetown knows what it's giving up. Take Mr. L.D. Spell, down at Spell's Store, for example. He's been able to get by all his life without cluttering up his brain with the telephone numbers that clutter up yours and mine. If he wants to call his brother, for example, he does it with a twist of a wrist.

MR. SPELL: Hello, Patricia? Could I speak to Brother Rupert?

And when dial phones come in, Mrs. Bidwell Berry is going to give up a major convenience.

MRS. BERRY: Hello, Patricia? Have you seen Cathy?

In another month, if you want to call Elmer Knight's truck stop in Georgetown, Mississippi, you'll have to look up the telephone number. In the meantime, the number is 2, and if you can't remember that, Pat Beasley will connect you anyway.

People in Georgetown are all excited about the coming of dial phones. They haven't discovered yet that if you say to a dial phone, "Get me the truck stop," it doesn't know how.

On The Road with Charles Kuralt, published in 1985 by Putnam Publishing.