The roaring sound came from our telephone—in fact, from all three telephones in our house that have the same number. Something was seriously wrong with the equipment at the house, not with the system itself. So I called the company and, after a long sequence of recorded voices, actually got words emanating from a human being. The next day a repairman came to the house. I looked over his shoulder as he opened junction boxes and was amazed, even terrified, at the complex wiring involved in something as seemingly simple as telephone service.

The upshot of all this meant that we had house telephones that worked—and a bill for $130. That's when the memories started unrolling. One hundred thirty dollars. I thought back how that would have covered more than eight months' rent for the house where our family lived at the end of Marion Avenue (the 1926 telephone directory lists it as "av," not "rd") when I was a very young sprout experiencing my first telephone.

It was a wall phone in the kitchen, with a hand crank on the side that one turned to ring the bells of other phones on the party line for direct connections or to call Central to place more distant calls. Central. Now there's a name that has passed from the language, telephone-wise; today it's Operator. Somehow, I prefer Central. Operator has an imperious sound, as if someone is going to tell you what you have to do. Central sounds more as if you are calling the shots.

I'm not sure just when Central was superseded by Operator. It probably was before the introduction of dial phones. My memories of Central involve a woman who was the mother of a grammar-school friend of mine and who worked on the switchboard at the telephone office in what is now the Corinthian Studios building on Big Basin Way. I could call Central and ask, "Is it OK if Benny comes over to play today?"

I like to reflect on the role Central has played in cultural folklore. In particular, I'm thinking of popular songs involving that vital communication role. In 1901 there was "Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven" and in 1918 there was "Hello, Central, Give Me No Man's Land," referring, of course, to the deadly area between opposing enemy trenches in World War I. I have a record of that song, and it's quite a touching ballad.

As to dial phones, Saratoga got them in 1942, just before World War II caused a delay in the transformation in other locations. For instance, San Jose was still grappling with prefixes like Ballard and Axminster while we rubes out in Saratoga were simply dialing four digits to make our local calls. That's right, dialing. When my family moved from Marion Avenue to our brand-new house on Orchard Road—back then it was called Oakwood Avenue—we had a wall telephone, without crank. Then dials, the ultimate in telephonic sophistication, came in. Four digits did it on local calls.

I can't pass up what I consider one of the most significant elements in Saratoga's telephonic history. This had to do with the inclusion of Saratoga's Glen Una area in the Los Gatos telephone system, rather than Saratoga's. Now it makes no difference, but there was a time when having a Los Gatos Telephone Co. connection meant paying a 5-cent toll to call across the street to a Saratoga neighbor. And in the Depression days, a 5-cent toll was something to think about.

This came about because Frank G. Hume, the owner of Glen Una ranch, known as the world's largest bearing prune orchard, was a pioneer in public utilities. He had a power plant, with electricity generated by a water wheel on the property, and he wanted telephone service. But he didn't want a line to Saratoga, because that's where his ranch hands would go to get drunk on weekends, and then they would fail to report for work on Monday morning.

So he had his phone line run to Los Gatos, where there was a locally owned telephone company, and that set the pattern. Saratoga, incidentally, eventually cleaned up its saloon situation.

These, then, are the matters that came to mind with that $130 phone repair bill. I just happen to have an antique hand-crank telephone. Maybe it's time to get it going again.