Land Lines

8513415. The first set of numbers I ever learned when I was all of four.

Like 1+1 = 2, I wrote them in crayon on wide-lined paper in kindergarten. 8513415.

  Those numbers were handwritten in my mother’s rounded right slant in the middle of the dial on the rotary phone that hung on the hallway wall between the den and the kitchen with its cord that stretched to the back stoop so mom could talk to her friends with the receiver cradled on her shoulder as she hung laundry on the clothesline. I remember walking onto the deck on a hot day in August when I was eleven and she was sitting on the edge of that stoop crying, the clothes still damp and bunched in the wicker basket.

“I can’t believe he’s dead,” she sobbed into the phone. At first, I feared it was my dad or grandpa, and I was relieved when she told me not to worry. I mean, sure, we’d listened to his music sometimes, but I had no idea she’d cared that much about Elvis.

  I called the number from payphones at the mall or the roller rink or my job at Golden Corral when I needed a ride.

  I gave the number to prospective dates, hoping to the heavens that they’d call it AND that I’d get to the hallway phone before anyone else in the house tainted our potential love connection.

I made most of my calls home in college on Sunday evenings when it was cheaper. I called collect from phone booths when I was out of dimes.

  I was a product of a seven-digit childhood. And then they added area codes.

  I called less frequently when I first moved to Los Angeles. I guess I was waiting for BIG news about my BIG break and it took a lot longer than I’d hoped. If my own kids disconnected for months at a time like I did, well they’d definitely no longer be part of our Verizon friends and family plan.

  I stopped calling 9198513415 for a while in the early aughts during what my father calls his 13-year mistake. After his second wife told him he had to choose between her and his children, dad and I only spoke when he was at work. That was weird. When that marriage ended, I was happy to have 8513415 connecting me to my father again.

  I’ve called the number several times a week over the past many years, knowing that a simple phone call would make my father’s day. Sometimes he'd say, "Yours is the only call I've gotten today."

When I’d get the answering machine, I’d leave him messages “guessing” where he was. It was a little game that I knew elicited smiles.  “Hi Dad! Are you out eating a blooming onion at Outback with Bob?” I’d ask. “My money is on you drinking a beer in the stands at a Durham Bulls game!” Or “Hey Pops! I bet you’re playing coins, stamps, medals, honors and awards with your 'stamp-licking club'!”

  When I knew his housekeepers were there and he couldn’t get to the phone, I’d leave messages for them to hear like “Dad, are you at Hooter’s again?” or “I told you daddy, the next time you go to The Doll House, you need to bring $10s and $20s or at the very least $5s. The girls are insulted by your wad of ones.” 

  Those numbers are an anchor to my past. They remind me of family dinners when the phone rang and rang and we were forbidden to answer. We’d catch each other’s eyes around the table, never knowing who was calling and hopeful they’d try back later, though preferably not during The Love Boat or Fantasy Island. There was no way to pause the TV back then.

  The 851 indicated that we lived in the southwestern part of Wake County, off US-1 in the fringes of Cary, not far from NC State University. Cell phones numbers don’t provide that relationship to a place. The area code is generally where the phone was purchased and has nothing to do with where the owner actually lives.

  My father worked for Southern Bell and was part of the crew that transitioned many of my hometown’s 8 and 4-grade shared-circuit party lines to private lines back in 1970. Entire neighborhoods were then identified by those first three numbers.

  Growing up, closeness to friends was easily indicated in knowing their phone numbers by heart and not needing to look in an address book or directory. Now I have to look up my own daughter’s number when I buy lipstick at Sephora to get her the purchase points. I love my friends, but if I lose my phone, we may never talk again unless you come to my house or we run into each other at Trader Joes.

  8513415 was tied to the collective. It was mom’s and dad’s, mine and Billy’s, Marianne’s and Carolanne’s. They call it a landline for a reason. Not just because of the cords and cables rooted to the earth. It identified where we all landed when we entered that place called home. We were all 8513415. Then I moved away to a 213. My brother left for 828. My sisters found their own 919s for a time. Like Elvis, mom died. But the touchstone, that house, that number, my father was still reachable there.

  I called 9198513415 for the last time in June, before I left for Europe. But dad fell while I was in Switzerland. He was down for 24 hours when the neighbors noticed his trash cans hadn’t been brought in and his mail was still in the box. His car and truck were in the driveway and he wasn’t answering his cell phone or 851-3415, so they used the key I gave them and found him bruised and disoriented on the bathroom floor.

  Things have moved slowly and quickly since. Weeks in the hospital. Weeks in rehab. Slow, dispirited conversations on his cell phone. He couldn’t move back home to his two-story house. That was pretty clear. My sister took charge, moving him to a retirement home, selling his car and his truck and consolidating bills. Dad needs the money and he needs to be safe. I get that. But there are people that I don’t know who were hired to pack up the house and donate, trash or sell the things they determine will no longer fit his condensed life. And not much will. The three bedrooms and two jam-packed offices in the home where he lived for 56 years have been downsized into a small studio apartment. He’s cut off from his former life, most of his belongings, his history and yes, mine. And last week, with no fanfare or warning, 8513415 was disconnected.

As shared at Story Salon on August 12, 2026 when the theme was "You Never Know".