"Number Please" - A story about connections by Bob Kaufman

I don’t know when Calder and Richard happened by, nor when they went away, but for a brief time in the early 1950’s we were next-door neighbors. They lived in the little house beside ours at the top of the hill on Gulling Street. We always called it “The Little House”. I don’t know why.

The Kaufman House and The Little House
Hidden behind to the left, circa 1960

“I have had playmates, I have had companions,

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

“Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood.

Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

So wrote Charles Lamb. 

When I first heard this, that sentiment pierced directly into my heart and soul. I am certain it has application in both directions through the veils of birth and death … but that’s another story. This one is about the search that had engaged my mind and heart for decades, through the mists of time that have all but obscured the once-crystal-clear moments of earlier chapters of my life. The desire to find two particular old familiar faces stuck with me because of three black and white snapshots, and one very vivid memory of the time when I earned the wrath of “The Operator”. You should ask: “How could a pre-kindergartner possibly provoke a Bell Telephone operator?” Well … you’ll see.

Little Bobby Kaufman and
Richard Hammond circa 1952

The Big Snow hit Northern California the winter of 1951-1952. I was early in my fourth year, and few memories of that time are still visible through the mist. We must have been neighbors by then, but the Hammond family did not stay around town long – only a few years. From time to time over the six decades since those pictures were taken, I have often wondered what became of them, and on some occasions I tried, without success, to locate them.

Western Digital Type 500

The Western Digital Type 500 telephone first became available for consumer use in 1950. But, as with television, electric washing machines, and indoor restrooms, it took time for the Dial Phone to penetrate the small towns and sparsely populated areas of the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. Less dimly than The Big Snow, I remember the meeting all the town’s people attended in the elementary school cafeteria when the Dial Phone was introduced. It was around ‘56 or ‘57. I was older now, and just barely young enough still to enjoy the eight brightly colored tiny plastic telephones all the kids were given as a souvenir that night. There was one for every color in the rainbow, plus black and white. Like some modern weekly pill dispensers all senior citizens have in their cupboard, the phones came packaged in a clear plastic case with a removable lid so we could easily see them on display or take them out and play telephone games – pretending to talk to one another as if we weren’t in the same room. Not many years

hence, we played telephone for real, something we did as often as we could and a whole lot more than our moms and dads cared for. They cared even less when Tennyson called Venison. It was only ten miles, but incurred long-distance charges.

I guess I should tell the story about Tennyson and Venison, two homonymic, but otherwise unassociated words which, surely, have never been spoken in the same sentence in all the world, except by one humorous old-timer that night in the cafeteria, which yet carried the faint aroma of Mrs. Knapp’s tamale pie served at lunch time to all the kids at school. In truth, I really don’t know what was on the menu that day. The cafeteria smelled like tamale pie even on days when she didn’t cook tamale pie.

Bobby Kaufman and Richard Hammond
in our old Chevy at the WP Depot

When they first launched the dial system, the exchange numbers were TE2 for Portola and VE6 for the Graeagle area. On the dial, the prefixes were 832 and 836. Back then, the letters stood for something. The man who was giving the instructions said that TE stood for Tennyson. Just then the old guy in the back of the room stood up and in a heckling sort of way yelled, "What does VE stand for? Venison?" After a good laugh echoed through the cafeteria, the straight-faced presenter said the correct answer was “Vernon”. That name must have been thunk up by someone with very little sense of humor.

Western Electric
Antique Crank Phone

Before dial phones came to Portola, we only made crank phone calls.

“Number Please”. That’s what I heard each time I wanted to call Richard next door to see if he could play. To conjure the spirit in the box, I had to lift the earpiece, stand on my tiptoes, turn the crank on the brown wooden box that hung on the wall a foot or so above my head, and strain to speak into the mouthpiece to give the appropriate response. I do not remember ever getting a chair to make the task easier. Nevertheless, after completing the checklist, even this almost-five-year-old could wake the spirit from her slumber. It was always a woman with a somewhat nasal-sounding voice that answered my call. If I responded with the magic number: “2 9”, after a brief silence someone in the Hammond household would answer.

To connect to the home of “Little Bobby Kaufman” in the days of cranks and nasally operators, Richard would speak “2 2 2, please.” Soon after, the bell in the brown box on our wall would ring, and if it wasn’t wintertime, we would be playing in the yard faster than Superman could change in a phone booth. Although, I imagine that the picture of Richard and me standing on the snow in our front yard was taken some other day. Surely it was not the day I angered the spirit in the box, and by some miracle, lived to tell the story.

Calder and Richard Hammond
Joe Kaufman, in the Kaufman Yard
circa 1952

Before I learned to walk, it was easy to put my foot in my mouth, literally. Somewhere along the way it became possible to do so only metaphorically. By the time I was able to stretch and reach the crank, I was no longer capable of biting my own toe. I am best at metaphorical mouth stuffing and have trouble thinking what to say at times when I come under pressure. That day, when the imprisoned spirit asked: “Number please”, and I quickly responded, “2 2 2”, I had my first experience with a pressure situation and putting my foot in my mouth.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had given MY number, NOT Richard’s! Immediately I was flustered!

With those antiquated switchboards, whenever I turned the crank, a light flashed to alert the operator. She then would plug a cable into the jack for my line and ask for the secret code number. Once I spoke the number, she would plug another cable into the jack for Richard’s line. Soon we were talking to each other. Somewhat magically, our voices travelled through the wires down the street to the telephone office, through the switchboard and back to our homes. Given that we lived barely thirty feet apart, I think a couple tin cans and a long string would have worked just as well, and there would have been no spirits to anger along the way.

Eva Gufra and Barbara Applegate
At the Switchboard 1955
Bertha Miller Photo [1]

I expect the operator quickly noticed that 222 was busy, and that she could not plug another cable into that jack. I don’t recall what she said, but before she could finish, owing to my agitated state I blurted: “O shut up!” – quite loud actually – totally in character with my propensity for metaphorical mouth stuffing.

Not long after that incident, Calder and Richard moved away, and I never saw them again. But I always wondered where they went. This, then, is the rest of the story where I learned how closely connected our lives had been though we were completely unaware.

Occasionally, over the years I tried to locate Calder and Richard. When in Salt Lake City, I would look for Richard in the phone book. There were probably fifty Richard Hammonds in Salt Lake and the surrounding area. I never thought, even once, to look for Calder. Richards, like Bobs, are a dime a dozen, but Calder is priceless. In my life there has only ever been one Calder.

Sixty-five years or so after being grounded for sassing The Operator, COVID hit the world, and I was grounded once again. During a period of isolation late in May, I thought to search for Calder Hammond. Almost immediately, as if the operator had just plugged the cable into the jack for “2 9”, someone answered!

I searched for Calder Hammond on FamilySearch.org and I found him! He had passed through the second veil three years earlier, in 2017, and his information was now available to the public. One thing led to another and within two days I had corresponded with two of Calder’s daughters – and then, I was given a new magic number. I “turned the crank” on my mobile phone, punched in the ten-digit number, and Richard answered! I would have asked if he could come and play, but he lives seven hundred miles away. Instead, we reminisced about those carefree days in Portola, what little we could remember of them. It seems I had forgotten that we caught pollywogs together in the creek that ran in the gully behind our homes. Mom’s mason jars were good for more than just canning fruits and jams. We filled them with bug-infested creek water and pollywogs, added a few leaves and other green things. Then we put the jars on the porch. Before long, the pollywogs lost their tails, grew some legs, and little frogs were hopping out of those jars! I imagine that led to another grounding sentence. I was delighted to be talking to my long-lost playmate! Richard too, was tickled to have received a call from “Little Bobby Kaufman”.

 

The advent of social media has put tin cans in all our hands, and taut strings connect to other tin cans anywhere in the world. Richard and I could not have imagined such things when we were catching black, slippery, wiggly pollywogs in the creek. I have learned that we all share connections to others – kindred spirits, friends we never knew we had – others whose paths crossed ours, however briefly, perhaps long ago, or even long, long ago. In the end, I must confess that we are all brothers and sisters in more ways than we know.

I learned that Calder, his dear wife, and Richard all were members of the Tabernacle Choir for several years. A handful of times during those years, I sat in the Tabernacle on Temple Square and my childhood neighbors were in the choir seats, close enough to connect with tin cans and string. Their voices, combined with many others, produced that glorious music that I love dearly. There they were, right before me, in plain sight, and we were clueless. Two of Calder’s daughters, Carolyn and Melinda, are now members of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, anxiously awaiting the day when they can sing again. I, like they, have been agonizing the loss of music and anxiously await its return. Until then, I look for them in every recording I watch, and rejoice when I see their faces in the Alto section.

Richard and Calder in front of The Little House
On Gulling Street, Portola, Summer2013

In the summer of 2013, while Calder was still able to travel, Calder, Richard, and their families visited Portola and Graeagle, places which “formed some of [their] happiest boyhood memories”. Among other places, they stopped at the top of Gulling Street on the north side of town and took a picture in front of The Little House. No more than a week later, Claire and I stayed several days in Portola, for the annual Alumni Picnic. Oh, how I wish we had been there just a few days earlier! As with everything else in town, those houses where we lived and played have changed significantly. But then … so have we.

John, Elliott, Don Kaufman and 
Cousin Jamie Kaufman in front of The Little House
Summer 1986

Ever so slowly, spring 2020 morphed into the hottest and driest summer on record for the Phoenix area. September came, and Claire and I were able to hit the road for Salt Lake City to escape the heat, to visit my niece, and hopefully to see some fall color. My discovery from late in the spring had almost slipped from my aging mind. Suddenly, somewhere on I-15 north of Cedar City, I remembered Richard! He lives in Salt Lake. I can see him! Soon, we had engineered a meeting for lunch a couple days later. It happened to be on my birthday. When we arrived at Little America, we found a private room full of the Hammond family!

What followed was a delightful couple of hours reminiscing, and visiting with friends we didn’t know we had – kindred spirits from a time before pollywog hunting, before The Big Snow, before crank phone calls, before all that. We talked about Portola, The Little House, music – the language of heaven, Calder’s bittersweet passing. We even enjoyed lunch and dessert … oh wait … we skipped dessert. 

Richard and Bob
September 14, 2020

It was a day of tender mercies. I felt the sentiment expressed by Juliet Ashton in her letter to “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”, one of our favorite movies:

“Without knowing it, I feel I’ve been searching for the old familiar faces for many years now, and can’t quite account for why I recognize them as yours. But I do.”

“Do you suppose it is possible for us to already belong to someone before we’ve met them? If so, then I belong to you, or you to me. Or me simply to the spirit I found among you…. That is as good a definition of family as any I know.”

That would have been reward enough for having waited over six decades to be reunited. But my joy was not yet complete. Before we set course for our separate ways, four present and former members of the Tabernacle Choir and the rest sang Happy Birthday to me, there in that banquet room in Little America! Few people can say they ever received such a birthday present.

To Richard and Suzanne, Joyce, Melinda, Carolyn and Derek, I will quote Juliet Ashton again.

“Thank you for sharing the story of your family with me, and for sharing [Calder]. Though I did not get to meet him [again] myself, I feel keenly how [his] life has changed the arc of my own forever, in ways I am only just beginning to discover.”

I went in search of childhood friends and found connections that extend much further back in time.

When Alma encountered the Sons of Mosiah after years of separation on their missionary journeys, what added to his joy was that they were still his brethren in the Lord. I expect Calder and my brother Joe had a joyful reunion a few years ago. Still, another reunion awaits somewhere down the road. I expect it will be without the use of cranks and dials – not even tin cans and string!

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Footnotes:

[1] The image of the operator shows Barbara Applegate, mother of my classmate and old friend, Dave Applegate. I wonder if she might have been the "spirit in the box". It would be fun to think so.

This image was posted in 2008 on our PHS site at MyFamily.com by Carrie Neely, daughter of Bertha Miller. A friend, Dolores Schuetter, PHS class of 1961 posted this comment:  "I also remember the crank telephone on the wall in the kitchen. Whenever I needed my mom (at work) I would crank the phone and say: "I want to talk to my mom" and I would be connected. Also remember the party lines."

I expect "The Operator" knew a whole lot more about us kids than we knew about them.

 

Melinda, Joyce, Carolyn, Bob, Richard, Claire, Suzanne

Joyce, Melinda, Derek, Carolyn, Bob, Richard, Suzanne