Sacramento, California

April 10, 2014

On my first day in Sacramento in 1983, after picking up the keys to my studio apartment on N Street, I headed over to the phone company offices downtown to start my service and pick up the phone. That was the only option if I wasn't able to schedule a weekday appointment and wait around for the service man to bring out my push button phone and plug it into the wall for me.   I placed the order, carefully picking out my calling features, but they didn't have the phone in the color I wanted so had to drive what seemed like forever out to Watt and El Camino (about 10 miles east) to get the actual phone.  It seems so crazy now, and a lot of work to have a phone line installed in my apartment. But phones weren't sold in stores then, and cell phones were years away for most of us (although my Dad had one of the very first mobile phones, back in the late 1970s, I think).  Other than a job, which I had, and a roof over my head, which I also had, the phone was the most important thing to me because it made me feel not so far away from family and friends in Southern California. Fast forward to today, when I was walking to a meeting and crossed paths with where I had been 31 years ago, just starting my new adventure in Sacramento. Wish I knew then what I know now.  Or maybe not.   (These pictures of phones are imprinted on tiles on the side of the building.)