Yesterday, when Marty brought in the mail, he said, “Wow! Look, a phone book!” We haven’t had a phone book in years. The cover says, “The real yellow pages. The original search engine.”
When we moved to Vermont from New Jersey 32 years ago, I was in for a significant culture shock. When I say shock, I mean shock. I was dumbfounded the first couple of years we were here.
Silly little things were different. You had to pump your own gas. You could smoke in the grocery store, which delighted me since I was a smoker at the time. Hell, I probably would have lit up even if I didn’t smoke because you could. To the 23-year-old me, this was the coolest thing ever. Now it’s the most disgusting thing in the world! 🤢
The whole food scene was different too. I missed little things like an authentic bakery, a good pizzeria, bars that stayed open late, Entenmann’s donuts, cakes and cookies, Tasty Cake anything, Taylor ham or pork roll. The list goes on and on. What Vermont did have was peace and quiet along with no traffic.
I will never forget the first time I saw a phone book. I was beyond amused that it was so skinny, like a half-inch skinny. The phone books in New Jersey were so thick they were used as children’s booster seats. The phone books in Manhattan could be step ladders; they were so thick. I remember thinking we aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto, or in my case, NJ.
Last night, just for kicks, I opened to the restaurant section of the yellow pages; I always look at the restaurant sections; it’s always about food with me. Some places have been closed for years and years. The more I read, the more I laughed. The Village Country Inn, The Rattlesnake Cafe, and Carmodys just to name a few.
Next, I checked the Hotels & Motels section. Most of the hotels are still in existence. The motels? More than half of them are welfare/halfway houses. I understand there is an extreme need for places like these for people down on their luck or bad situations. A few years ago, Marty and I got duped on a Priceline booking in Connecticut. Us and another family were the only guests of the “hotel,” which turned out to be a motel.
To say the least, it was entertaining watching all the action going on while sitting on our balcony that was 50 yards from the highway. When we were in the pool, we could have tossed a beachball over our shoulder, and it would have landed on a car.
At some point, I was apprehensive because people were whacked out on drugs and crazy. I mean, batshit crazy. Many were transients with vouchers from the state; our next-door neighbor was clearly homeless and wouldn’t leave us alone. We got the hell out of there the next day and said, “never again.” It was a learning lesson of a lifetime!
Back to the phone book, there were also goods and services listed that have been out of business for years. Doesn’t anyone who works for the Yellow Pages check these things? What’s even more puzzling is that they have added new businesses, so why not remove the older than dirt ones that exist anymore?
As far as the original search engine business goes, I looked up a couple of the closed businesses using an online search engine that listed the business as permanently closed. Another thing I started thinking about was who in the fuck even uses a paper phone book these days?
Back in the day when we moved to VT, the phone book was the only way to get local information, and it was trustworthy. This was how we found everything we needed before we had any friends to ask. Now we have the internet.
Also back in the day, whenever we stayed at a hotel somewhere, I would grab the phone book from the drawer with the Bible, jump on the bed, and start leafing through it. They even had menus so we could decide where to eat!Â
A big part of me misses those days of laying on my stomach with my legs curled up flipping through those pages. Believe it or not, I still look in the Bible drawer to see if there are any phone books; the Book of Mormon has replaced the phone book. BTW The musical The Book of Mormon is hysterical, and I love, love, love the music! I know I got off track here.
Maybe people who still have landlines and no computer use a phone book? Fair enough, so then they should at least have up to this decade’s information listed for these folks. Right?
My last question is, do businesses still pay to have their business ads in the phone book;? Selling yellow pages ads used to be a profitable business, our best man in our wedding Paulie used to sell those business ads. He was quite the salesman and guido!
All these questions and no real answers…it’s like the great phone book mystery that remains unsolved!
When I lived in NYC I would get all the phone books for free that were available. I had quite a stack and used them all pre-internet. Found advertising in them was prohibitively expensive but it was the only game in town.
Haven’t seen a phone book here in Central NH for years. I do clearly remember being financially gouged for my yellow page ad each year. Prices went up, up, up! But I owned a company so the yellow pages and the local daily rag were my only options to get my name out there at the time. The pre-internet days surely were a different world.
I miss phone books too. But if they aren’t making sure the info is accurate, it isn’t worth the trouble.
Julzie, this essay has made my day! It made me laugh my butt off. I live down here in York, PA, about 20 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line, a.k.a, the PA/MD border. I moved to MD in 1983 from my home state of Maine, where they may still actually have Yellow pages. Down here we had phone books that were also very large, but that was in MD near D.C.. Here in York, they still had local phone books with residential phone numbers and address, along with The Yellow Pages. But there are no phone books to be found here in York, a small city of about 45,000 now. I’m guessing they were discontinued about 2018, since that’s the last one I have.
The internet revolution has not only eliminated most phone books, but also lots of local newspapers. Local grocers stores and other companies do advertise as my stuffed mailbox on Thursdays attests. Anyway, I’m going to finally stop my ramble here. Rest assured your great essay about the Yellow Pages is going to be shared with friends and neighbors. They certainly need to have some humor in their lives. Stay warm!