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I think I enjoyed living in Harvey House and the adventure of being away from home. I was so young, only 17, when I arrived. I had been the oldest of four kids; now I was one of many. There were always people around and doors left open so you could start a random conversation any time of day. In those days, you couldn’t easily keep up family relationships. There was one payphone on the first floor of each dorm. I recall coming up with tricks so that my parents could pay for the call. I think I called them collect, they refused the call, then they called me back at the payphone number. The window of my first second-floor room looked out over the upper quad where something was often going on. People coming and going, coming and going. I remember the ritual of picking up mail, buying a copy of a San Francisco newspaper, lining up for the dining hall.
Ah yes, telephony in the 1960’s!
I only vaguely remember the pay phones, but there was also a ‘regular’ phone (with a dial, of course, and in everyone’s favorite color, black) on each floor, which could receive incoming calls, and call out to campus numbers, and maybe local numbers, and maybe the operator for collect calls?
Back then, “long distance call” meant something really, really important had happened, because making such a call meant you were willing to lay out some serious cash! That refuse-the-collect-call trick was not unique to your family, Lisa, I assure you.
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