On 2/24/06, John Rodgers <inua@charter.net> wrote:

But why not, somewhere? There used to be a fellow in the Atlanta phone
directory named Straiten Hard. I lost a $20 bill AND a steak dinner over
the name. I simply didn't beleive it. At a family get-togther, my
brother-in-laws wife - with the greatest of glee - dragged out the phone
book and pointed it out. We laughed our back-sides off at her, she was
so funny about it.

Please don't me stated. First job I ever did whilst still in in school was
Directory Service Operator. Seems we'd seen them all.

There's Royal Valley, John Meoff (listed his nickname), Benjamin Dover
(again under his nick name... Rule was "the phone company" made you remove
any fictitious name listings deemed offensive to the average phonebook
reader. An exception was later made to that ruling. So as part of my job, I
got Jack and Ben removed in the above example. Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse,
and even Mr. Lyon listed at the San Francisco Zoo was fine. One of my
counterparts in Marin County picked up a certain Richard darling who was
listed under his nickname Dick. The subsequent lawsuite filed by Mr. Darling
forced the phone company to make exemptions to their rules. So there sat the
listing in Corte Madera, California:

Darling, Dick, DDS.

BenT

ps:

i kept some pages of the 1978 paper directories just so i can use them to
win a awful lot of $5 bets all these past years.