DEAR SUN SPOTS: Regarding the old phone number on the hanger from a Rumford dry cleaner (May 22), these phone numbers were in use before the area’s phones had dials.

In 1959 and the early 1960s I worked in a Rumford office that had 227-J as its phone number. Every time you picked up the phone to make a call, an operator came on and said “Number, please.”

The call was put through by the operator. Local calls went through quickly, making a long-distance call took longer. My boss had a phone line setup that allowed him to also speak on the office line from his home. That was top-notch technology in action! — No Name via email

DEAR SUN SPOTS: Letters were often included as part of a telephone number to indicate the local exchange through which the call was routed. Exchanges were limited to 10,000 lines (the number of combinations for a 4-digit number), so in populated areas the local telephone company had to divide its subscribers into various exchanges. Initially these were represented by letters (e.g. AS for Astoria or CO for Cony Island in New York City), but eventually they were phased out in favor of three-numbers exchanges like “784” for Lewiston-Auburn.

Often, though not always, the use of “M” as the exchange letter meant that the number went through the “Main” exchange, meaning that there was no local exchange for that area. The greater L-A area had so few telephone customers that the company didn’t operate multiple exchanges.

An article from the Lewiston Evening Journal (Oct. 8, 1924, http://tinyurl.com/pobhw3g) described the introduction of another letter, “K,” at the end of a number, to denote that the family who owned the number had moved. If, for example, you wanted to call the Poulins, at 1234-M, and they had recently moved, dialing that number would alert the switchboard operator that you wished to connect to the Poulins in their new address, and you would be put through to the information desk where another operator would give you their new number.

Dialing 1234-MK, however, would tell the operator to put the call directly through to the new family at “1234-M.” When new telephone directories were published, the “K” would be dropped, and the new family would officially adopt “1234-M” as their number:

As to LeBlanc Cleaners and Dyers, the Franco-American Collection at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College has some information about the business. It was started by Joseph LeBlanc, who came to Lewiston from Canada aged 18 in 1862, speaking no English. He worked for Henry Free at the Lewiston Steam House (which was established in 1860) before starting a business in Auburn with William Smith.

LeBlanc later bought out Smith and then purchased Free’s business to create LeBlanc’s Cleaners and Dyers. The shop at 139 Main St., Lewiston, was the cause of a large fire on March 23, 1929, which destroyed five blocks and caused more than $150,000 of damage. The building was a write-off, and by 1939 the cleaners moved to 143 Main (opposite the Empire theater) with another office at 6 Lafayette St.

Fires were apparently a hazard of the business, perhaps due to the chemicals involved in bleaching and dyeing, since a previous fire in 1901, which started at the same location, caused some $60,000 of damage. Mr LeBlanc was apparently taken for dead when he suffered an explosion at the plant, but later recovered.

LeBlanc’s cleaners remained in the family and was passed from Joseph (who continued to work at age 76) to his son, Alfred, and then to Alfred’s son, Julien. The business closed in 1976.

Readers curious about the history of LeBlanc’s or other prominent businesses run by Franco-Americans are welcome to visit the collection at the USM LAC campus at 51 Westminster St., Lewiston. Our hours are Mondays, Wednesdays to Fridays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 753-6545 or email franco@usm.maine.edu for more information. — James Myall, jmyall@usm.maine.edu

DEAR SUN SPOTS: As an everyday reader of Sun Spots, I’d like to comment on the lady who wrote about the hanger from Leblanc’s Cleaner’s. It was a very well known business in Lewiston, I had an old hanger and took it to the museum. Also when I was in grade school, our phone number in Lewiston was 4542 M. — mom6pep@mailstation.com

DEAR SUN SPOTS: Back in the day, we had private telephone lines and two- or four-party lines. Our number was 1213-R and the other three were 1213-M, W and J.

If you picked up the phone to make a call sometimes you had to wait your turn if another party was using “the line.” I think it was possible to listen in, but that was very bad manners.

If no one else was using the line, the operator would say “number, please” to connect you. 

It was considered very classy to have a private line. One of my classmates back in Massachusetts had the number 94. Dial phones came in the 1950s, and our town’s exchange was OLympic 3. — Anne Ceplikas, Auburn

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