Fifty years ago the Island was assigned its own telephone area code: 609. Our writer reminded us, if we complained about having to dial – that’s dial, not press – too many numbers, we should remember that not so long ago we had to wait our turn for a telephone line. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that families could get a party line with only four other homes on the same circuit. Back then if you were nosey you could listen in to your neighbors’ phone conversations.

Before regular telephone service became available in Southern Ocean County, the first telephones in what AT&T called…