It's true: time has nearly run out in California. As of September 19, 2007, Californians will no longer be able to pick up the phone, call a number (the venerable POPCORN in Northern California) and receive, at the tone, the most current time. AT&T has decided to discontinue this service, which has been in effect for more than half a century. The advent of cell phones and other electronic devices that keep current time, as well as the need to have access to more telephone numbers (dropping the "time" number prefixes in the two halves of the state will open up 300,000 new numbers), have led to the demise of the time service.
It is truly the end of an era. Dialing "time" was one of the few numbers I could call as a little kid, so it is tinged with the thrill of big-kid-ness in my memory. Plus, there was always a strange sense of comfort knowing that, whatever else was going on in the world, we could all be united behind the kind woman on the other end of the phone who always knew exactly what time it was. At the tone.
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I totally relate to the part of enjoying calling "time" as a kid. Like you, it was the one number we could call. Many "pretend" phone calls were made talking to the time lady, trying to trick my sisters that I was really calling somebody.
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