Two things of note happened in our household during Thanksgiving week. On the day itself, Nancy and I celebrated our wedding anniversary.
Only 56 of them.
The national record for longest marriage is that of Herbert Fisher Sr. and Zelmyra George Fisher, who made it to 86 years, 290 days before Herbert died on February 27, 2011. Here’s the happy couple on their wedding day:
We are within 30 years and change of setting a new United States record.
The all-time record is held by Karam and Kartari Chand, who were married in India but lived in England when Karam ended 90 years, 291 days of married life by dying on September 30, 2016. He was 110.
So we’re 34 years and change from setting a new world’s record.
We haven’t discussed it but I’m in if she is.
Incidentally, the longest current marriage is between Evert Stolpe and Annni Lepisto Stolpe, who are still hitched in Narpes, Ostrobothnia, Finland after (as of Thanksgiving Day in the USA) 82 years, 244 days.
Studies show (What The Average Marriage Length In US Says About Your Divorce Risk (fatherly.com) that the highest risk of divorce happens within the first two years of marriage, before there are children to complicate things. The possibilities flare up between years 5-8, the infamous “Seven Year Itch” period. But years 15-20 are average but growing because in this time of late marriages, people reach their 50s, the kids are gone, and who wants to stick around with this person through their declining years when there’s fun to be had? “Gray Divorce” is increasing.
Apparently, we missed our chances. Now, we’re stuck with each other, which is fortunately very good for both of us.
When I sent my parents a letter informing them of the upcoming nuptials in 1967, my father wrote back to note of congratulations and hope that we would be as happy as my parents had been. “We never thought about divorce,” he wrote. “Murder, sometimes, but never divorce.”
Or something like that.
Bowling Green University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research published a study that only seven percent of American marriages make it to 50 years or more.
Hooray for Us!!!
The second thing that happened during Thanksgiving week was the arrival of the telephone book.
The 1967 phone book was the first one in Jefferson City to have my name in it. Right there, Priddy, Bob 1519 E. Miller Street. It was a third floor attic turned into an apartment reached by a laong narrow flight of stairs. The kitchen was the biggest room in the place. I lived there for about three months before we moved in together after returning from our Thanksgiving Holiday honeymoon in St. Louis (how old-fashioned that must seem in today’s relationships).
The house number later was changed when the city decided to renumber houses so that there was some logic to addresses (so first responders had a better idea where the fire was or the heart attack or the overexuberant family disagreement).
We later moved to an apartment closer to my work, which was a radio station in a building that no longer exists on Capitol Avenue (the radio station doesn’t exist in Jefferson City, either—it’s one of several radio formats crammed into a single building in Columbia). Then to a rented house where our Ericofon sat on the floor between the bedroom and the living room.
(Have you seen the video of two 17-year olds trying to figure out how a dial phone works? Check it out at (107) Hilarious video show 17 year old teenagers baffled by rotary phone – YouTube or another example at (107) Rotary Phone Challenge for Students in 2022 – YouTube). I’d hate to see them figure out an Ericofon, which was the first phone Nancy and I had as a married couple.
For any younger readers: the dial was on the bottom and there was a button that was pressed when the phone was put down that disconnected the call.
Look back at that 1967 phone book’s cover showing Capital City Telephone Company serving Jefferson City. But there also was Midstate New Bloomfield, Midstate Centertown, Mistate Taos, Midstate Brazito, Midstate Eugene and dial St. Thommas. It had 77 pages of residential numbers with “favored businesses”—meaning they paid more—set in bolfface and 128 Yellow Pages advertising businesses by category.
(United Telephone moved in in the early 70s. One day I spied a company pickup truck with the first name of the company misspelled, “Untied,” on one of its doors. I quickly called the newspaper, which ran an embarrassing picture on the front page the next day.)
The phone book for 2020-2021 was 234 Yellow Pages and 70 White Pages. It was small and obviously a lot thinner than that historic 1967 book. But it was about half the size, top to bottom and side to side—about the dimensions of what is known in the book biz as a “trade paperback” edition—about the size of my Across Our Wide Missouri books. But way thinner.
The new pre-Thanksgiving book had 16 pages of “featured businesses.” It has 118 Yellow Pages. And it has only twelve white pages—people who still have land lines.
Nancy found the names of a couple of friends on those pages. I have learned of a couple of other wons. I felt a strong urge to call them, land line to land line, to celebrate our distinctions. But I was interrupted by dinner.
Here’s the cover of the new one.
Look at the list of towns. It takes 21 of them to generate just twelve white pages. I’m not sure how important it is for somebody from Tipoton, 36 miles to the west on Highway 50, to have my home number in Jefferson City but what few people there have phones that don’t fit in their pockets have it now. Same goes for people in Syracuse, 41 miles away from our house, or Otterville (where the James gang pulled one of its last train robberies), 49 miles away, or Smithton, named for railroad promoter George R. Smith who was so disappointed the town didn’t want a railroad that he moved a few miles farther west and founded another town that would be more welcoming—naming it for his daughter Sarah whose nickname was “Sed” and therefore the town became Sedalia.
Well, we got a little carried away there. But the phone book lets a person with a landline 54 miles west of my landline to call me. The number is small enough we might invite everyone to a picnic at the Memorial Park Pavilion. We will provide a small Waldorf Salad, without marshmallows because I can’t eat them anymore.
Phone books are one of many commonplace things that remind us of the changes in our world over time.
Fifty-six years of marriage and phone books. And phones. We now have three numbers, two of which reside in our pockets unless we’ve forgotten where we put them.
Has anybody ever kept track of how many hours in a year we spend looking for our cell phones?
Anyway—
56 years of family and phones. And we’re in no mood to hang up.
-0-