Shelter Island, we’ve got your number: An Island tradition — the phone book
Shelter Island is a place of many mysteries, and one of the most impenetrable is the phone book.
Who produces it and how? Why in the information age is a printed document full of phone numbers, street addresses and Post Office boxes still considered a valuable record, in spite of being up-dated just once a year?
Shelter Island is one of few places that still has a phone book, and it seems to get more popular every year. A new one was published this week, and many will make sure not to leave their Post Office without it.
Most of us will look first at the cover photo — always a breathtaking shot of Island beauty.
But is it ever used for looking up phone numbers?
The answer is yes, maybe, and who cares? The phone book is so much more than alphabetical order and sequential pagination (although those features never get old.) That’s because the names, addresses and Post Office boxes in the Island’s phone book are not the automated output of a database.
The information is provided by residents to the Reporter, and is a product of the community.
Susan Carey Dempsey, the Community News Editor, who is in charge of this production of the hive-mind, said the residential listings are carried over from year to year and people call, mail or email her with changes.
“Who knows how far back it goes?” she said.
The phone book’s role as a receptacle of Island memory is something the publisher recognizes and respects. “We don’t take anybody out unless the family specifically requests it. Some families like to keep names in the book even after a loved one has passed on. It’s very moving when I get messages from people who ask about deleting a loved one’s name.”
The book also documents the here and now, such as the passing of a home from one generation to the next. Since COVID, there have been many additions, and increasingly people are listing their cellphone, as they give up landlines.
Tracey McCarthy knows a thing or two about phone books. Her family’s business, a publishing company started by her father, produced community pages for the phone books. Before computers they were the primary source of information about what to do and who to call.
They were also profitable. “A Yellow Pages ad rep in those days could make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,” she said.
There was one important feature the typical phone books lacked that she appreciates in the Island phone book — brevity. “If I don’t recognize a caller I can find out who it is by going through all the numbers in the book, because there aren’t that many,” Ms. McCarthy said. “I love the Shelter Island phone book and I love that we still have one.”
Susan Cincotta loves that our phone book unites all of us with landlines under the 749 prefix. “Oh, the small town, old fashioned joy when you can go to the Post Office and say, ‘The new phone book’s here’, and someone gives you a smile. The phone may be a computer in your hand, but a smile is your heart’s delight.”
For Cindy Belt, the publication of a phone book is the time for an annual tradition of. annotating the new edition. “I have a whole ritual of going through the new edition and adding numbers and P.O. boxes if they aren’t in it yet. I also cross out the folks who have moved or died that haven’t been taken out yet.”
Some would say that efforts to keep abreast of the changes misses the point of the Shelter Island phone book, which ceased being a reliable listing of who is alive on Shelter Island years ago, but still accurately represents who lives on in our hearts.
Want to send a sympathy card to someone you haven’t seen in a while? Their P.O. box is in the phone book. Wondering just how many households named Clark we have? Most of them are listed. Has a brain cramp robbed you of the first name of your neighbor’s wife? She’s probably right there next to him in the phone book.
Many people report keeping past issues of the phone book. Paul Shepherd claims to have at least a dozen on his desk now. “Once in a while you have to go into the Way Back Machine to find somebody, or reminisce.”
Kiki Boucher loves the phone book because it’s a connection to the entire Shelter Island community. She says the phone book feels personal. But does she use it? “Of course, I use it!” she said. “You know people, but you don’t always know their phone number.”
Ms. Boucher also relies on the advertising to contact local businesses. “It’s easier to look on the back of the phone book than my contacts. Advertising works. Plus, the cover always has a great photo of Shelter Island.”
To be listed in the Shelter Island phone book, you have to live here, which makes it a kind of social register whether you like it or not.
Rust Glover likes it. “I think it’s classy to have a local phone book.-The size of the Island means it will be small and kind of exclusive, not like those books you get for other towns that are two inches thick and ugly. It gives a sense of the island being a tight little community, and it’s a good feeling to think you are in it.”
