Nowadays, when you call the police, this is what they see:
But 50 years ago (even 20 years ago, says Chief Thomas Browne), there was no visual element. You were just a voice; sometimes a garbled voice. Combine that with sound-alike street names in town, and we’d occasionally see emergency vehicles showing up at the wrong locations. Selectmen pondered changing the names of many streets:
Emergency workers are now trained about tricky names as part of their recruitment, and dispatchers know to carefully articulate the problematic names. So it’s a solved problem. If you call police or fire, they’ll find you, even if you call from Maryvale Road. Uh, make that Meadowvale. Or from Stony Brook. No, Sandy Brook.
Other happenings in September, 1975:
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