Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 15, 1995 TAG: 9507170055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: Below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Gee, thanks, guys.
First, you Northern Virginians barge into the state and start paving over our beloved Civil War battlefields for your shopping malls and commuter parking lots.
Next thing we know, you're taking our area code.
Is nothing sacred?
The Old Dominion, our corner of it anyway, loses another tradition today, when our 703 area code - the state's original area code - is split in two. Northern Virginia, with its voracious demand for cellular phones, fax machines, pagers, computer modems and other high-tech gadgets that require a telephone number, gets to keep 703.
The rest of us in the old 703-land, a slower-paced swath of Virginia that stretches from the horse country estates of Middleburg to the coal mining towns of Appalachia, have been assigned 540.
And what do we think about it?
"That's a weird area code," says Boones Mill palm reader and tarot-card interpreter Donna Johnson.
Indeed it is. The phone company's run out of the old-fashioned area codes that have a "0" or "1" in the middle. So now we, along with 19 other parts of the country who haven't been plugging into the information age fast enough but whose neighbors are, get one of these new-fangled numbers.
It's more than a hassle.
It's an indignity.
"Personally," says Virginia Tech geographer Susan Brooker-Gross, who worked as a telephone operator in her undergraduate days, "I did feel like we were second-best. That we got stuck with the new one."
Because, well, we were.
The phone company techno-wizards say it's too complicated to make Northern Virginians change their area code. They've got more phone lines than we do, and they're adding more faster than you can say "AT&T."
Fact break: The phone company measures growth by the number of prefixes, because every prefix makes 9,999 new numbers available. During the past nine years, the number of prefixes in the 703 area code has ballooned by 62 percent, and almost two-thirds of those have been assigned to Northern Virginia.
"All this is fueled by the growth of the information economy," says Harrison Campbell, an economist and senior fellow at George Mason University's Institute of Public Policy. To him, this is further proof that Northern Virginia has established itself as a world-class leader in technology companies.
One of his institute colleagues, former state economic development chief April Young, even has speculated that having a 703 area code will become a prestige thing for some companies, the telephone equivalent of "Beverly Hills 90210."
Area codes, mind you, are powerful things. Real estate values in California's San Fernando Valley supposedly took a tumble when that region was split off from Los Angeles' pricey 213 area code, and "it became more obvious to outsiders how peripheral it really was."
That's what The Washington Post said, anyway, when it observed how neatly the new area code cleaves Virginia along cultural lines:
"703 is high-occupancy vehicle lanes; 540 is the Skyline Drive."
"703 is day care; 540 is Grandma."
"703 is Prozac; 540 is Ben-Gay."
"703 is one perfect child; 540 is three strong ones."
"703 is aerobics for fitness; 540 is haying for fitness."
What, exactly, is our proper response to this?
Should we hang our heads in shame and mumble whenever someone from out of town asks for our phone number? Will "540" and the other new area codes become the Scarlet Letter of the Information Age? Oh yeah, you're one of those big-middle-digits places who couldn't even keep your old area code. How are things down there in Petticoat Junction, anyway?
Or should we be glad we've finally separated ourselves from our mismatched phone mates in Northern Virginia? After all, expressing disdain for Northern Virginia long has been a favorite hobby among Virginians who live south of the Rappahannock River.
"Damn Yankees," grumbles Roanoke College sociologist Marvin Pippert. "I think that's how they're often perceived, as the damn Yankees from Northern Virginia. Fast-paced. Urban. Talk too fast. Live too fast. Can't get used to having the nice, slow-paced life we do. Good riddance to them and 703."
Besides, he's steamed about the Post's comparison. "Seriously, as a sociologist, I would be appalled to see that, because it propagates stereotypes about us as a region. This is not a good thing. This is feeding back into that redneck, Appalachian stereotype that has existed for 200 years."
Then again, maybe getting a new area code means nothing at all.
"We'll have to reprint all our business cards and reprogram all our fingers," Tech's Brooker-Gross says, "but I'm sure we'll get over it in about six months."
Funny. That's what the phone company folks say, too.
"Sometimes, folks think the phone company is doing this to 'em to mess with their minds," says Ken Branson, a spokesman for Bell Communications Research Inc., the New Jersey-based telephone lab that administers the sinister-sounding master list of area codes, the Northern American Numbering Plan. "They're just numbers, man."
Just numbers?
Just numbers??
Just because our local economic development experts aren't concerned - "I really don't think it means a thing," says Virginia Tech urban affairs specialist Michael Hensley - doesn't mean we've heard the final word on the subject. Let's hear from the real experts, those New Age number-crunchers, the numerologists.
Two of the Roanoke Valley's best-known numerologists are in agreement: 540 isn't a bad number, but we could have done better.
The key is that the individual numbers in 703 add up to a 10; in 540, they compute to a 9.
"Ten is a number of leadership, of initiative, of clever ideas and new ideas," says Jade Daniels, who's squeezing sore muscles as a massage therapist when she's not massaging numbers. "This 540 is completely different. It's a number of completion and the harvest."
Oh, there's that Appalachian thing again. Northern Virginia gets the cutting-edge technology, we get the cutting edge of a hay mower.
"If we want business, something adding up to an 8 would be better," Daniels says. "Nine would be a transitional number, so businesses will go through a transition. Some will close, others will open."
Trudi Mardian, a Roanoke hypnotist who dabbles in numerology in her spare time, sizes up 540 this way: "540 represents the hermit card, which represents the teacher. So being cut off from Alexandria is teaching us to grow, to be independent, to look within ourselves."
The danger, she says, is that nines must be sure they complete their projects and move on to the next one. "Don't be caught by your emotions," she says, quoting from one of her numerology books. "Don't hang onto the past. Wallowing in what used to be can only bring discontentment, frustration and depression.'
Don't believe her? A few weeks ago, she had to order new business cards. She knew "540" was on the way, but she couldn't bring herself to have it printed on her stationery. "There I was, wallowing in the past, and my husband was laughing and giggling because it's just an area code."
by CNB