When Retro = Retrograde

The Telephone EXchange Name Project came to my attention this morning. It offers a database of the old two-letter abbreviations that used to precede five-digit phone numbers, before seven-digit (and now 10-digit) dialing became the norm. So if you weren't using your current phone number back in the early 1960s -- in which case you'd already know this -- you can find out what your exchange letters were, and what word they stood for.

Now I like going old-school as much as the next guy -- see my truck in the previous post -- but the past isn't always so pretty.

Case in point: Apparently, the exchange in my Arlington, Va., neighborhood was JEbStuart-6. Folks a few blocks over, in what was for decades a predominantly black neighborhood, must have just loved that.