Remember Phone Books? Canadian Man Enjoys Collecting Them
Fred Meandro of Toronto started collecting phone books when a library was tossing out old ones. He has 50, dating back as far as 1891. He tells the CBC he loves to look up old hotels or theaters.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Within living memory, the way to contact a person was not to Slack them or send a DM. You looked them up in the phone book, which Toronto resident Fred Meandro now collects. He started when a library was tossing out old ones and now has 50 dating back as far as 1891. He isn't sure what to do with the books, which nobody in his family wants. But for now, he's keeping them and tells the CBC he loves to look up some old hotel or theater. It's MORNING EDITION.
Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.