One more cut

Yesterday I cancelled the 800 number for my business. It simply wasn't worth the cost. As it was piggybacked somehow onto a local 313 number I went ahead and cancelled that too. The phones weren't costing a king's ransom: on average about 65 bucks a month. But why pay for something you don't need, that wasn't producing? Still, a part of me hated letting them go.

Back in the 1980s as me Pops was trying to expand the business into outstate Michigan he added a second line. With that one he bought advertising in outstate editions of the Yellow Pages (the what?) using it as the contact number; that way we could basically tell where an incoming call originated and know if the investment was paying off. Similarly with the addition of an 800 number sometime in the 90s he thought we might attract customers.

But now of course second lines for experimental reasons and toll free numbers simply don't mean what they once did. With cell phone plans being so cheap and extensive, having in most cases unlimited minutes at least within the US, toll free doesn't concern people. It's not the audience attractor it once may have been. 

Yet it was one of the few things left of Dad's business as Dad's business. They were ideas of his, very good ideas, which I've now put to bed. 

As we come up on eight years since his death, there is almost nothing, I'll say legally, left of it. Sure, we still have the same building, and I kept the primary business number of course, using it as my business and personal cell number.  But just that much more of what he created is gone.

Yes, time marches on. Too, it means more to me than it should, out of little more than sentiment. I know this. And yet, one more tie is cut.