20 years ago

Old timers remembered the days when you just had to dial four numerals for any phone number within the 235- prefix. Then, the phone company required dialing the prefix, too. Still, when asked a phone number, people would say just the four numerals, like “7767” for the Homer News.

Those days ended when Alaska Communications System added a new prefix to the southern Kenai Peninsula region: 226. New customers will get the 226 prefix, although if an old 235 number is available, they might get that. The phone company doesn’t reassign residential phone numbers for a month and business numbers for a year.

The reason for the new prefix has to do with more customers and also more wireless phone service and pagers. Businesses or government agencies can get blocks of numbers which will allow direct in-dial of only four numerals.

The central peninsula also got new prefixes, with 714 added to Soldotna and 335 added to Kenai.

— From the issue of Dec. 21, 2000

30 years ago

Shawn Kinney bought her husband Mark a special, one-of-a-kind Christmas present: a 35-ton rock. The huge rock had been a liability for Pioneer Car Wash owner Malcolm Mackintosh, and after he failed to win a small-claims suit asking the city to remove it, was glad to get rid of it. The price: $1, plus moving expenses. North Star Terminal and Stevedore quoted a price of $125 to move the boulder one block up Svedlund Street to the Kinneys’ home on Lee Drive. The rock was dug up from Svedlund Street when work was done on the road in the 1970s. Mark Kinney said in his mind the rock is just coming home.

“I kind of wanted her to give me something that will last, and believe me, that rock is going to be around 100,000 years,” Mark Kinney said.

— From the issue of Dec. 27, 1990

50 years ago

The issue from Dec. 24, 1970, is missing from the Homer News archives.