Do I Remember a Telephone Upstairs?

Not until the late 1960s.

Advertisement from The Architectural Forum, June 1940

(Yes, we were definitely behind the times).

Until then, the only telephone in the Nelson household, located at 4 East Third Avenue in Warren PA 16365, was one of those standard black desk jobbies.  It sat on a small cabinet in what could loosely be called the vestibule of the house.

Hell, in 1959, folks in Warren were just getting used to direct local dialing, which may or may not have been referred to as DLD.