I’m not sure why, but I was lying in bed this morning
thinking of pay phones. It would be nice to think that the memory was the last
remnants of a particularly wonderful dream, not just some random thought that
spun itself into my brain.
You don’t see pay phones much anymore, and to tell the truth
I can’t remember the last time I saw one on the street. I suspect that the odd
bar and most federal buildings will have them tucked away in some unobtrusive
corner for the odd, antiquated person who shuns modern technology. Now that I
am thinking about it, there were pay phones in the hotel lobbies down in Las
Vegas . I guess anything that takes coins is fair game
in Vegas. I kind of miss the pay phones; just seeing them gave me a feeling of
being in touch no matter where I found myself in the world.
I can remember that pay phones were on almost every corner
when I was a kid. The ones that I remember all had coins slots for 5¢, 10¢ and
25¢. For most of my life a call cost 10¢, but changed to 25¢ when I was a
teenager. You could always get the operator for free and in a pinch you could
make a collect call for someone to come and rescue you. Normally, you would
always have a dime or a quarter in your pocket in case of an emergency.
Sometimes you would have to make a decision whether you needed a candy bar more
than you needed that feeling of security access to a pay phone. In my
experience, munchies would trump safety every time.
I went out with a girl who had a necklace that held a
quarter inside of it. I suspect that her dad bought her the necklace when I
started to date her. It was kind of pretty and useful at the same time. She
spent the money once and somehow her dad found out and she was grounded for a
week. I carried a keychain that held a quarter for a number of years and just
never used it. By that time in my life, I always had some coins in my pocket
and never had to use me “emergency” quarter.
Phone booths weren’t just for making phone calls. Each and
every phone booth had two phone books, a white pages and a yellow page
directory which were handy if you got “sort of” lost and actually needed the
correct address of someplace. The pages were also good if you needed to make a
note or write down that cute girls name and phone number. The booths provided
temporary shelter from the rain and wind. I would often duck into a phone booth
when the wind was howling to light a cigarette with relative ease. In later
years the phone company built phone booths without doors for some reason and an
opening at the top and bottom which the wind blew through with ease. Shortly after that, the phone booths lost
their “booth” part and became phones with two short sides attached. Probably they figured out how to waterproof
the phones by then.
Phone booths began to wane with the proliferation of cell
phones. The ones that were left fell into disrepair and more often than not
would be missing the phone books or have the handset missing or damaged. I
suppose that they ceased to make a profit for the phone company and just became
a liability over time.
I kind of miss phone booths, but I have a cell phone myself
and can’t imagine a time that I would use one now. Even if I were without my
cell phone, someone I was with or even a perfect stranger would loan me theirs
for a quick call. Times do change, and I suppose we change with them.
