P is for Pay Phone (remember?)

According to Webster’s College Dictionary, the definition of “pay phone” : n. a public telephone requiring that the caller deposit coins or use a credit card to pay for a call.  Also called pay station (1935-40).

Ahhhh—a trip down nostalgia lane.  I remember the first date I went on.  I wore a pair of penny loafer shoes with a dime—a DIME—in the slot for the penny that was supposed to be there.  This was in case of an emergency so I could make a phone call from one of the public phones located throughout the city.  I was instructed as to how to use the call boxes on the roadside should I be out in the country.  But always—the dime in the shoe.  You, too?

Today, a mom or dad probably yells, “You got your cell?  Got our number on speed dial?”  Well, of course the teen has their cell!  Would they be caught without it?  Plus, the parent only has to stay on social media internet to see what is going on with their teen as the youngsters post it live as to where they are, what they are doing, etc.

Pay phones.  A remembrance from the past.  Just try and find one now.  And a dime won’t even buy you a local number.  Try two quarters to get a dial tone.  Or—at certain campgrounds where there is lack of cyber service due to remote location (a rarity) you can use your credit card and pay whatever the service contracted decides.  In one campground, I had to pay $24.99 for a phone call with a master card.  Ouch!  That hurt!  Never again!

I have wandered streets of tourist trap cities, looked in windows of antique shops, and occasionally seen a defunct pay phone hanging on an outside wall next to the shop with no receiver, the front of the unit bashed in, and wondered how long before it wound up in the antique store’s displays.  Yes, pay phones are a thing of the past here in the USA.  And if anyone should run across one, and it worked, would anyone remember how to use it?  Who carries change anymore?  We would need to have the payphone have a slot for the chip on our credit card to activate a dial tone!

Personally, I do sometimes miss the payphone.  I mean, just remember the pleasure you could receive from slamming the receiver into the holder when the other party was being a jerk or yelling at you!  Ahh, the good old days!  HA!  Our truth.