Posted on 12/11/2021 9:27:32 AM PST by SamAdams76
If you are under 30, you will probably not understand.
There was a time when there were millions of these things across the United States. They were once as ubiquitous as stop signs as you could find on on just about every corner.
Every neighborhood bar had one. Every gas station. Every supermarket, restaurant, post office, convenience store, movie theaters, well, just about every public place you could think of.
And in places where people congregated in larger numbers, there were BANKS of these things. Airports, shopping malls, sports stadiums, and highway rest areas had rows of them!
I'm talking about the pay phone.
They were a marvel of technology in which you could drop a quarter in the slot (or aa dime for us older folks) and get the magical dial tone which would allow you to place a call to anybody in the country. If you weren't calling collect, you'd be prompted to feed additional coins at intervals lest your call be brought to a rather inglorious end. But if you called collect and your call was accepted, your initial coin would drop down into the coin slot like in a old-fashioned slot machine. Well, sometimes that happened, not always.
When I was young and poor, I used to walk around Logan Airport pushing my fingers into every return slot looking for that rare coin. When I found one (and sometimes several), I would get a rush of excitement that was never quite duplicated in my adult years. I also used to snag those baggage carts that passengers left lying around because they were too lazy to return them to the kiosk to get their quarter deposit. I would spend a Saturday morninig at Logan Airport doing this and would make an easy two or three dollars. One time, I found a crisp $20 bill on the sidewalk by where the taxis parked! But now I digress. But my point is, there is free money out there for those who want to hustle for it.
Those pay phones were once everywhere in America. They were also in our pop culture, showing up in many movies and in the verses of many popular songs. Here are some examples of pay phone showing up in songs:
Back when there were millions of pay phones in America, you could make a career of being a pay phone technician. Most of your service calls would involved cleaning chewing gum out of the coin slot, alcohol wiping handsets and unsticking buttons on the keyboard clogged up with people's sweat and who knows what else. But you would occasionally get a challenging service call which would involve taking the entire phone apart (453 replaceable parts!).
I would say that the early 1980s were the heyday of the telephone. Kids at the Crabtree mall would call their parents to come pick them up from a video arcade, with the sounds of PacMan and Space Invaders in the background. Anxious teenage girls would call their parents for a pickup from a date gone bad. Businessmen would get alerted with their newfangled pagers and have to scramble to the nearest payphone to retrieve their message. Stressed housewives would call their husband at work to say they their car broke down on the way back from their hairdressing appointment and was towed to a gas station by a guy named Al who is sitting outside in his idling Chevy Caprice waiting to drive her home (and hoping to stop for a drink or two along the way).
On military bases, soldiers would be lined up 10 deep waiting to use pay phones for that 10-minute phone call to mom. At bars, men would phone home to say they were "working late tonight" and not to wait up and the wives would then wonder why "Tush" by ZZ Top is blasting in the background with a bunch of clinking glasses. At airports, many were calling home to speak of flight delays and such. Occasionally, one would use a payphone to call in sick to work on the way to a fishing trip.
There used to be a time where you never left the house without a dime (or a quarter) so that you could place an emergency phone call if you ever needed to.
Another trick to let your family know you had arrived safely to your destination and give a message was to call home collect, ask for yourself with extra identifiers to convey a message...like a collect call to Joe edward blow the 3rd....
“Caller ID killed all the bogus calls like cheating on your wife and calling in sick....”
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Prank phone calls were the BEST. Your cat is in my garden, are there any walls there, is your refrigerator running. Good times.
They recently installed one outside my local King Soopers. A guy was taking a picture of it to show his son was had never seen one.
I love your redirect. It will baffle many, but they will enjoy the reading why so much Christmas we hear is lame.
My hat is off to you. Good move.
I grew up in North Philly.
When the ferals took over the city, they routinely destroyed pay phones and tipped over phone booths.
“Cultural enrichment” I think it’s called…
https://www.businessinsider.com/part-of-united-states-no-cell-phone-national-radio-quiet-zone-2016-9
Andover (MN) man installs pay phone in his front yard
https://wnyt.com/news/minnesota-man-installs-vintage-pay-phone-in-front-yard/6269690/
I had a friend who could whistle to mimic the sounds of the phone companies trunk switching tones...free long distance!
Or tear off a 10 inch long, coin slot wide, piece of the cover from phone book..shove it down 10 cent slot on pay phone...then pull it out quickly,. While rapidly and repetitively pressing the return button. Some coins would come out into coin return area. Magic...but stealing nonetheless.
The last time I ran across a pay phone I had my picture taken with it. The end of an era.
” “ When I was young and poor, I used to walk around Logan Airport pushing my fingers into every return slot looking for that rare coin. When I found one (and sometimes several), I would get a rush of excitement that was never quite duplicated in my adult years “ “
Same for me here at IAH in the ‘80s. There were scores of phones all lined up for harvesting.
Good one! No really. Very good. You’re quite observant and no doubt very quick on your feet. Seriously!
I don’t think such a thing would work. The coin that dropped into a slot would strike a chime depending on the coin’s denomination. That audio signal went to the central office to start the phone service. The dial tone had to be present in order for the coin drop to work.
I’m still trying to get a pager.
Those will make a come-back once civilizations hits the bottom.
Thanks. I had forgotten about that. I was just thinking steep mountains and deep coves.
Knowing that the silver pre-1964 quarters/dimes weigh (and sound) differently than the post-1964 coins, I wonder what sort of adjustments the phone company had to make to their pay phones?
Still a nickle in the booth off US 50 in my home town.
Those old/new coins massed the same, and their physical dimensions were the same. A great deal of effort was put into making them that way.
I still carry a phone card in my wallet, to use if I ever need to place a long-distance call on a pay phone. It’s basically a memento now, of course, but if I happen to die unnaturally and a cop goes through my wallet for ID and such, I wonder if s/he will know what it is for.
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