I updated the Relics: Mail chute post with slightly better photos and a new photo taken at the Garland Building in Chicago. I forgot to take a photo of the lobby box, but will. Someday. I wonder what is under the white paint, although I suspect hallway mail slots weren’t as fancy as the lobby boxes.
As usual in the Midwest, summer has brought a relentless series of watches and warnings, including thunderstorms, severe weather, flooding, and tornadoes. When a new watch or warning is issued or a current one is updated, one of my phone’s weather apps emits a submarine sound. Sometimes I feel like I’m immersed in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Not that long ago, before mobile phones, weather apps, and 24/7 cable, people got their weather news and updates from regularly scheduled radio and television news. Emergencies might warrant a crawl across the TV screen with a siren or very loud beeping. Basic, everyday weather news at 6 and 11 wasn’t enough for my dad, however. He tuned into his dedicated weather radio.
A weather radio picks up NOAA broadcasts that include arcane weather details you won’t hear on the 6 o’clock news, which you may not watch anyway because you get the news from trending topics on Facebook and Twitter. I hadn’t heard a weather radio broadcast in decades, but I remember a flat, tinny male voice, most likely not a “voice talent,” reciting a long list of current weather conditions and statistics in a monotonously soothing way. My dad could listen to this for long periods, as though he were a farmer whose livelihood depended on knowing weather conditions intimately and preparing for them. Our weather radio did come in handy a few times, such as during the Western New York Blizzard of ’77. We kept spare batteries on hand for all of our radios because we never knew when wind or ice would knock out the power.
Today I imagine a weather radio may be useful to boaters, campers, hunters and fishers, construction foremen, and anyone else whose life or work might depend on unexpected or sudden changes in weather conditions. Several years ago in Chicago, a horrendous thunderstorm with hail abruptly blew in without warning, even breaking thousands of panes of glass at Garfield Park Conservatory. If I were out on Lake Michigan in a small craft, I would have wanted to know about those black clouds darkening the western sky, how conditions were changing, and how long I would have to row my boat ashore.
Here’s a little more about these broadcasts:
NOAA Weather Radio is a 24 hour a day…7 day a week continuous broadcast of weather information. With the touch of a button, the current conditions, 7 day forecast, and other pertinent weather information is available whenever you want it. More importantly is the ability to get severe weather information the moment it is issued. Most weather radio models have an alert feature that will be activated to alarm you of any watch or warning issued for your area. Many have SAME technology that will only alert you for the county (or counties) you are interested in.
Weather radio came into being in 1972, and was designated by the White House as the sole government-operated radio system to provide direct warnings into private homes for both natural disasters and nuclear attack. This concept has been expanded to included warnings for all hazardous conditions that pose a threat to life and property.
As I said, once upon a time, the voice belonged to humans — as it turns out, the updates were recorded by staff at local National Weather Service offices, nearly all of them male. Although the voices varied, they were reassuring in their lack of voiceover-style sophistication. Today, however, the voices are synthesized. “Tom” comes closest to my memories, but still he doesn’t quite evoke morning at the kitchen table, listening to the weather radio.
Of course weather radios aren’t truly a relic. Not only can you still buy them, but there are even a number of options in a surprisingly broad range of prices (my brief search showed roughly $25 to $60, or $75 with a lithium battery). Copy for my favorite, no longer available, says: “If you’re in an area prone to occasional violent weather (and what area isn’t?) this radio can be a lifesaver.” I’m tempted.
If you have a weather radio, here’s where you can find your local weather station. Chicago’s is KWO39 at 162.550, broadcasting from Romeoville in the southwest suburbs via a transmitter at the “Sear’s Tower” (someone needs to tell NOAA it’s now Willis Tower).
Will your eight-year-old son or daughter wax nostalgic over iffy mornings and evenings or camping trips spent listening to “Tom” or whatever synthesized voice supplants him? For myself, “Tom” doesn’t evoke strong feelings or tempt me to buy that spiffy weather radio after all. I guess I’ll just have to keep feeling like I’m aboard the Seaview.
UPDATE 7/29/2016: After the skies turned dark again, I compromised and spent $4.99 on a weather radio iPhone app. Still not the same as the radio on the kitchen counter.
I can’t count the times Garrison Keillor has worked the Lutheran compulsion to ply guests with coffee into A Prairie Home Companion. My parents weren’t Lutheran, but the moment they saw a car that looked like it might pull up in front of or next to the trailer, out came the coffee and any cookies that had escaped my foraging on the sly. It was an invariable ritual, almost as certain as death or taxes.
The first coffeepot I remember was a percolator. Although I haven’t seen one since those times, I remember that coffee percolating was a rich sensory experience — the aroma of the coffee as it percolated, the sight of the liquid shooting up against the inside of the clear lid handle, and the bubbly sound that inspired an unforgettable series of percussive notes that still evokes vintage Maxwell House coffee advertising.
I recall the parts as well — the pot, the basket, the lid, and the hollow stem through the basket, as well as the filters with the hole for the stem. For my parents, the brew of choice was Eight O’Clock coffee, bought at Loblaw’s and ground (coarse) on the spot in the store’s big grinder.
Percolators fell out of fashion in the 1970s when drip coffeemakers became popular thanks to Joe DiMaggio in ubiquitous Mr. Coffee commercials. My parents (most likely my dad, as he did the shopping) succumbed to the hype and bought a drip coffeemaker, which then took over a spot on the counter.
The once-simple world of American coffee has evolved into one my parents wouldn’t recognize — the latte grande, the espresso machines, the syrups and shots, the French presses, the “pound” of coffee sold in 11-ounce cans, the Keurig cups, and fussiness of it all. If you camp like a cowboy on a cattle drive (like Keillor’s Dusty and Lefty), you may still use a percolator because all you need is a fire to get a pot going (although these days Dusty and Lefty mostly find themselves in new-fangled cafés, complete with very noisy espresso machines).
Electric and stove top percolators are still sold. The most frequent comments on Amazon seem to be, “I would get one if I knew how to use it” and “Are there instructions?” Maybe it’s a sign of how in the 21st century we’ve become so used to our electronics doing the work and keeping the time that operating a simple coffee percolator seems not only different, but daunting.
At a time when the cell phone had become popular but not ubiquitous and the smart phone was still a toy for the affluent, one day I heard someone on the street ask me a question. While thinking, “Are you talking to me?” I asked, “Pardon me?” because I hadn’t caught what she’d said. The young woman sharply shot back, “Not you!” while pointing to her phone. Apparently, I’d intruded into her world.
Even before the mobile phone, some people talked aloud while walking alone. These weren’t young folks planning hookups, or mothers tracking down wayward offspring, or couples checking in with each other. These were Very Important People with Very Important Thoughts whose Very Important Time couldn’t be wasted during their commutes. They were using Dictaphones or similar devices to record letters, memos, minutes, notes, and anything else they needed to get out of their heads and into the record. At the office, a secretary might don a headset and type the recorded words. As Dave Barry might say, there are two kinds of people: Those who dictate, and those who take/transcribe dictation. You want to be the kind who dictates.
Dictation devices weren’t new in the 1980s and 90s — they have a long history beginning in the 19th century, and they evolved throughout the 20th. According to this article, a Dictaphone plays an important role as Fred MacMurray’s inanimate confidante and eavesdropper in the 1944 film classic Double Indemnity. While Walter Neff’s thoughts were strictly private, public Dictaphone use bloomed among yuppies in 1980s and 90s Chicago, or maybe that’s when I noticed it.
Today using a Dictaphone on the street might be as jarring and quaint as getting out a Sony Walkman, although if you prefer an old school approach with new technology, you can still buy a handheld dictation device. You don’t need dedicated hardware to dictate or a secretary or administrative assistant to transcribe your thoughts, however. Just fire up an app such as Dictaphone or Dragon Dictation or the functionality built into apps such as Evernote. You can talk to your device anywhere, anytime, and it will do the hard work of deciphering what you’re trying to say. (It’s still up to you to proofread.)
If, however, you’re plotting a murder like Walter Neff, you’ll want to put both the dictation device and the phone down. Even better, set aside the dame. She ain’t worth it, kid.
Like other men, my dad participated in the ritual of mowing the lawn a couple of times a week. For a family living in a trailer, we had a fair amount of lawn to cover, later reduced by the installation of a shed in the middle of the side yard. Our extra lawn and garden came about when our landlord, Frank, allowed us the use of the portion of field next to our trailer, which was at the end of the row.
My dad, ever economy minded, cut his grass using a push reel mower propelled only by the engine of his body. Consisting of an axle and blades between two wheels attached to a handle, the push reel mower could be operated with little effort over grass that had not turned into tall grass prairie or hay, and that wasn’t too full of lumps or sticks and twigs. I’d not be surprised if he had picked up his mower at the same junkyard that was the source of my first bicycle.
Push reel mowers are so easy and safe to operate that even a child of a certain age and over can do it (8+?). At a certain point, preferring outdoor chores to indoor ones like washing dishes, I began to help with the task of mowing the lawn, or at least part of it. I doubt my dad was patient enough to let me finish every time because, as he often said, “We haven’t got all day!”
The push reel mower offers many advantages:
As for disadvantages, unless your lawn is enormous, lumpy, weedy, or overgrown, or sports a variety of tough grass, or you have a heart or other medical condition that makes a miniature workout complete with sweat risky, I can’t think of any. Just be sure to wear sunblock, insect repellent, and a hat as you would for any outdoor activity.
In addition to following my dad or pushing the mower myself, creating those neat rows of cropped grass, I have another fond but bittersweet memory associated with our old mower. The friend who sharpened the blades had a son, Billy, who was about my age. We chased each other and rough housed with abandon. I always looked forward to any chance to see Billy.
We didn’t visit Billy and his dad often, but one day we set out with the mower in the back of the van. I may have been between 10 and 12 and was eager to see my playmate again. Alas, it was not to be. When we arrived, we learned that Billy was afflicted with a some childhood disease (measles, I think) and was quarantined in his bedroom. All Billy and I could do was wave sadly to each other, he from his window, I from the gravel road. The wooded area around the house was part of the attraction of visiting Billy. It felt like a magical place.
As it would turn out, I would see Billy only one more time, when he and his dad stopped by several years later. Although I knew we’d no longer be playmates in the same carefree way, I was still looking forward to their arrival. Sadly, in the intervening years, Billy (now Bill, I’m sure) had morphed into a shaggy, sullen, awkward, and dull teenager who didn’t seem to remember me. He ignored me for the duration. In my unformed and moralistic mind, he’d been transformed from the happy, wholesome hero of a Scholastic Books mystery into a future hoodlum if not serial killer. Or decadent rock star. I never saw him again, and now I can’t remember his last name to see what became of him or if he outgrew that nasty teenage phase. It may seem a small thing, but I felt disenchanted with growing up and the changes wrought by the process.
As my dad aged, he let his garden go and to my horror replaced the push reel mower with an electric model. It wasn’t as noisy as a gas mower, but it was too newfangled for my taste. I wasn’t allowed to use it as my dad was convinced I’d run over the cord — to me, the constant fighting with the long, inconvenient cord looked more difficult than pushing the old mower!
One summer after I’d graduated, my aunt (his youngest sister) from Washington, D.C., and I visited him at the same time, perhaps after one of his health events. He decided to mow the grass after supper one day. No, no, no, my aunt signaled to me with her eyes. “Diane, why don’t you mow the grass?” No, no, no. On the one side, my dad, still didn’t trust me not to run over the cord. On the other stubborn side, my aunt didn’t want him to do any work in his condition. For my part, I didn’t want to use the mower because I knew he didn’t want me to and I knew how he’d react if I did. My aunt assumed I was being my legendarily lazy self and glared at me. I wasn’t going to win, and my dad wasn’t going to be happy.
As my dad hovered and fretted, I got the mower out, plugged it in, started it, and got to work, mindful at all times of the cord and thinking how much easier it would have been to mow with the old push reel mower. As I walked back and forth, my dad followed, haranguing me and nearly working himself into another apoplexy. There were some things I couldn’t do right, and this was one of them. My feelings ranged from resentment (toward my aunt) to bemusement to amusement. After I finished and had put the darn thing away, she said quietly, “I’m so sorry.” And she meant it.
Remember, push reel mowers can be operated by even the most mechanically inept teenager or overgrown adult you happen to have around the house. In the popular spirit of DIY, use one today!
While staying at the Ann Arbor Bed and Breakfast, I spotted a relic that I remember fondly and that may be making a comeback in some progressive communities — the clothesline.
At our home, Saturday was wash day. As our only licensed driver, Dad was the designated launderer. Our Saturday mornings began with the emptying of the clothes hamper under the counter in the bathroom into plastic clothes baskets and the collection of bed and bath linens. Sometimes alone, more rarely with me for company when I was very young, he drove to a laundromat in town, where the women cooed over the little girl they assumed was his granddaughter, thanks to his middle age and shock of white hair. As I grew up, I went less often if at all — too cool to hang around with Dad at a boring place like the laundromat, I’m sure.
Behind the shed in our backyard, underneath the cherry trees, we had five or more clotheslines strung across — enough for most of our clothes and sheets. Knowing my dad, I suspect hanging clothes out to dry in fine weather was a matter of economy — conservation of money as much as of energy, although he did consider the environment, too.
When I was little and somewhat willing to help with the chores, I couldn’t reach the lines (conveniently). By the time I was tall enough, I had better things to do than to help my parents with what seemed like a chore, but would today be a pleasure to me.
When I was in 8th or 9th grade, I started to wear blue jeans to school. They weren’t the pre-washed, distressed designer duds of today, but were dyed a dark blue that penetrated every fiber. I spent countless hours at the kitchen sink trying to rinse the stiffness and the blue out of them. They, too, ended up on the clothesline after leaving a messy trail of water through the trailer. I even hung them out in freezing weather, when they froze and I risked cracking them.
Clothes hung out take longer to dry, especially when the clothesline is in the shade. It’s not as convenient as tossing a load in the dryer and hitting a button, and there are other downsides to line drying under trees besides the amount of time it takes. Occasionally a bird or two would ruin our laundering efforts with well-placed defecation. In our case late spring/early summer meant picking tent caterpillars off nearly every item. I loathe everything about tent caterpillars, especially stepping on them.
If left unscathed by birds and bugs, clothes dried outdoors pick up an indefinable scent of sun and fresh air that no fabric softener, dryer sheet, or other chemical treatment can replicate. It truly is like absorbing sunshine into your clothes.
Even as we tear our hair out over energy sources, climate change, and problematic technologies like wind farms, we’re missing out an obvious way to save money and our clothes — clothesline drying. It costs nothing but the price of clothesline and a few moments of standing outdoors. Our mothers may have loved the affordability and convenience of dryers, and homeowners’ associations hate the sight of something so downscale as clotheslines. But sometimes convenience takes away the satisfaction that performing a simple task as simply as possible offers. And you can’t chat with your neighbor if you’re both isolated in your basements, feeding your machines.
Perhaps a few more clotheslines combined with fewer homeowners’ association rules might improve the neighborliness that seems to have been lost in the last half century — the neighborliness that brought my parents and their peers many a lifetime friendship, no matter where the neighbors moved or where they hung their clothes.
If you grew up before the 1970s, you probably remember full-service gas or filling stations. When you pulled into the station, your car’s tires ran over a hose stretched across the driveway that emitted a sing-song “ding ding’ for each axle, alerting the attendants, or “gas jockeys,” that they had a customer. One of them would come and fill your tank and, if you wanted, clean your windshield and check your oil and your tire pressure. Until the oil crisis of 1973, gas appeared to be plentiful and cheap, and drivers like my dad would call out, “Fill ‘er up, Joe!”
Many of the attendants were uniformed young or middle-aged men with their first name sewn on their uniforms. If you went to the same gas stations out of habit as my dad did, you might even come to know a little about them, like which towns or neighborhoods they were from and how many children they had — and if the kids went to school with yours. It could feel like a little more than just a simple transaction.
We lived near a gas station, and mostly I’d carefully step over the hose so I wouldn’t bring out the attendants to yell at me. If I did set off the “ding,” I’d run off or pretend I hadn’t. I’m sure it fooled no one and that they were used to people stepping on the hose accidentally (or kids like me not so accidentally).
Today many gas stations are the model of self-serve convenience and efficiency. Some allow you to bypass the cashier when you use your credit card; in Illinois, the posted penalties for taking advantage of this by driving off are stiff. Many people do go in to the store to pick up drinks and snacks; we’ve become used to refueling on the go. I’ve seen a few of these gas station stores promote their stock of beer (“beer cave”), which is striking given that the primary market can’t, or shouldn’t, buy and consume it on the road like they would a soda or a bag of chips. As for the cashiers, I’d guess the commitment is low and the turnover high. I wonder how often they come and go and if they become fixtures in the neighborhood.
As for full-service gas stations, they’re not gone completely — thanks to state laws, they’re holding on in New Jersey and Oregon. I wonder if I — or my dad — would recognize them.
Here’s a 2012 farewell to the last full-service station in Lufkin, Texas. And here are some more memories.
No matter what kind of home entertainment setup you have, it probably features a clear cable or satellite picture, even if it’s not digital or high definition, and a remote control that means having to get up only for the necessities (input and output).
In the 1960s and 1970s chez Schirf, I didn’t grow up with the crisp lines and vibrant colors that Comcast delivers today to my high-definition box and 32-inch TV. To capture the available TV signals broadcast by stations in Western New York and Ontario, Canada, we used a TV antenna.
I don’t know about anyone else’s TV antenna, but ours needed nearly constant adjustment, which depended on the station we were watching. In good weather, the three major network stations in Buffalo (ABC, CBS, and NBC) came in clearly most of the time, while the local UHF stations and those across the way in Ontario were marred by visual “snow” and aural static. Depending on weather and other conditions, it might not be watchable.
That’s where turning the antenna came in.
On Saturday afternoons at 1 p.m., my dad watched wrestling broadcast by a Kitchener, Ontario station. That meant that, at some time before 1, after lunch and washing the dishes, one of us would be dispatched to turn the antenna, while some else stood near the TV and the window to call out directions: “No, getting worse . . . turn the other way . . . keep going . . . no, too far . . . back . . . that’s good . . . there!”
The antenna was at the top of a long pole set into a pipe in the ground, which I’m sure was my dad’s do-it-yourself setup. The pole was tall, the hole had widened over the years, and the antenna made the whole thing a little top heavy, especially if there was a wind. It was heavy and hard to turn, and had to be turned slowly. I remember standing outside in the weather, fighting the wind. Of course, the same wind could sometimes turn the antenna enough to make the picture snowy, and sometimes the picture would alternate between bad and worse as the wind rocked the antenna. The picture might be bad but tolerable if the program on was one you really wanted to watch. When it was unwatchable, it was time to find an alternative channel or turn off the TV — there was no Internet to turn to.
In the early 1990s, Chicago Cable TV mistakenly cut off my cable. To my surprise, Walgreens still sold rabbit ears with a UHF loop, so I bought a pair. My apartment was at the end of a courtyard, which may have been why they didn’t work very well. I kept them until I moved in 2003, when I tossed many non-necessities. I’m not sure how they’d connect to the flat-screen LG TV I bought in July 2010.
TV antenna are still sold; the FCC provides a guide to “Antennas and Digital Television.” When I’ve traveled through small towns and rural areas, I’ve seen some antennas, although they are outnumbered by satellite dishes. I spotted these two on the return trip from Kankakee River State Park, although I’m guessing that no one has to go out to turn them and that no one has to stand inside by the window calling out directions about picture quality. And that, like the rest of us, these residents are continuing the time-honored tradition of complaining that “there’s nothing good on TV.” Whether you have eight channels or 800, there’s only so much “reality” you can take.
I’d settle for curling in Canada.
A couple of years ago in “Please Mr. Postman,” I marked the prolonged passing of the blue mailbox, no longer needed in the age of text messaging, mobile phones, and social media. Before USPS started carting the Chicago boxes off to rust at the central office (where I saw what seemed to be thousands lined up, with nothing to do and nowhere to go), another type of mail collection method had fallen into disuse — the mail chute, or Cutler mailing system.
The first mail chute I saw and used was at 200 South Riverside Plaza in Chicago, at my first job. The chute ran down the wall across the hall from the word processing room on the 37th floor. People still used it in 1983. Walking past it, I would be startled by the sudden whoosh of an envelope falling down the chute, presumably on its way to a receiving box. Sometimes, however, someone would ambitiously stuff, say, a 9″ x 12″ envelope into the chute, which had the same effect as boxes do in trash chutes — it would “gum up the works,” as my dad might have said.
I don’t recall if the mail chute was still in use when the company relocated to 203 North LaSalle Street in 1986. A contemporary blend of glass, steel, and atrium, this building probably didn’t have anything as quaint as a mail chute.
The Flamingo, which opened in the late 1920s, has a mail chute, although it’s closed off on the floors. I have no idea where it may have ended, as it’s on the same south wall as the elevators, while the mail receiving box in the lobby is on the north wall across from the elevators. Mail is collected from the receiving box once a day, ostensibly at 10 a.m., but it was afternoon the one time I saw the carrier come in to open it.
Cutler~Mail~Chute~Co.
Rochester, N.Y.
Cutler~Mailing~System
Authorized by P.O. Dep’t.
Installed under the Cutler Patents
Note that it’s not just a mail chute and mail receiving box, but the Cutler mailing system. Product pretentiousness isn’t a contemporary invention.
Find out more about the history of the Cutler Mail Chute Co. and the Cutler mailing system at the National Postal Museum site and, of course, Wikipedia.
Added 2/19/2017: You can see more examples in New York City at Atlas Obscura and learn about why mail chutes were discontinued.
Added 5/12/2020: “Oh, chute!” from USPS News Link and “The city’s mail shafts are chock-full of good stories” from Crain’s New York Business. The latter is worth it for:
The mother of all mail-chute jams occurred in 1986 between the lobby and the basement of the McGraw-Hill Building at 330 W. 42nd St. Workers removed cinder blocks to rescue 40,000 pieces of mail, filling 23 postal sacks.
Aaron Elstein, Crain’s New York Business
Once upon a time, all Clark Kent had to do to summon his inner Superman was to pop into the nearest telephone booth, tear off his glasses (not in the careful two-handed way recommended by opticians), and rip open his shirt. (His tailor must have made a mint replacing buttons while wondering who were these women so eager to get to the nerdy reporter’s chest.)
Telephone booth? Back up. What’s a telephone booth?
Like many things associated with the traditional telephone, the phone booth is almost only a memory. Aside from Clark Kent/Superman, who needs a phone in the relative privacy of a booth when, with our smart phones, we can chat openly about our hemorrhoid surgery or latest squabble with a friend right on the bus or at our restaurant table? Access to the world is in our pockets.
The last time I used a phone booth or pay phone was in 1999, when I called a cab after my high school reunion. It was in a decaying shopping center across the road from where I used to live, and quite possibly was the only one for miles around. The last pay phone I recall seeing in Chicago was here where I live. It lasted for a few years after I moved in, but has been removed; it wouldn’t have been worth it to the phone company. I have seen a pay phone recently; it was at Jasper Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana, attached to one of the buildings the attendant told us had been built during the Great Depression. I’m sorry now that I didn’t take a photo or check out the cost of a call, but it did seem to be in good shape. I wonder how much action it gets from the hunters and the visitors to the sandhill cranes, or if it’s even functional.
Mobile communications alone didn’t kill the phone booth or pay phone, although they’re clearly the primary cause of near extinction. In cities like Chicago, they were already on the endangered list, placed there by the activities of neighborhood drug dealers and other criminal types who used them to conduct business. Community members petitioned the city to have these gang and criminal magnets removed.
For fans of the classic films and TV shows, phone booths and pay phones have long been associated with crime. Calls made from phone booths and pay phones could be threats, demands (often for ransom), warnings, information dumps, or pleas for help. The dangling public phone handset became a poignant, then cliched theme. Now, having said that, I can’t think of any examples. I do remember that in Strangers on a Train the Farley Granger character has a fatal conversation with his pregnant, cheating wife on a pay phone.
Other movie characters also flocked to booths and pay phones, including reporters — which could explain Clark Kent’s predilection for them. In a film or radio program, when a big story broke frenzied herds of frantic, aggressive reporters would race to the nearest booth or pay phone to call the story in. Having gotten the scoop, the lucky ones who arrived first could gloat over their unlucky brethren, whose continued employment often depended on being able to get through to the newsroom first.
As I remember them, phone booths and pay phones came in a variety of styles, including indoor and outdoor, full sized or half, fully or partially enclosed, or open (for example, a pay phone stuck on a wall, as at Jasper Pulaski). When I was a child, a local pay phone call was a dime; later it went up to a quarter, then 30 cents, then 50 cents or more. For a toll (long-distance) call, you’d put in so much change for so many minutes. Each time you were running out of time, an operator or, later, an automated voice would tell you to deposit more or hang up. If you didn’t have more change, you’d find yourself cut off abruptly soon after the warning. Those who use their mobile phones for personal chats could learn some of the succinctness imposed by the pay phone.
A pay phone played an important role in my life. My college dormitory had two pay phones off the lounge. Before I got a phone installed in my room, I spent a lot of time in those booths calling my mother collect and pretending not to be homesick. I imagine phone booths and pay phones have absorbed a lot of very interesting and very mundane conversations and history, just like mobile phones today.
For a look at phone booths and pay phones, and some of the holdovers, check out the Payphone Project, featuring the sometimes creepy photography that abandoned human creations can inspire. The Payphone Projects quotes a recent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story:
The American Public Communications Council, a trade group representing about 800 independent pay phone operators, said about 425,000 pay phones remain in the United States today, down from 2.2 million in 2000.
According to Wikipedia, as of June 2011, there were 327,577,529 mobile phones in use in the U.S. alone — more than there were people.
I suppose Clark Kent has long since found an alternative changing room.
Update: Chris Burdick on Facebook:
I thought I was the last non-cell phone person, but a woman just used the pay phone near where I’m sitting. The woman dialed a number, the phone gave off a loud fax machine shriek, and the woman backed away in terror.
As many times as I’ve been to Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center, I’d never spotted this before. It’s a working pay phone, but don’t use it to call 911. And a relic with a relic.
