The Humble Pay Phone

There are many things in this world that once were common but that are now so rare I tend to stop and take note when I see them. Tail fins on cars, people who still play compact discs, a punch bowl at a party, and all around good manners make me look again. Another thing that tops my list is the humble payphone. 

The payphone originated in the late nineteenth century, giving folks the opportunity to prepay for a call. This was handy if you were traveling or if you didn’t have a home phone and just needed to make a call. Young people may be skeptical when I say this but there was a time that a phone was a luxury rather than a right or necessity. 

When I was a college student back in the nineties, I carried quarters as well as a prepaid phone card to call home from a pay phone. This went on until the day I got my first mobile phone –  a giant black corded monstrosity inside a leather bag that was attached to an external antenna via about six feet of cord. It was bulky and not meant to be portable. Instead, it lived in my car, more or less turning my little Chevy Cavalier into a rolling phone booth. 

As technology improved, that bag phone was traded in for a flip phone and then one with a pull out keyboard (that one was the bomb) before eventually embracing the iPhone, a decision I’ve been repeatedly told was an upgrade. I’m still not convinced about that given how intrusive it can feel. 

I liked using the payphone because the upfront cost lent a certain kind of urgency to a phone call. If I had just a handful of quarters, I had an excuse to keep the conversation short. Not to mention, being tied to the wall in a public place where others might need the phone encouraged some brevity as well. 

Unfortunately, the rise of mobile phone usage in America has nearly driven our faithful payphones into extinction. 

Almost. 

I remember when the City of New York got rid of the last of its public pay phones back in 2022. That was a small news story but one I saw as a profound marker in our society. That city was once home to more than 30,000 payphones attached to poles, inside public buildings and in phone booths across the city. 

I have just one question. Where does Clark Kent change now? I mean, how does he transform into Superman on his way to fight crime and save the day if there are no phone booths?

Yet, you still see them around. You see them more in small rural towns where cell service is spotty or where the economy is such that not everyone can afford a cell phone. You also see them in neighborhoods near county courthouses and jails. After all, if you’re released from jail with only the possessions you took in, it’s possible you don’t have a working cell phone to call for a ride. 

This little number pictured above is located in the vestibule of the Frisch’s Big Boy in Chillicothe, Ohio. It’s a bizarre place for a payphone given the lack of privacy and the constant risk of being smacked with an opening door. 

At least it’s there. 

Personally, I haven’t touched a payphone probably since college but they always make me feel nostalgic, not just for my own youth but for eras before me. When I was a young reporter at a regional newspaper, the rookie desk in the newsroom was next to a man named Roy Cross. He was elderly at the time and cherry picked the best feature stories. He had earned that right after spending a career chasing stories during the golden age of journalism. 

Roy regaled me with tales of covering crime and courts as a young reporter. If there was no time to come back to the paper to write up a story after a long day sitting through a criminal court trial, calling in the story for someone to transcribe was the only choice. So he and competitors would jockey for courthouse phones and public payphones to do just that. The idea of Roy as a young man with a reporter’s notebook in hand, writing his story as he spoke it into the phone was basically the coolest thing I had ever heard. It was like something out of a black and white film like “It Happened One Night” or “His Girl Friday.”

Sentimental, maybe, but most people couldn’t do it and I loved the idea. By the way, Roy would absolutely have been played by Clark Gable. 

So seeing a payphone isn’t really about the phone. It’s about the memories and about nostalgia for a time I’ll never know. And let’s be honest. Given how much I despise talking on the phone most of the time, it’s absolutely about those shorter calls!