Homunculus of Men in Black. Open the face of any Republican and you'll find one in the void behind the eyes. We're supposedly susceptible to infestation with age, but traded wealth for natural resistance.
There is one functioning pay phone that I know of and pass regularly on my rounds, which is outside of Lancaster in Georgetown, Pennsylvania right at the dog-leg on 896. There are like three locals reading this who are nodding right now.
There used to be a row of them at the ferry terminal. They had cover plates from Bell, Bell Atlantic, Nynex, and Verison. May have been other names, but I can't recall.
Good good, I was going to say that clearly looks like a Russian spy device placed clandestinely on American soil right under citizens very noses but you have assuaged my fears.
Yeah those Bell phones (and some Telus ones in Western Canada) are still in many places surprisingly, but increasingly rare and I haven't seen any one use one in Canada for years.
A couple non-Bell ones I know of in downtown Toronto still operate somehow.
Also it's kind of neat to see places with payphones where you know they were used way more often before, like Portland [Oregon] Union Station. I could imagine people getting off a train forming lines to try to send word home they made it into town...
Yeah lines for the phone were common. People would argue about the relative importance of their phone call. I don't miss it, but I kind of miss phone booths. I don't know why.
9-button dialer... credit card reader... this is a fairly modern phone. It'd even be useful if a battery died or (given the location) someone dropped their phone over the side of the boat into the lake - as long as they could remember the phone number of the person they needed to call.
I don't think this is a relic; kids today wouldn't be confused by the technology (as they might with a rotary dial), and given the location, I'll bet it gets used more than you'd think.
Yeah that's the best part of using these things in an emergency.
30 years ago I used to memorize about 20 seven digit phone numbers. I may have remembered one or two ten digit numbers for long distance calls but we live in northern Ontario and the entire area of our province is the size of France and has one area code.
Now I have a hard time recalling my wife's number if I had to call anyone I know in a public pay phone. I have to stop and think to remember what my number is. I definitely wouldn't be able to remember any of my close friends or family members.
Honestly in an emergency, I would have an easier time going to library to use a computer to contact someone on Facebook or Instagram
Random true story: A guy named Vincent was at home in New Jersey, dialed the phone number of his good friend, and Vincent's wife answered the phone. He immediately assumed they were having an affair and got in a shouting match.
Turns out he accidently misdialed a digit and rang up a payphone, which his wife just happened to be walking past when it started to ring. He said it was the weirdest thing that ever happened to him.