Remember These? Public Telephones-Vanishing ‘Species’

As most of us at Newstalk 870 are a bit older (I hit the half century this November) we recall growing up BEFORE cellphones, I-Pads, Internet and the like.   Public Telephones and booths? remember them well.

It used to be if you needed to get a hold of someone in a hurry, your "cellphone" was pulling over, finding the nearest phone booth, and making a call-("Please deposit 25 cents" said the female voice).  And as a kid in search of candy money, we used to check the coin return to see if anyone forgot their quarter.  But with nearly 80% of the US population having some sort of cellphone, phone booths and public phones are rapidly disappearing.  According to a report from Columbia University, as of 2009, the number of public or pay phones in the US has dropped by over half.  Some say the demise of the payphone or booth says a lot about vanishing privacy.  Who wants to hear somebody yammering on their cellphone about last night's drinking binge while you're standing in line at the grocery store?

   Disappearing phone booths also bring back memories of Superman (that's where he changed) and back in the 1950's kids used to have contests to see how many people could be crammed into a phone booth.   But as these pictures will show, while there are still some left, more and more public phones are being removed, destroyed or just left to crumble away.  Join us for a look at yet another vanishing part of what once was a big part of America.