November 2024 Reads for the Rest of Us
3 hours ago
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Remember Pay Phones?
When using the first pay telephones, a caller did not deposit coins in the machine. He or she gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Self-service coin telephones did not appear until 1899.
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7 comments:
I haven't seen one in a while
what would they have thought of cell phones??
Cell phones were like Dick Tracy stuff. I sort of miss pay phones. I sort of miss not being able to be connected and reachable all the damn time.
Momma made me keep a dime in the bottom on my band shoes in case I ever needed to call home... collect, of course!
Are you old enough to remember when they turned the crank and yelled "operator, operator?"
Didn't think so!
Me, either!
Nope. I just remember those black dial phones everybody had. And operators! I lived in a small town and when I was very young, we had to make calls with the operator. That made me think about Lily Tomlin's, "One ringy-dingy. Two ringy-dingies. Is this the party to whom I am speaking?" What was her telephone operator character's name?
It wasn't that long ago that we encouraged the kids to have a quarter for the phone everyday as regularly as they had lunch money. We still have a pay phone in the lobby which is always ringing because the kids get the number and call it from their cell phones just for the heckofit.
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