Remember coin-operated pay phones? Before cell phones, they were how we called people when away from home. When away at boarding school and college, it's what I used to call home, collect. My first decade in NYC made good and frequent use of them. Calls were 10 cents. When I became a commuter after moving to the suburbs, I was on the line at the bank of pay phones every evening at Grand Central Terminal to let the family know when I'd be home.
At their peak in the 1980s, more than 2 million pay phones were connected across the country by AT&T and Bell System companies, many in phone booths. Only 100,000 are still in use today.
I passed one today while on a walk. Emergency calls are free, local calls are 50 cents, and you can call anywhere in the world for four minutes for $1.
Who knew?
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