Are Payphones Becoming an Icon of the Past?

While on a recent road trip, I made a distinctive observation. Pay phones were missing from virtually every gas station! What is causing the pay phones to be taken out. Will they become an icon of the past?

Perhaps one of my fondest memories as a young teenager involved pay phones. I was dating a young man in a town some 50 miles away. I rarely saw him. Long distance phone calls from the home phone were exceptionally expensive, and certainly only the richest of the rich owned a cell phone (which were called car phones in those days). Whenever I could scrape together enough money for a phone call, I would walk to the nearest payphone, which was located about four blocks away. In my tiny country town, this was the only payphone available, but it was always in regular use. It seemed to me that, for some reason, that young man's voice sounded so much sweeter on the other end of that payphone line.

Shortly before leaving home, the payphone in my little town was removed. It was rumored that someone ripped it out of the ground, pole and all, in an attempt to steal the money from inside. Whether that rumor was true or not, I cannot say, but a new phone was never installed.

Just this last week, some fifteen years later, I purchased my own cell phone. I finally joined the ranks of the average American citizen. My husband insisted that it was a necessity, as evidenced by my most recent road trip.

You see, I had been driving down the highway, stopping at different gas stations in an attempt to find a payphone. I had a bad tire that continuously flopped as I drove down the road. I knew that stopping in the middle of the freeway was quite dangerous, and the alternative was to continue drivng, yet I needed to find a payphone in order to call my husband for help. After stopping at four different stations and finding no payphone, I pleaded with the woman behind the register to let me use the phone. She looked at me in a funny, you're-a-weirdo sort of way, then reluctantly let me use her own personal cell phone. "I can't let you use the store phone," she told me. "The call would be long distance, and I would get into trouble."

On a separate occasion, while traveling in the Tulsa area, I found that locating a payphone was equally difficult. I had been to an Arby's location and received a receipt with a free sandwich offer on the back. If you do not know about this offer, Arby's will provide you with a free sandwich if you call a toll-free number and tell them about your visit. In any case, I had obtained one of these receipts, and wanted to complete the survey so as to get an additional sandwich. I searched for a payphone, and after visiting six separate gas stations without success, I gave up.

Why are payphones being removed from every logical location? Today, it seems that the only place that payphones can be found, if they work at all, is in the worst parts of a large city. Even the bus stations have removed their payphones in many cities.

Although I am not a telephone technician, I can speculate as to why payphones are being removed. For one thing, everyone and their dog has a cell phone. Children as young as four are being given cell phones, which they carry to their daycare centers and preschools. Homeless men and women are given prepaid cell phones for free through various charities, in an attempt to help them find employment. People purchase cheap prepaid phones, which they store in their glove boxes, for emergency purposes only. Finally, the average citizen heavily relies on cell phones, using them as high-tech walkie talkies, calling friends and family for everything from requesting an extra gallon of milk to asking where the individual is in relation to a destination point.

It would appear, therefore, that the only people who do not have cell phones today are those who are on the margins of society, either by choice or by uncontrollable circumstances. Perhaps the person believes in green living, living life off the "grid", or prefers to avoid phones all together. Perhaps the person fears unwanted charges, does not know how to use a cell phone, or become confused by the numerous bells and whistles. Maybe they simply cannot afford a phone, or owning one is not practical for them or their lifestyle.

Will the payphone become an icon of the past? I believe that it will. There are fewer and fewer payphones available every day. I believe that in the near future, the payphone will be on display at various nostalgia museums. Sitting alongside the box television sets, pay-per-view theater movies, and gasoline-burning automobiles, our grandchildren will marvel at the unsophisticated way that life was lived in the 90's and early part of our century.