Payphones

What prompted these thoughts? It was a visit to Shepherd University and seeing a working payphone in the performing arts building. I showed it to my 13-year-old son, Clay, who had never seen one before. I’m not even sure he understood the concept, having lived his entire life in the era of mobile phones. It was just an alien concept to him.
I was also reminded of the back-cover of 2600 Magazine which featured reader-submitted pictures of payphones from around the world. Related to that, “hacks” to get free phone calls from payphones. What is the value of that today? Who pays for long distance? Which is to say, we’ve come a long way. So far in fact, that we would likely scoff at the idea of paying to make a call.
