This is the comment I was looking for.

When my Wife was in hospital for a two-weeks stay, the only telephone in her area was a pay phone - cells not allowed because of 'interference with medical equipment''. So, every time I came to see her I'd bring a couple of quarters and put one in the coin return as I passed. I heard from the nurses that people were charmed to be 'lucky'. Made someone's day.

Hahahaha this for sure!! Totally agree 👍

MILKMEN!-YES!- I was born in '79, and I remember mum leaving the glass bottles out to be collected, and they'd be replaced with full glass bottles of milk with those little aluminium foil lids!

They were the only place we had to change into our superhero clothes.

I had occasion to call emergency services in the UK and I quoted the "whatthreewords" reference. The operator laughed and said it shows as a phone box. I replied that all that remains is a square of different coloured tarmac.

LOL.

When I came along, a phone call was a quarter.

Plus the demise of pay phones made any number of Rock songs obsolete.

Memorizing phone numbers, imagine the thought!

There's the "Bell" phone I was talking about! :) I actually just saw one just like this a few days ago in the Welland Ontario canada hospital

You are pretty young if you had payphones at school.

In the old “Superman” TV series, Clark Kent ran into a pay-phone booth to change into Superman. In the 1978 movie with Christopher Reeve, Clark Kent starts to run toward a pay phone, but realizes there’s no booth, just a phone on a pole like the one shown above. So resourceful Clark uses a revolving door to change into Superman.

They smelled like metal, plastic, dirt, old food, and pee. Not necessarily in that order.

And giant yellow phone books that got delivered to your house. We used that instead of Google. :)

Worst part (I travel a lot) was when the payphones were disappearing from airports and train stations but there wasn't good wfi in those places and maybe you didn't own a smartphone because not everybody did.

“Adventures with the Mojave Phone Booth” by Godfrey “Doc” Daniels tells of a pay phone in the middle of nowhere. People from around the world would visit it in order to answer it when it rang. And people from around the world would call it, hoping that someone would be there to answer it.

My grandmother was so obsessed with maps. Now we don't need them. But I know how to read one.

That would have been an interesting job to have, dealing with whatever gunk was on those phones.

Expecting my first baby, our new build didn't have a landline. I drove myself to the only phone box in the village and called hubby. Little lady arrived four hours later!

Ha!

We didn't in any of my schools, but could use the office phone.

I just thought ospf something. They would come in handy if you were in some small town out of the way and reception was bad. But then again what would it cost to maintain them.

I highly recommend Richard Coles’ autobiography (part 1) “Bringing in the Sheaves”, lovely book!

AtMostAFabulist

AtMostAFabulist

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Are you sure you didn't just watch Wargames?

Bye Bye Birdie movie. Good example of phone use.

Google it on your smart phone.