The dilemma of the Pay Phone

By Joseph Parish

Years ago I can remember that if you required the use of a telephone you could readily discover a nearby payphone. If your mother or father were like mine and they instructed you to phone home at a precise time then by golly you had better be calling home or else. To comply you had merely to pause at the local street corner of town long enough to make your needed phone call and then you were happily back doing what ever you were previously. You basically had no excuse for not doing so. You could drive down the local main street of town and notice that payphones were easily available on just about every street within the town.

It did not matter if your town had a population of 20,000 or if it was the size of New York City, you could always locate payphones when you needed one. Most grocery stores, pharmacies and gasoline stations had a coin operated phone within easy reach. Today however, the payphone is rapidly becoming a gadget often associated with the past. No longer do you see them at every pharmacy. No longer do you see them in or around your local grocery store. No longer can you find one on every street around your town as you could many years ago. In fact you could consider yourself extremely lucky if you could locate one of these coin operated phones in most American towns at all. They are simply getting extremely scarce and are rarely seen.

Being seriously involved in various survival efforts I have often pushed that everyone purchase pre-paid telephone cards for all members of ones family. I have done just that with my own family members. These cards represented our emergency means of communications during any sort of disaster in the event of a cell phone disruption. Unfortunately, if the cards ever had to be actually used we would find it extremely difficult to locate a coin operated phone where they could be used. In the event that you are away from home and happen to develop automobile related problems or require any sort of telephone services at all you had better be carrying a cell phone with you.

Prove this point to yourself and take a ride around your town tomorrow. Look closely to see if you can find any payphones at all. Count each and every phone booth that you encounter. Chances are you will not locate a single phone in your immediate area let alone several of them within the town limits. With the payphone appearing as a soon to be museum piece, I would seriously suggest that you make every effort to ensure you have plenty of time on your cell phone and it is able to send out a useable signal from wherever you happen to be located.

Copyright @ 2009 Joseph Parish