You won't believe what I saw this morning.........

A WORKING pay phone! Sure, I've seen old phones from time to time, but its been at least 10 yrs since I've come across a working one.

How much for a call?

I guess "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"

How much? .50 per minute.......

I kept my call VERY short.

Was the phone sticky? They usually were

I wonder if those are for the growing population of "urban campers"

It was stuck to the saddle, but the receiver wasn't sticky.

Inflation has caused "drop a dime on someone" to drop "half-a-buck"...

I remember using them while holding it with a napkin and trying to hear the person on the other end while not actually letting it touch my ear lol.

I occasionally see leftover phone stands/poles at some older gas stations where those pay phones used to be before they removed them years ago. Figured they'd take the stand too when they took the phone away, and even stranger the store owner would let the empty stand sit there on the sidewalk forever.

Just wait until someone trips on it and is "injured" and hires an attorney. Then they will remove it lol.

I see one in a blue moon. But it's been years since I saw a phone booth.

Wait till these new kids find out there’s money in it. I can’t believe it’s still there.

There is a small town north of me, population 171 that I drive through every once in awhile.
They have a working phone in the town square and I just had to stop and take a picture. They have a small bank there and the president is a friend of mine.
He told me that many visitors stop to take pictures of it. If they see the person from the bank , they will call the phone and chat with them, lol.

^ That's funny. They've become relics.

Some actually stole our local empty phone booth this past year. Was big news here.

I would love to have one like this from the 1970's. I see them for sale and prices are high.

When my first wife and I were house shopping we looked at a nice split level that had a working pay phone in the basement.

Wow that one would really throw someone young for a loop! Not only a coin slot but a ROTARY DIAL

I worked for a Telphone company for 33 yrs, I have two or three older pay phones that we called triple slots with rotary dials, one chrome and two blacks or maybe it is two chrome and one black (Kellog and ITT brand) as well as several older regular phones that I would sell for the highest price i can get for them now They may have worked a long time ago but they were what we call pre pay phones, you put the money in before dialing, the later ones like in the picture above are post pay. You pay after they connected. The ones I have are very old,40+yrs or more
PM me if interested and we can discuss them and I can send you some pictures of them to let any one interested getting one

I was just thinking to myself..... Hell I just used one here at XXX.....ooops that was 23 years ago. Probably gone. Where does the time go?

How many remember the pre bought time number that you dialed first before you dialed the regular number?

I do, but never used it. Thought it was too up scale and never had enough money to try it

Brady bunch applies to this thread too.

I remember being shown how to get a "free" phone call or dial tone on the original button coin return models. If you dropped a coin in and instantly hit the coin return button as you did it, the coin would activate the dial tone and head straight for the coin return if you hit it just right. I think you could do the same action at the self use pressure car washes too.

i have a pay phone in my stash of "stuff" that i have been meaning to put up in the garage one of these days.
i'll even hook it up.

I pass this almost everyday. It lost its phone about the same time frame as when Blockbuster closed up. The Jack in the Box that its advertising on the side is long gone too. Not sure why this has never been removed.

Around here when you wanted to use the pay phone you always looked for a bobby pin laying on top of the phone or on the shelf where the phone book was. Once you found the bobby pin you would poke one end through the holes in the mouth piece so it touched the metal inside and then you would ground the other end of the bobby pin to the body of the phone itself. Once you did that you would get a dial tone and you could make your call.

Not to change the thread....but mmmmmmmmmm....Jack in The Box! I loved their food as a kid! LOL...just had to mention that, carry on.

There is a pay phone outside at our little convenience store/gas station here. Makes sense though as cell phones don't work around here.

Boy did they get some bad press for awhile in the 90's was it??? Never had any around here.

I don't guess you could actually get one of these old pay phones working now since they are all analog right?

not really sure Larry.
i have an old rotary phone in the garage addition, and it works, so i'm thinking i could get my pay phone to work if i hooked it up.
i know one thing. when comcast hooked my phone service up, after MANY return visits to get it to work correctly, i just re-did ALL their work myself, and the phones have worked flawlessly since !
the MAIN problem with their current installations rely on "scotch-lok" type connectors, the kind that you squeeze together piercing the insulation to connect the wires. that results in "iffy" connections, just like using these style connectors in automotive wiring.
anyway, back to the original programming.
one of these days, i'll dig out my pay phone and try it.
one thing that was pretty neat when my phone company buddy gave it to me, was the coin box key came with it ! he said i could make a fortune with that key, as it was a master and could open any pay phone !
well, needless to say, since all the pay phones were being removed from this area, [the reason i got this one in the first place] no fortune was to be had by me !

I'm sure you wouldn't have taken advantage of have the key anyway

I think I have someone who'll know if I could make one work here, Maybe in my garage, but then I'm single so screw it right inside my living room!

.

^^^ Now THAT is funny - love it !

Me too!!!

I remember the controversy back in the early 80s about mislabeled meat making its way into the burgers or maybe it was the tacos. To this day I still call it "kangaroo in the box" sometimes....

I thought it was 90's and people getting sick and even possibly dying I'm going to search further because now I'm really curious lol.

Found it:

The outbreak was centered on Jack in the Box fast food outlets in the United States. The 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak occurred when the Escherichia coli O157:H7 bacterium (originating from contaminated beef patties) killed four children and infected 732 people across four states

Jack In The Box, McDonald's...what didn't kill me in my 20s made me stronger
A couple stories come to mind regarding the 1st Jack in town - what, '69 or '70 maybe ? - but discretion being the better part of valor, I should just keep chuckling to myself.

Regarding rotary phones, I have one dated 1948, but a phone guy told me some years back that it wouldn't work any more after the digital upgrades to the system.
I don't have a landline anymore, or I'd see.

I saw someone using a pay phone in Kansas off I-70 a couple of days ago, I had to do a double-take...

I have an L.M Ericsson Eiffel Tower Telephone Circa 1885 that's been in the family since I don't know when but since I have memory. It's mine now. No dial, just a crank to ring up the operator I guess. VERY heavy. Here's a picture from internet but if anyone wants to see actual pics I can post some. Mine is actually a bit nicer than this one.

Here's a picture from internet but if anyone wants to see actual pics I can post some

That's a very cool phone !
Nowadays, that would be called "steampunk".

There's a couple payphones left around here. There is or was a phone booth near a restaurant too still. I haven't been there since corona virus hit so don't know if it's still there. I think there's also one I saw on the side of a gas station lately.

Around the turn of the century, I installed high speed switches for dsl at central offices. In Louisiana they had some ancient machines in there that connected the calls at all the pay phones connected to that office. A central office covers about four square miles around it. You’d be surprised how often one of those old mechanical switches moved to connect a call. They were referred to as “quarter machines” because that sound meant somebody dropped one in a phone. They were still using those decades old things because they were stone reliable.

I shall post some soon. It's a very cool phone. I remember as a little kid loving to crank the handle and hear the bells. I'm going to weigh it too.

Are you sure that's not something the homeless guy might leave in a field