Phone booths are disappearing. Kids nowadays don’t even know what it is when they are looking at one. But this booth in Prairie Grove, Arkansas is one of the last remaining specimens of a passing era in the US, and just has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. When’s the last time you’ve used one of these relics?
As Smithsonian magazine reported:
Cities and suburbs alike used to be dotted with millions of pay phones, many sheltered in iconic glass booths. But as the cell phone continues their rise, phone booths have become increasingly rare. […] Though pay phones haven’t died altogether, they’re rare enough these days that they count as a curiosity. The American Public Communications Council, which represents pay phone owners and operators, estimates on its website that there are fewer than 500,000 of them left in the country today. As such, the St. Prairie booth has become a destination for nostalgic tourists.
I can recall that it was around 2001 or 2002 when I made my last call from a telephone booth, not long before I purchased my first mobile phone. How about you? Do you feel nostalgic about long conversations in a phone booth? Have any funny, sad, or thrilling story about calling someone from a booth? When did you stop using such public phones? Tell us in the comments.