The pay phone has almost completely disappeared from our society. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw an actual honest-to-goodness phone booth. Where is a mild-mannered shoe-shine canine supposed complete his superhero metamorphosis: The changing room at Old Navy? Okay, back to my memory bank: I think Weise’s at Colonial Village was the last time I saw a real phone booth. Or was it Goldblatts?

The “Phone Tree” popped up around the same time Cherry Vale opened. To kill time I would spend the 20 cents to call the phone on the other side of the tree to see if anyone would pick up. Usually it was a girl on the other end.

A little later, The “Drive-Up Phone” would arrive in a parking lot near you. These were just the right height for rolling up in a sedan after a state of the art pager went off. They weren’t the right height if you were driving a 4x4.

To teenagers today, a pay phone most-likely would mean “pay-as-you-go” as in Tracfone.  I believe we are now such a society of germaphobes that, if the 10 cent pay phone were to reemerge, nobody would use it. Really? You want me to put my mouth and ear on something a complete stranger has had his mouth and ear next to?