Remembering The Phone Booth

What Ever Happened to Phone Booths? I realize that change
is a good thing. We should embrace it. You may not be old
enough to remember how a phone booth even looked. They were
fairly spacious. I would call them phone cubicles with a
door.

You walk up to it, open the door and step in. Close
the door for privacy and to keep down the outside noise. It
had a good size area to put a pad to write on, and it was
level. You could always find a set of phone directories;
both the white and yellow pages. But, almost no one ever
used the books.

In those days directory assistance was FREE. Simply dial 411.
Phone booths were always placed where they were easy to use.
It was so pleasant to go to use the phone. I never had to put
up with a booth on a sidewalk by a busy and noisey street. They
were serviced and kept clean and in excellent working order.

Everyone has either used or at least seen a modern pay phone.
Pay phone, that's all it is; nothing more. There is no place
to put a notebook or even a clean level surface to lay things
on, or to write. And there is no shelter from the elements.
It's just to bad if it starts to rain.

And it must be a conspiracy, or something.   Most, if not all,
are placed close to a sidewalk. True, they are easy to spot.
But why not place them up on the property away from the traffic?
At least, if it starts to rain, you can hang up and dash into a
store.

Nowadays if I happen to find a phone booth, it's in a place of
business. And it's just for show. The phone inside doesn't work.
It's there for the display; like a curio.

Even though it is only a booth, I still have to open the
door and step inside. I close the door and stand there. I
even pick up the phone's receiver and look around. It's
like stepping into a time machine. If only for a minute or
two I'm back in the days when there were real phone booths.