I attended a college that was about 100 miles from the small town in Indiana where I grew up. In order to call home I needed to go to a pay phone. There were several phone booths in the college Union Building that afforded some privacy, and this is where I headed if I wanted to make a long distance call. Picking up the telephone, I would dial zero for the operator. I would then say that I wanted to make a long distance call to my home town. The local operator would then say, “Just a minute while I connect you with that operator”. When the regional operator spoke, I had to start over again and say that I wanted to place a long distance call to my home town. I would give the five digit number (27637) of my parents’ party telephone. The regional operator would then say, “Deposit $1.25 for the first three minutes”. If I was lucky and no one else was using our home party line, my mother would answer. At the end of 3 minutes, the operator would come back on the line to say, “To continue this call, please deposit an additional 50 cents”. You had to have a stack of quarters beside the telephone if you wanted to talk very long.
These days I can direct dial anywhere in the country (or the world, for that matter) by merely saying the person’s name in my cell phone. Pretty fantastic, it seems to me.
By the late 70s, early 80s, there were no longer party lines to worry about. But we did still call home from the hall payphone. (Yes, conveniently located in our very own wing of the dorm.)
Sometimes it would ring. There was a girl down the hall who would, when this happened, open her door, stick her head out, yell “PHONE CALL!” then slam her door shut again. Very useful for anyone capable of hearing human bellowing, but NOT telephone rings.
When I went away to college in the 70’s the campus owned dorm rooms had phones in the room but no long distance calls unless you called collect. They could call in so you called home and asked the operator for a person to person call. The family of course refused the call and then called back. My family never called back.
I explained to my mother about the person-to-person call method of making calls. I would call and ask for the name of a person, say my mother, for example. The operator would say who the call was from. The person at my house would reply that that person was not at home, at which point the call would be terminated with no charges assessed to either party. That would be the signal for someone at my house to call me directly in order to avoid the higher person-to-person or pay phone rates. On hearing of this scheme my mother said, “But that isn’t honest”, so that was the end of it.
When presented as a “scheme” of course it doesn’t sound honest. When presented as an opportunity for the phone company to participate in community affairs and contribute to a college education, it practically seems like a sin of omission to not do this. Your Mom would have probably whacked my brothers and me.
We still have a number of family members with poor long distance services. So when we get a call from one we simply say we’ll call in a sec. and hang up and then call back. We do the same for overseas family. My doctors have strongly suggested I get one of these cell phone thingies.
The first time I went to college, it was the late '80s. We all had our own phones, with our own phone numbers, and we had regular phone plans so we could even directly call. And since the phone company didn’t own the phones anymore we weren’t stuck with the icky gold or green phones anymore. In fact, mine was PINK. I know…you’re totally surprised, aren’t you?
I think we did have a pay phone at the Student Union…in fact, I think it’s still there. But I don’t remember ever using it. And despite things being so vastly different for me than I’m reading here, it’s still rather interesting to go back after 20 years and have everything run by computer (I was used to the overhead projector), and everyone with a mobile. There is a huge change even from when I went, and it took a bit of getting used to.
Pay phones are getting rare in the Minneapolis/St Paul area. Some of the phones were restricted in how they work and wouldn’t take cash so that calling would be traceable. Don’t know if those laws are still in effect, but it kind of defeated the idea of a payphone. Our city has many of the old “booths” without a phone installed. The things are graffiti magnets and abandoned. Frankly the city should not allow companies to abandon property like that, yet if I used a carjack and a length of chain to remove the things I would be charged with destruction of property.
It is slowly getting to the point where I will have to get a cell phone, which seems silly considering how ubiquitous phones are. It seems that people cannot plan a meeting more than 4 hours in advance and if you don’t have a cell phone to page you are not reachable. I just don’t like the idea of paying for a phone that won’t last more than 2 years before needing to be replaced.
Our university finally removed the coin operated typewriters some time around 2001. At the speed I type, my papers for class would have cost a couple of dollars per page.
Really. UWMadison didn’t even have phones in the '60s. They first showed up in the '80s. Appleton, WI had them in the '70s. Absolutely no colours, all wood and black painted steel or fancy ones for the faculty out of nickel. That crank handle gave me arthritis in ma wrist.
Ours didn’t click. But it did eventually become all warpy and wobbly, so when Kris Kristofferson got to the really poignant verse of “Darby’s Castle” it would go all it tooOOk three-hUNNNDreeeed DAAyyys for the TIIIIMberrrrs to be LLLAAAAIIIIID…, and that really spoiled the charm.
Ours did that as well, only it was on the Carpenter’s 8-track, on “We’ve only Just Begun”. I still can’t listen to that song without hearing it the way it was on our 8-track. “weEEEEEvvvve OOOnnnnnllLLLLyyyy jUUUUUUussssttt beeegUUUUUUUnnnnn” Then it got to the point where poor Karen sounded like a guy for the duration. Fun times
We? I never could ignore it; it bugged the bejayzus outta me no matter how hearty I partied, and if anything could make me yearn for oblivion, the 8-track tape was right up there on the short list. I mean, think of it: we’d put a man on the moon. And yet fast-forward to over a decade later, and our 8-tracks were still all Mesolithic and wooden-shoed clonky and everything, switching tracks in the middle of your favorite song. What did they do, chew rawhide strips to make the tape? It just wasn’t right. I was convinced we could do better. Unfortunately I was out of ideas. Fortunately until that brighter day we had LPs. Unfortunately you couldn’t play an LP in the car.
