These days public phones are a dying breed. Everywhere I look; there are very few if any public phones anymore. Several places have removed public phones altogether with the exception of a few places that may still have only one when they formerly had a whole wall lined with them. Even the very few places you can still find an outdoor public phone, the booths are gone and it is an open aired drive up phone. Of course, this is because of the proliferation of cell phones these days. I’m sure the public phone people aren’t too excited about the propagation of cell phones. Just as email has killed the Post Office, cell phones have killed public phones and the income derived from them.

 

These days everyone (except me) has a cell phone. I don’t have one for 2 reasons: The first is that everyone else has one and I want to be different, having never followed fads. The second reason is that I don’t want to have anyone to be able to contact me so easily, since I desire privacy. Even when I was working, I didn’t accept the free cell phone when it was offered to me. All the other engineers and supervisors not only had county supplied cell phones, but also had pagers. Here again, I didn’t want anyone to be able to contact me so easily. Besides, the only people that have pagers these days are physicians and drug dealers.  If anyone needed to contact me, by the nature of my job, it was usually a message that someone wanted to yell at me with a complaint as a result of something I either did or didn’t do. I did have a two-way radio in my county truck, and I figured if the office people needed to contact me, they could call me on the radio. That way, if it was concerning someone who was upset at me, I could take my time on the way back to the office in order to give him or her more time to cool down before I returned their call. Ingenious, huh! I always figured if I’m not around when I received calls at work, they could leave a message with one of the secretaries. Normally when I got back to my office, there would be so many phone message yellow sticky notes all over my computer screen that it looked like a giant lemon! However: The MAIN reason I don't have a regular cell phone is because it's been well proven that over use of cell phones due to the close proximity of electrical magnetic radiation cause brain tumors (the news media knows this but has been suppressing and denying this fact for years) and the LAST thing I need is another problem with my brain!

 

Back when Tim and I were in High School, there was a public phone booth at the corner of the old Citco (now Marathon) gas station in Berlin Heights. It cost 10 cents to use the phone. This phone was unique, because instead of depositing the dime before you dialed, this phone worked by waiting until the party you were calling answered, and then you deposited the dime in the slot to be able to talk to them! Sometimes, the interval between the other person answering and putting in the dime resulted in the other person hanging up thinking it was a “crank” call. We if we ran to the phone booth to call home, we always waited until we caught our breath so no one would think it was a crank call when they heard heavy breathing after we dropped our dime in. I’ve never seen any other pay phone work in this manner. When Tim and I needed a ride home, we would call our mother from that phone booth which was the only one in our small village. We grew tired of dropping dimes in the slot after she answered. Somehow, we discovered that if we yelled into the listening part of the receiver, the other party could hear us without us having to deposit in a dime. Although our voices were very faint, the other party could still hear us if they really listened. I don’t recall how Tim or I discovered this ploy, but it sure saved us a lot of money over time. In those days, we could buy a bottle of pop or 2 candy bars for a dime, so we didn’t have to waste any dimes to call home for a ride. Due to the fact that I’m too timid to try this with other pay phones today, I drop in my quarter before dialing. This is contingent upon the fact, of course, that I can still find a public phone! Every once and a while, someone would vandalize the public phone booth we had in Berlin Heights. Although neither Tim nor I were ever involved (at least in this caper), we were, nonetheless, accused of doing it by the mayor of Berlin Heights. Mayor Bud Nickols aka “Lard Butt” would come to our house and accuse us in front of our mother, of wrecking the phone booth! Hey, it wasn’t us! (Honest!) We CERTAINLY didn’t want to have to walk home from Berlin Heights!

 

Back in those days, one kid, (Jim E.), used to make obscene phone calls from the Berlin Heights public phone. Now that I think about it, since this was in the days long before caller ID, why he didn’t call from his home? I would guess that he didn’t want his parents to overhear his obscene calls. In fact, I was never sure how, but he was finally “busted” for it and spent some “hard time” at Mansfield where the Juvenile Detention Home was located.

 

At this point, I must confess that with the extinction of public phones, I very reluctantly and against my wishes, purchased a cellular TracPhone after I got married about 2 years ago. Technically speaking it isn't a regular cell phone and is not meant for everyday use. I wanted to make that very clear so no one would accuse me of being a hypocrite. The ONLY use I have for it is to take on long trips, and its ONLY use is in the event of an emergency while traveling. Thank goodness, I've never had to use it. There's no monthly fee, it operates on buying time. My rationale for getting it, in spite of the fact I detest cell phones, is that my wife is handicapped and I may need to contact someone if she has any sudden physical problems during a rare long trip. The phone number is unpublished and no one else has it. Well, as long as I'm on this expedition, yet another reason I don't like cell phones is when I'm out shopping or for that matter, anywhere in public, people's cell phones are always ringing. At least the latest cell phone fad is to have music play when a call comes in, and not that irritating electronic ring sound. I've rarely, if ever, have heard any conversations that served any useful purpose. The following is a typical example of the kinds of one-sided "important" cell phone conversations I often overhear:

Harpsichord music... Hello... Oh, hi Lyle what's up?... I'm not doing anything right now either... I don't know what I'm doing tonight... Oh, you either... I'm at Wal-Mart right now and walking down the laxative aisle... Yeah, they have all colors... Huh? Your cell phone faded and I only got 2 or 3 words... Oh, you didn't get all of my last words either... I said they have all different colors of laxatives in this aisle...No, I don't see any speckled ones... Now I'm just starting to go past the ladies underwear section... Huh?... I don't know if they still make Playtex Living Bras, how would I know, you'd have to ask my wife... Oh all right, wait a minute, I'll go back and look... I said wait a minute and I'll go back and look... I said I'll look... LOOK LOOK!... Hey Lyle, please don't tell any of the other guys at the Yugo plant that I'm looking for Playtex Living Bras!... Well, you know how Sidney is... ha ha yeah right... Hey, there's some dust on the floor... I said there's some dust on the floor... THERE'S SOME DUST ON THE FLOOR!!!!! Hello, Hello, LYLE? LYLE? Are you there? STUPID cell phones!!!!!!...... (Same guy 4.68 seconds after losing Lyle on his cell phone) Harpsichord music... Oh, hi Walter what's up?... I'm not doing anything right now either... I don't know what I'm doing tonight... Oh, you either... I'm at Wal-Mart right now and I'm walking through the house wares aisle... By this time, I've started to make  yet another hasty retreat to another section of Wal-Mart only to hear more electronic music in that section! UGHHHH! As Martha and the Vandellas so fittingly sung it in 1964, "No where to run to, baby nowhere to hide..."!!!

 

The previous typical cell conversations are from adults. By far, the most cell users with the same kind of constant "urgent" conversations are teenagers. After hearing "like" before every word for the "umpteenth" time, I can't take it anymore. I then hastily push my shopping cart to yet another department such as the Book Section where I don't have to worry about being within hearing distance of teenage cell phone talkers who all sound like the reincarnation of Maynard G. Krebs. Now days, cell phones also serve as cameras, Internet access, mp3 players, text senders, and what ever other uses that are included. Incidentally, I just can't understand why so many kids send text messages via of their cell phones. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier and faster just to talk to someone else on your cell phone???? Will this make email obsolete for everyone but me???? What's the deal here??? I can just imagine the "urgent" conversations with text messaging:

yo brittany it's like me amber like what cha doin im not like doin nothin im like at walmart like walkin down the grocery aisle like lookin for some like rutabaga for my mom lol hey like theres like some dust on the floor here.........

Apparently, email and text-messaging software that teenagers use these days is incapable of using capital letters or punctuation... The above example is no doubt typical except that all the words would be misspelled.

 

SERIOUS NOTE ALERT! Of course I realize that some cell phone calls do serve important purposes (such as when I hear from my daughters), it's just the ones that don't are the ones I always manage to overhear in public places. In addition, I hope you; my teenage fans are not offended by some of the stuff in this story. I'm a humorist and satirize things and do not intend to convey any offense to anyone. I like teens; after all, I was one once. When I was a teenager, the previous generation couldn't figure us out either and it's the same now with my generation observing teenagers. I had 2 teenagers working for me in the stable this summer. Working with horses is hard work and they both did a great job and were very polite. The main thing I've learned over the years is not to take yourself too seriously and learn to laugh at yourself as all my stories illustrate.

 

Well, I have to take a quick break, since I'm receiving a phone call and I know from caller ID, the person calling. OK, I do have a cordless phone, but it's not the same as a cell phone. I have my phone system set up when any caller has deactivated their caller ID, the call will be blocked by the phone company, and a recorded message will play telling the caller to unblock their caller ID and call again. Ah, isn't modern technology great. Therefore, if any of you call me, which may be difficult since I have an unlisted number known to a limited number of people, remember to unblock your caller ID if your phone is set up that way. Better yet, send me an email! So far, I haven’t gotten an unlisted email address. Heck, every spammer in the world knows my email address anyway! Yeah yeah, I know. I'm starting to sound like a cantankerous old man, but that's because I'm out of Metamucil and I have to make a trip to Wal-Mart to get more. I sure hope they stock it in the Book Section! J

 

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