I have one right now, although it’s a replica. It’s in an old wooden phone booth that came out of an old drugstore. The phone didn’t come with the booth, so I found a replica of an old pay phone. The phone works and you can drop coins in it. It’s quite a conversation piece.
AWWWWW…. I’m jealous! I’d love to have an old phone booth. I’ve thought about trying to build one. But like many things, I’ve been thinking about doing that for 20 years.
The phone booth also has a sign that sticks out in front of it that reads “Telephone,” that lights up. When we obtained it, it took 4 men to hoist it up a ladder to the second floor, and naturally it took 4 men to bring it down. It was packed on a moving van and brought with the rest of our furniture, and my husband’s motorcycle to our present home.
my in laws still use a rotary and have no planes on upgrading.
You have no planes on upgrading?
Does this mean your in-laws have to fly coach? 😀
I remember these. When I was a kid, we could dial the last 5 digits of a local phone number to make the call (since the first two digits were 7 and 8, this saved a lot of time waiting for the dial to return). Unfortunately, once the 911 system hit town, we could not do that anymore–we had to dial all 7 digits.
The reason? It was because how these phones worked. To dial, you could spin the dial or click the “hang up” buttons–5 clicks was the same as dialing 5. So to dial 911 you could click 11 times. And 11 clicks could also equal some 5-digit phone number–thus, we lost that shortcut.
Now about the weird looks I get from my son when I try to explain this to him…
Yeah like, back in my day the telephone had a wire hooked to it. And there were no answering machines, so somebody had to actually be there and pick up the phone and talk.
And if you wanted to text somebody, you put it in an envelope, and walked to the end of the driveway to put it into a box. In a week or so, you might find a text from them in that same box.
I have one right now, although it’s a replica. It’s in an old wooden phone booth that came out of an old drugstore. The phone didn’t come with the booth, so I found a replica of an old pay phone. The phone works and you can drop coins in it. It’s quite a conversation piece.
AWWWWW…. I’m jealous! I’d love to have an old phone booth. I’ve thought about trying to build one. But like many things, I’ve been thinking about doing that for 20 years.
The phone booth also has a sign that sticks out in front of it that reads “Telephone,” that lights up. When we obtained it, it took 4 men to hoist it up a ladder to the second floor, and naturally it took 4 men to bring it down. It was packed on a moving van and brought with the rest of our furniture, and my husband’s motorcycle to our present home.
my in laws still use a rotary and have no planes on upgrading.
You have no planes on upgrading?
Does this mean your in-laws have to fly coach? 😀
I remember these. When I was a kid, we could dial the last 5 digits of a local phone number to make the call (since the first two digits were 7 and 8, this saved a lot of time waiting for the dial to return). Unfortunately, once the 911 system hit town, we could not do that anymore–we had to dial all 7 digits.
The reason? It was because how these phones worked. To dial, you could spin the dial or click the “hang up” buttons–5 clicks was the same as dialing 5. So to dial 911 you could click 11 times. And 11 clicks could also equal some 5-digit phone number–thus, we lost that shortcut.
Now about the weird looks I get from my son when I try to explain this to him…
Yeah like, back in my day the telephone had a wire hooked to it. And there were no answering machines, so somebody had to actually be there and pick up the phone and talk.
And if you wanted to text somebody, you put it in an envelope, and walked to the end of the driveway to put it into a box. In a week or so, you might find a text from them in that same box.