Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire When was the last call you made?

Had a pay phone in front of our office until around '08 - '10.
Still one in town - in a wooden booth. AFAIK, it still is operational.
Hillcrest Restaurant, Las Vegas, NM.

Took my sister to a Dr appt last week (she can't drive for a while). BIL came from work to attend the appt w/my sis. I noticed a pay phone in the waiting room and asked BIL if it really worked or if anybody would even know how to use it if it did.

Basic training in ‘93 to call the family, once a week on Sunday if I remember correctly.

1995

Pearl Harbor Naval Station to home.

Collect

It has been a long time

2003 Bar in Meeker Co on a deer/elk hunt checkin with the wife.

I called a suicide hot line in Iraq...

They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

Had a wheel bearing freeze up in Modoc County at around 70 mph.

Was glad the wife had change for the phone booth after limping 10 miles or so.

2007 I was in Eastern Montana with a friend who was looking to buy a house. My cell phone did not work there and it was hard to find a pay phone.
We left with no house and no deer.

By 2008 we called from Seattle. We came with moving van, a truck and a trailer full of engine blocks.

2000 in Brownwood, Texas

2005

Around 1999 - 2000... Company I worked for before I retired supplied pagers and calling cards to certain employees.

Paged at home used personal home landline -- paged while out in the field used pay phone and company calling card.

Around 2002 - 3 they started replacing employee's pagers and calling cards with cell phones.

I wound up carrying 3 cell phones -- my own personal cell phone and two more for worked related calls.

My accountant was telling me a story several years ago…he was dealing with an IRS audit helping a client, the reason and basic extent of the audit was premised on the pay phone in the parking lot of his business. The IRS guy was some west African, ESL ‘boo that just couldn’t understand the fact that he didn’t make money off the phone, not even the coins that theoretically would’ve been used because there is NO phone! The phone and everything was removed years ago since it hasn’t been in use for at least 20 years, it was an empty phone booth! The ’boo kept digging trying to find something…did he rent it to someone? WTF would someone do with 4 square feet of phone booth? The IRS tried to find anything to justify their intrusion but they couldn’t and finally gave up. My CPA is a great guy but he said after that whatever respect he had mustered for them out of professional necessity was destroyed.

No idea.... but it's been a while. In the mid 80's, I remember using one of those that just hung on a pole, had two of them side by side in Bethany, La., but it wasn't a phone booth.

Far enough back I can't remember! 🤪

Do rotaries even work at all any more? The way they input the signal is totally different from a touch phone. I remember when the touch 1st came out. They wouldn't work on many lines until the programming was updated.

In 2000 I was riding a bike and some big black professional athlete flipped his bike in a crosswalk and hit his head on the curb. He was knocked out. 20 people gathered and a nurse took charge. She pointed at me on a bike and said, "GET TO A PHONE". I Pulled out a cell phone and dialled 911. Cops were there in 1 minute. Ambulance took 10 minutes.
A year later in 2001, all 20 people would have had cell phones.


In 1980 my wife designed a synthesizer for development of the new cell phone system.
In 1990 my realtor had a $1k/month cell phone.
In 2000 I was designing circuits for cell towers being installed in China.
In 2020 my son was designing software for Android cell phones.