Winter Writings: Day 48

Remember phone booths? What would Clark Kent or Maxwell Smart be without one? Where do our superheroes go to complete their transformations or drop into their secret headquarters? I was walking down the street when I came across this vintage beauty and had to stop to take a photo...it's been so long since I've seen or used one...I felt like I had just turned the corner and traveled back in time. I half expected to see a dark sedan pull up to the curb, complete with a shady character dressed in black, who gets out with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth and drops a dime in the slot to call his moll.

Remember seeing them on every corner, their lights beckoning to you on a dark night when your car just died and you're in need of rescue? Before cell phones, phone booths were an essential part of life. Salvation inside a glass box. Where's the drama of the chase, when the kidnappers have no booth to call you at as you bring the ransom monies on a wild goose chase? Remember the frustration of the missing yellow pages...even if the book was there, the pages you needed were always gone. Or the words conjured to your tongue by the hungry slot that just ate your last dime but failed to give you a dial tone.

Now it's just another fixture from yesteryear on the fast track to oblivion...travelling the same road as rotary phones and DOS computer systems...sometimes time just amazes me with the speed of change. I'm feeling my age today!