Ma Bellbottoms

Remember when payphones were everywhere? I still do. It was just over a decade ago when going out with friends meant making sure I had an extra 35 cents in case I needed to make a call. Except in the biggest cities and some other odd places where they may still be found, payphones were taken off the hook everywhere. In the years after September 11th the huge increase in the popularity of cellphones marked the death knell for many payphones.
For many decades payphones were ubiquitous in all areas of the United States, and found in many public places. The image of Clark Kent transforming in a phone booth is embedded into American culture. Tony Montana never had much trouble finding them around Miami in Scarface. The Jim Croce song "Operator" has an extra outdated-bonus - not only is the singer on a payphone, but the song takes place back when calls only cost a dime!

It is at Mr. Croce's alma mater (and mine!), Villanova University, where this picture was taken. In the middle of a busy plaza, a small but garishly yellow sticker against a black light pole. I always assumed it was a sticker for some long-dissolved student band, with a picture of a cassette tape. Then one day while lounging in the area I happened to notice - wait! That cassette tape has a rotary dial and handset! So of course I had to look closer.

If the sticker is to be taken at face value, there are a few things to be learned:

1. There was a payphone out here in the plaza or near it. There aren't any outdoor payphones here anymore, and I'm not sure if the nearby buildings still have any inside. Maybe the Connelly Center does since it hosts a lot of outside functions. I'm sure in the past all of the neighboring buildings had plenty of payphones inside.
2. Students loved to hack said payphone for free calls. Not so surprising; students still like free stuff, even when it isn't really "free".
3. The sticker was designed, if not placed, in 1975. Judging by the two baffled students in the drawing, 1975 looks like a feasible date at least for the design of the sticker. Look at those pants! And what's up with that girl's outfit too?
3a. If that sticker was put up at any time after 1975 it would have looked dated already. Disco invaded. But I guess AT&T was too busy with the whole monopoly breakup drama to care about trivial things like that. Wait, maybe it was Pennsylvania Bell who put it up using old stickers they had lying around?

The irony about the sticker and its message is that it was not abuse in the end that made most of the campus' payphones run away on their comically-thin legs. It was changes in society, and changes in technology, that made them whimper off into the sunset, never to be seen again.