Consider the lowly phone booth

Think about it, living in our world of cell phones, texting, tele-communications, Twitter and Facebook, when was the last time you saw a phone booth? Well we have one right in downtown La Crescent, right across from the post office and outside our local phone company office. I've never noticed it, but while CA grand daughter Janine was visiting this past week, it caught her attention. "Grandma, what's that little building on the sidewalk?" To which, I could reply, "Huh", really unaware of what she was talking about.

So we drove by the post office on our way to one of our shopping expeditions. "Oh, that's a Phone booth!" She said, "A what?" I began to explain pay phones and phone booths. She was so fascinated at her young age of 18, that we had to visit it and take her picture to post on her i-phone or whatever that magic device she carries.

Really here is a young lady, in her first year of college who knows nothing of pay phones and certainly not of phone booths. How will she ever understand the comedy of Maxwell Smart? How will she ever get the jokes about Superman changing in the phone booth? We have now an upcoming generation deprived of such experience. While we progress in technology and other rapid changes in our society consider the lowly phone booth. No more college pranks stuffing it full of as many of us as we could.

We returned home to explain this phenomena to our other family guests including a 10 year old niece from CA, Sophia who is quite advanced and well read. Certainly she had heard of phone booths. And where? In Harry Potter! But her parents took her by the same phone booth from which she called our house just to be able to say she used a pay phone booth--another part of disappearing America.

When we visit Decatur, Indiana we go to Arnolds's, a local diner 50's style, which has survived from the 50's and still serves the greasy burger, real Cherry cokes and thick malts. We remember those times and can experience them in places like that. Not a faux flip to the 50's but a real survivor of the ages.

So many things are changing and so much we roll along with taking no notice until we engage with the younger up and coming generation and find ourselves explaining what's become obsolete in society. They can no more imagine pay phones and life without i-pods, cells, texting than they could imagine life without TV. While we grew up in the midst of phenomenal changes, we studied history and knew of such things as horse and carriage pre-automobile. Today without the study of history only by visiting Grandpa & Grandma in the Heartland will they know some of what they might otherwise miss.