RESTORE TO ADEQUATE PUBLIC PAY PHONE SERVICE !

 

Public pay phones obsolete? Last week on my way out of the re-modeled Providence Public Library I spotted what looked like a new PUBLIC PAY PHONE. Not presently in possession of my own cell phone I counted on using that phone this morning . I wanted to update my sister on where her husband could meet me after my grocery shopping at Shore's Food Market in Cranston.

I located the public library phone . Joked with the security guard that these were all but obsolete. I deposited two quarters . There was no dial tone and no change return. I asked myself if it was not RUDE of the library not to notify would be users of their pay phone that it was not functional.

The woman at the desk seemed a little embarrassed by this and gave me back two quarters. IN SO MANY WAYS TODAY THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE WITH LIMITED RESOURCES ARE BEING IGNORED or neglected.

And you don't have to be pauperized to be in need of a PUBLIC PHONE . We need more of them in many different places.

[Like so many other great inventions of yore — think Blockbuster Video, JNCO jeans, and the special effects in The X-Files — payphones seem to be pretty much obsolete. Except that they're not. Payphones still exist and roughly 100,000 of them remain operational in the United States.Sep 6, 2019]