Monday, September 10, 2007

The old drugstore telephone booth

The old telephone booth in the back of the downtown corner drugstore was among the favorite places of many young students on their daily after school adventures. There were no cell phones in the 1950-60 era so the phone booth served as a primary communications spot for teenagers. The booth always had a line of customers waiting to deposit their dimes and quarters after school and at night and the pressure was on for anyone that tied up the phone for a longer than their allotted time as they took their turn on the small wooden seat in the tight fitting booth. Sadly, the old booth disappeared in recent years when cell phones became the ever present means to keep in touch and pay-phones became a losing business for the telephone companies.

The daily after school ritual usually for many local students consisted of a walk or ride to downtown (depending on whether you had a car or had or had a buddy with one), rushing into the corner drugstore and ordering your favorite drink or milkshake with a grilled cheese sandwich and then spending some much anticipated "quality time" with all the friends you already saw at school all day.

Those days have faded into the past along with the old telephone booth. The drugstore has been renovated and turned into a favorite local pizza-pasta restaurant always crowded with a mixture of adults and families. The teen crowd has moved on and some now return to the former after school spot for their favorite pizzas and new friends found along the way...