I came across a woman along Duke Street chatting on her device, and asked her the last time she used a payphone. 

“Oh my God, ” as her eyes signaled a mode of nostalgia, “years!”  Her glow of remembering the past quickly snapped to the here and now, “Those things are nasty!”  she said walking away.

Open communication in Norfolk

You no longer have to be  tethered to a stationary position, imprisoned by a glass booth, or bound by a steel snake protuding from a heavy plastic receiver attached to a box,  to carry on a phone conversation outside your home or office.  The pay telephone is quickly going the way of buggy whips,  typewriters,  and VCRs (video cassette recorders for those of you born before the Reagan administration.) 

In my early days of reporting,  the assignment desk would chat with us over a two-way radio about our story.  When something big broke, they would urgently tell us, “Get to a landline!”   That meant find a payphone, and have a roll of change, but by no means talk on the two-way so rival stations can hear what’s going on.    That brings me to the gaggle of reporters we saw as black and white images on the silver screen rushing to a bank of phone booths when James Cagney was found guilty of killing a “copper.” 

 So an icon of mass communication fades like the distant click of the rotary phone.    We no longer have to “get to a landline”  to hear from someone at work, nor do we have to “call you when I get home.”   Talk in the 21st century is instant.  Listening?  That may be something we have to work on.