Everyday items that are disappearing... or already gone

“Are you olden days or nowadays?” a young cousin asked me recently.

Of course, I wanted to be nowadays. I mean, who wants to be olden days? Duh!

She eyed me skeptically. “Well, you’ll have to take the test!”

Hmm.

“Let’s say you just took pictures on your camera.” She looked at me to make sure I was paying attention. “What do you need to do next?”

“Develop them?” I said, hoping this wasn’t a trick question.

The reaction was instantaneous. “Olden days! Olden days!” she and her sisters chanted as they jumped up and down. “Nowadays you print them!”

It’s true — cameras no longer have film, and we print digital pictures instead of developing film exposures. So many staples of my childhood are disappearing... or already gone.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and see what’s truly “olden days” and obsolete.

Pay Phones and Phone Booths

I remember going to use a pay phone in my school’s entryway. It cost ten cents to make a call. And I remember, when I was a little older, making some calls from the airport, too. By then the price had gone up to as much as 50 cents. When you were almost out of time, a voice recording would come on instructing you to insert another 25 cents to continue the call.

Wow, those were the olden days!

Phone booths (which were little outdoor cubicles for people to stand in when they used pay phones) used to be common not just in airports, but all over city streets and in public places. They came equipped not just with phones but with phone books. In 1999, there were still some 2 million pay phones in the United States. Today, the phone booth is practically an extinct species.

This past May, New York City removed its last public pay phone. Any existing phone booths that remain in the city are simply tourist attractions, like the United Kingdom’s iconic red phone booths. Some of the phone booths that are still standing offer other services, like a charging station for your cell or even a phone to make free outgoing calls.

“Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile and from the automobile to the airplane, the digital evolution has progressed from pay phones to… kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs,” NYC Commissioner Matthew Fraser said. Um, did he just compare horse-and-buggy transportation to pay phones? That really is “olden days”!

New York’s last public pay telephone was put on display at the Museum of the City of New York as part of a “NYC life before computers” exhibit.