Now & Then: No cell phone user is an island

Clark Kent wouldn’t have a chance in today’s world. No phone booths.

For years there was a London-style telephone booth in front of the Historic Courthouse in Asheboro. It was a booth in the truest form of the word, with a door that closed to limit outside noises.

Perfect for changing into Superman’s tights and cape.

Now it’s gone — the square concrete pad now home to something that has nothing to do with telephones. What the telephone company did with the booth, I guess I’ll never know.

I remember more than two decades ago calling Ginny from a basketball arena to tell her I’d be home late. I phoned her from a bank of telephone booths.

A couple of years later, I was back at the arena and noticed that the phone booths had been removed.

I knew then we had officially entered the era of the cell phone.

I can remember back in the ’80s they were called mobile phones or car phones because most of them were installed in automobiles. Later, companies came out with phones you carried on your person.

Now, it seems, everywhere you go people are talking or texting on their cells. You can be in an office, department store, government building or even out in the woods and you’ll hear ring tones.

Last week my brother Ron and I were in a medical office waiting room, where most of the people were looking at their cell phones. I asked Ron what we did in waiting rooms before we had phones to keep us occupied.

The answer was simple. Ron said, “We looked at 20-year-old People magazines.”

To verify his point, we saw a lady near us looking studiously at a magazine. Maybe her cell phone battery was dead.

This past weekend I was in a big box store looking for Ginny. During my second lap around the huge facility, I pulled out my cell and punched her programmed number.

“Where are you?” I asked. “In the produce section,” she said. “Be there in a minute,” I responded.

It was so simple to call her and avoid further fruitless searching.

So, the question is: How did we ever survive without the now ever-present cellular telephone?

I guess the answer is, we didn’t know what we were missing. Futuristic prophecies predicted that we’d one day be talking to each other without the aid of wires and cables, but it sounded so Buck Rogers or Dick Tracy at the time.

But there were times in the past when I could have used a cell phone.

Like the time when I was still a preschooler. I had followed my two older brothers through the culvert under the road in front of our house.

On the other side, I hurried to catch up with them, only to find myself ensnared in a brier patch. But I was no Brer Rabbit and couldn’t release myself from the stickers that had grabbed ahold of me.

A cell phone would have allowed me to call for help: “Mama, I’m stuck in the blackberries!”

Fortunately, my big brother came to my rescue.

Years later, another bachelor and I were motoring back to Asheboro from Charlotte in his ’57 Chevy ragtop. He’d warned me that his tank was nearing empty, and sure enough, we ran out of gas on Highway 49 at the NC 109 overpass, several miles from town.

It was late on a Saturday night or Sunday morning and there was virtually no traffic. We tried the nearest home but nobody answered our knocks.

A cell phone would have come in handy back then. “Hey, we’re stranded on 49. Can you bring us a can of gas?”

This time it was a local politician driving by who saved the day. He stopped when he saw us and said he knew my father.

Otherwise, it would have been a long walk home.

Cell phones can be irritating, especially when they ring at inopportune times or when people talk loudly into them in public places. 

But aren’t they nice when we really need them?

I wouldn’t give mine up for, oh, one of those London-style telephone booths.

■ Larry Penkava, is a writer for Randolph Hub. Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com.