Roadside discovery offers dial back to the days of pay phones

During one of my recent morning walks, I unearthed a relic from the not-so-recent past. It wasn't some ancient archaeological discovery, though. The dust-covered and weather-beaten equipment lay abandoned on the roadside. As I got closer to the ET-like object (it has a large, pearl-shaped cover), I realized it was a pay phone.

The telephone, sheltered by a red helmet-like protective cover made of fiberglass, had perhaps been dead for a long time. For confirmation, I lifted the black-colored receiver hanging on its rest and kept it to my ear. No dial tone. Perhaps, it was permanently on sleep mode.

The boxlike telephone, fixed to two parallel metal staffs on the sidewalk, with a yellow-colored "dashboard", an LCD screen and silver-colored push buttons, and a handset with a receiver and mouthpiece, brought back some nostalgia, from days when the cellphone was unheard of, or it was just making inroads into our lives.