All right kids: Sit down. You want to hear something crazy?
Back in the day — the last millennium — we did not have cellphones.
If we were out somewhere — say, Compo Beach — we could not text our parents: “Pick me up.”
We would have to use this device (below). It was called a pay phone.
Compo Beach, 1983. (Photo/Arthur Nager)
We would say — politely — “Mom, can you please come pick me up?”
Then we would wait. We had no screens to scroll through, until our mothers — not Uber — arrived.
I think we talked to each other. Or looked at the sky.
Somehow, we managed.
Phone calls cost a dime.
There was nothing more fun than walking by, sticking your hand in the coin return, and finding money.
Then again, that was when people still used cash.
A lot has changed. But look again at the photo.
Except for the long-gone pay phone — and the now-locked doors at the back of the bathhouse — a lot has not changed.
That’s part of the magic of Compo Beach. If you’re growing up here now: Enjoy it.
And maybe one day you’ll tell your grandchildren what it was like to text for a ride.
(NOTE: Click here for photographer Arthur Nager’s website. For archival prints, email artnager@gmail.com.)
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