David Thayer

Unless you’re writing a period piece your novel’s characters can’t devote a ritual hour in search of a pay phone. Younger readers may not know what a pay phone is unless they saw the movie with Colin Farrell, the ultimate in phone booth tyranny from which there was no escape.

The 1950s were the Golden Age of Pay Phones. In those heady days a person could wear a trenchoat and fedora, smoke a Chesterfield, and for a nickel, make a call. Doing any or all of those things today might result in arrest. Besides, your character either has a cell phone or access to one; sure the battery will fail at crunch time and then it’s possible to write the gotta find a pay phone scene.

My favorite pay phone scene would include the following elements: a rural setting, a dusty crossroads in Texas, a strong southwesterly breeze, a countdown of some kind, and thirty or forty minutes of frantic driving ( gotta…find…a pay phone.) Let’s add a bullet wound.

Happy ending: Pay phone found on a deserted crossroads in Deaf Smith Country. Call to the Governor goes through. Bullet wound heals.

Unhappy ending: Pay phone doesn’t work. A fat guy with beady eyes tips the phone booth over. You lose three quarters and a pint of blood.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 10:27 am and is filed under Biting the Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.