Colin Sheridan: The now-defunct phone boxes were once lifelines to our hopes and dreams

They may have stunk — they always stunk — but if those walls could talk they’d tell us of secret histories that now will never be written or known, writes Colin Sheridan

For the pre-mobile generation however, the payphone played a seminal role in all our lives. File picture: Larry Cummins

Farewell to the phone box, that curious rectangular fixture which adorned city street corners and town squares for over a century. 

Eir — the telecommunications company charged with decommissioning the boxes — have announced they will refurbish a 100-year-old 'K1' kiosk, the first type of payphone box introduced in Ireland, to commemorate the occasion. 

Once upon a time phone boxes were as ubiquitous as telegraph poles. File picture: Larry Cummins

There was no mention about whether they would attempt to replicate the lurid graffiti, pungent stench of urine, or token empty Devils Bit cider cans in the installation. 

Once upon a time they were as ubiquitous as telegraph poles. In recent years, with the monopoly of mobile and smartphones, they had become eyesores to those who actually took any notice, engrossed, as most people are, in the small devices we keep in our pockets.

For the pre-mobile generation however, the payphone played a seminal role in all our lives. 

How many teenagers today owe their very existence to that humble payphone? Not as a venue of conception (well, maybe some), but as a conduit for cupid's arrow.  A glorious Tardis of love, nine feet tall and just four feet wide. Standing in out of the rain to call your first love with nothing but a pocket pull of 50p coins and a head full of dreams was one of life's formative experiences. 

There could be a thesis written on the appearance of the phone box in popular culture. File picture: Larry Cummins

There was a thrill in predicting the sequence of events that were necessary to execute the perfect call: availability of a payphone, first and foremost. Then the relief of picking up the receiver to hear it actually worked. The slotting of the coins. The dialing of the number. The ring tone. Who’ll pick up, the Ma or the Da? Hopefully the older sister. How many calls were aborted if it was the brother?

If you grew up in a town or a city, having a payphone outside your house was a luxury country folk could only dream of. We were lucky the village square was only an eight-minute walk from our house. 

It served multiple functions, and not all of them involved reversing the charges to school friends in Ballyglass or checking was your maybe-girlfriend going to the Travellers Friend that night. My father was the local headmaster, so it was not that unusual for disgruntled parents to call to our house unannounced. With no place for my father to hide, the parents were always invited into the front room. 

As children, we didn't even need to receive verbal instruction as to what to do next. Out the back door we’d go, usually as a pair, and — adjusting our pace depending on the severity of the parent — we’d make our way to the phone box from where we’d call our own home number. Our mother would answer the phone in the kitchen (only after letting it ring long and loud enough to be heard all around the house), before interrupting the serious conversation in the front room between my dad and disgruntled parent. 

It may have been a small, restrictive, stinky place, but a lot of magic happened between the phone box's four fibreglass walls. File picture: Larry Cummins

In a scene that would later be replicated by White House Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card when he whispered in George W Bush’s ear that the Twin Towers had just been hit, my mother would mumble some serious sounding words to my father, who would abruptly end the meeting because of the nature of the news he’d just been told. 

I’m not sure what excuses he actually used, because at the same time he was extracting himself, I’d be in Riordan's shop with my brother spending whatever change we had from the phone on a bottle of Cadet cola. It was an ingenious plan, and one that arguably saw us at our best as a family, working telepathically as a team, for each other.

There could be a thesis written, too, on the appearance of the phone box in popular culture. 

Long before Colin Farrell’s sleazy publicist got pinned down by a sanctimonious sniper for conducting his extra-curricular affairs from on a payphone on the corner of 53rd and Eighth (Joel Schumacher's Phonebooth an underrated picture!), the Phone Box, as we called it this side of the pond, was a seminal prop for some of the best actors and TV shows. 

James Caan in The Gambler. Robert De Niro talking into “an empty telephone” in Heat. Val Kilmer calling Ashley Judd one last time in the same movie. Goodfellas. Intermission. The Wire. The Sopranos. Even the 1987 Irish movie The Clash of the Ash features a lot of potent pay phone action. 

The phone box, a place that carried our hopes and dreams. File picture: Larry Cummins

It may have been a small, restrictive, stinky place, but a lot of magic happened between those four fibreglass walls. A lot of deals done. Whacks ordered. Hearts broken. Copy filed. Come-pick-me-up’s issued.

Alas, no more. The phone box is yet another relic of a disappearing Ireland put out to grass, rendered useless by emerging technologies. They may have stunk — they always stunk — but if those walls could talk they’d tell us of secret histories that now will never be written or known. So, a fond farewell to the phone box, a place that carried our hopes and dreams. I, for one, will never forget you.