It feels like every single person in America has a mobile phone of one kind or another. Apparently, that's not a true statement. it turns out that the latest figures show that pay phones hauled in about $286 million over the past year. Compared to the multi-millions brought in by other technology, that's not a big figure, but that's a pretty good chunk of change when you consider how cheap it is to use a pay phone. it means a whole lot of people are using pay phones.

According to an article on the website Motherboard, each old-fashioned, nasty, germy payp hone generates just under $250 a year, so there must be a ton of pay phones still in operation. Have you gone out looking for a pay phone recently?

I decided to take a little turn around town in an effort to find a working pay phone. After about an hour of searching, I realized that I would have to widen my search to find a pay phone anywhere, working or not. I went all over town and, for all my driving, I found exactly three pay phones. Check out these money makers!

Here we are at Downtown Express on Broad Street - This phone looked okay at first. However, while it doesn't show very clearly in this picture, the entire change box is gone!

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I decided to take a drive down Ryan street since there are a lot of convenience stores and, let's face it, that's where you're most likely to find a pay phone. The phone at The Smoke Shop on Ryan looked okay, but when I attempted to put in a quarter to see if it worked, I discovered that someone had stuck gum in the coin slot.

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Here's a little beauty that I found at the corner of McNeese and Common. It's kind of fun to imagine what the last conversation on that phone was all about. I'm reasonably certain that the caller was not the recipient of particularly good news.

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At one point, a city worker asked me why I was taking a picture of a pay phone. I told him about the story, and he told me that he just moved here from Houston. He doesn't remember the last time he saw a pay phone in Houston.

Do you know of a working pay phone in Lake Charles? Good luck finding one!

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