Remembering simpler times as mailboxes and pay phones leave our sight

By Mary MacElveen
August 4, 2009

I want to shout BRAVO to those in Otisfield, Maine who are trying to save one mailbox. I feel as if they are guardians of simpler times where life made sense. Many of these mailboxes are disappearing as the article states because people are choosing to pay bills online and email. While convenient to many these actions are one of solitude where people do not have to leave their home and I find that incredibly sad.

As people choose to pay bills online or email, lost is human contact when one reads of post offices being closed. As one met up with friends at their local post office, they would stop and take a minute out of their day to shoot the breeze.

I never thought I would ever say this, but it used to be where bills were mailed. My mom would sit at the dining-room table doing the bills, placing each one in an envelope along with the payment as she reached for her book of stamps. I still remember her saying, “Bills, bills, bills, bills, bills” She would then ask one of us to walk the pile of bills up to our mailbox. While this lone action may seem foreign to today’s youth: We who lived in simpler times were getting exercise and fresh air by walking to that mailbox. While we may have grumbled being asked to do this one chore, at least we felt as if we were contributing to the family-unit. As we walked back home, we often met up with a friend or two and stayed out and played. Life was good.

In dropping either bills or personal letters actually written into that solid-mailbox, we felt secure they would get to their final destination. While paying a bill online is convenient, we have often heard of web sites being hacked into and an increase in identity theft. We who grew up in simpler times just never heard the terms ‘hacked’ or ‘identity-theft’ and I feel that to be a positive.

As people choose email over snail-mail, the art of letter writing has died off where many of our children do not even know how to formulate a sentence. In fact computer language has turned up in many a term paper. Has technology made us lazy?

As the article cites these mailboxes are going the way of the pay phone. The only ones I know of are in the supermarkets I choose to do my shopping in. I still remember the days of the phone booth where one can sit within it, close the door and have a little privacy when making that call. There used to be two at the local candy store which was just up the block from me. Just thinking of those phone booths brings back memories of simpler times. Back in the day, there was no texting. My friends and I would simply meet up at this candy store to talk to each other face-to-face and have an ice cream soda or buy a piece of penny-candy. How I wish our kids today had them.

Through the disappearance of phone booths, we are confronted with noise pollution when we are forced to hear other people’s conversations in public through the use of their cell phones. No, I really do not want to hear of the hot time you had last night which did happen to me as I sat waiting for a cab. In listening to every single detail, I felt the need to take a long hot shower when I got home. Yuk!

We are also confronted with accidents occurring when people choose to use their cell phones while driving. I often wonder is the price of making that one call worth the life of another? I would have to say, thank goodness for hands free components and remind all that holding one’s cell is against the law while driving.

In handling the receiver of a pay phone and dropping money into it, we knew the person on the other end could hear us now. Rarely were our calls disconnected as cell phone calls can drop. A solid machine for solid times.

People today feel the need to be connected second-by-second by using cell phones, yet if a phone company wishes to put up a cell tower in one’s community, at times the residents of it have screamed, “NIMBY”

As mailboxes disappear as well as phone booths, human jobs have been lost. The same can be said of the good old-fashioned newspaper where jobs have been shed. All signify to me the passing of an era where we valued humans and their contributions through hard work to our society. I suppose some who grew up in much simpler times do mourn their passing as we are faced with living in more complex times. With the advance of technology our society seems to value employing a computer over a human being and that to me is so, so sad.

Will we ever return to simpler times as I have expressed above? I suppose not since the world is fast-changing. However, I feel truly blessed in growing up in amazing times where mailboxes and pay phones were apart of our everyday existence. For those who are growing up in the Internet age, you are most likely saying, “Does not compute” In looking back, at least we did not have to know technology in order to live and thrive as a society. We just lived.

Author’s email address is, xmjmac@optonline.net

Copyrighted material: Should you wish to use any portion of this column, please email the author for permission.