A Blast From the Past Hangs on the Wall of Southbury’s McDonald’s

I never expected to have a flashback when I walked into the McDonald's Restaurant in Southbury Plaza, but wow, did I have one when I saw this.

I'm a child of the 1970's, I grew up carrying coins in order to make a phone call. That changed for all of us in the early 1990's when cellphones became affordable. Now in 2025? Pay phones are as rare as a crappy pizza in Connecticut, you just can't find one. I was shocked to see a holdover from last century as I waited for my delicious Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Photo by Mrs. Large

Right there on the wall of the only McDonald's in all of Connecticut without a drive thru was a working pay phone. Like everything else in this world, the price has jumped dramatically for the cost of a phone call. This phone is branded as a United Payphone Systems LLC device, and they charge 75 cents for a three-minute call to anywhere in the continental United States. I want to say that the last time I used one it was a quarter?

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It started me thinking also about the old phone booths that were everywhere in our cities, a tiny little shelter when it rained out. I can't remember the last time I saw one of those around here. I did a quick search on payphone-project.com to see if this is the only payphone in Southbury, and from what I can tell, that website hasn't been updated in quite some time. I might have to start carrying quarters again after all of these years.