Phone

Back at my hotel as I remember, had no heat except in the lobby by the front door. The lobby was narrow and long and was unfurnished but for a rug, a mirror and maybe a picture painting, a wall heater grate and a public phone. Some evenings on the weekends I would sit on the floor next to the heater and write letters, to girls I had met in my travels and was corresponding. It was discovered one evening, while I was writing in a notepad with ball point pen, in the dim light and the warmth of the heater, by a couple in their late twenties, that a phone call paid for using five coins got one's money back. Deja vu. They had made an unsuspecting not too distant call, requiring six or seven quarters and --- when with five quarters they got their money back, they got incredibly excited especially the man.

They were lower middle class and apparently quite poor, which would explain them living in this outwardly affluent but inwardly seedy hotel. They were both of short stature, plain and very simple people. They were dressed in the fashion of the day, a sort of hippie second hand store casual, but not hip --- they being seemingly unaware of the cultural whirlwinds around them. This fellow got really excited and wanted to call his brother in Wisconsin. "Oh my God, this is great", he kept saying. "I can call my brother. My God --- a free phone." She was a little more circumspect and suggested that they do a test call first, of not too long a distance; so they could make sure the phone would pay back before they went the whole hog.

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