This story happened over 40 years ago. There were no mobile phones. A landline phone was in the house, but if you were out and about you had to use a public pay phone. You would insert coins and dial the number. No pay by card either, it was coins or nothing!
I was going to visit my mother and would travel by train. The train line stopped ten minutes short of where my mother lived so I had told her I would phone when I arrived at the station and she would come in the car and pick me up.
Naturally the hour long train ride was uneventful. Everyone got off the train because it was the end of the line and a good twenty people lined up outside the single pay phone – clearly to do what I was going to do and phone to be picked up. The only pay phone was jammed by a coin. No one could phone up.
My years of being a House Master at a boys’ boarding school hadn’t been a total waste of time. The teen boys had taught me how to tap a phone to make a call. One simply took the phone number, subtracted each number from 10, and then depress that number of times flat out on the receiver handle. The phone would ring at the other end and it would be a free call. I was proficient at the method.
To be honest it was the only time I’ve ever been a hero. There I was fully dressed in my priest’s uniform and tapping calls on the public pay phone for about twenty people – all of whom were very grateful.
After about half an hour I was able to tap my mother’s number. It’s such a shame these days that one has to pay for ones calls.
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