Telefón box along the Wild Atlantic Way carries us on a trip down memory lane
CRUISING along the Wild Atlantic Way last weekend, we came upon a blast from the past – a perfectly preserved phone box. It wasn’t working, of course, but still beautifully intact and recently painted. Squeezing into it for a laugh, it took us back to another era when its compact structure offered so much more than just communication – keeping dry, waiting for a bus, smartening up for an interview and some of the best cuddles of our teenage lives.
At one point back in the premobile era, there were 10,000 phone boxes dotted around the country – a figure now dwindled to only a hundred or fewer. Taking snaps in front of that evocative green and cream relic, complete with its trademark Telefón sign, we wondered where today’s teens go to get jiggy after the flicks, how drunks grab a quick snooze or if Whipmistress Jane has found an alternative bulletin board to advertise her uniquely personal services.
The first Irish telephone box appeared on Dublin’s Dawson Street in 1925, but getting one into any locality over the subsequent 50 years was a complex task requiring the most delicate of negotiations, ranging across a dark web of political and commercial inducements.
It really was a case of “who you knew” in order to achieve a successful outcome, followed by the even more tricky assignment of exactly where such a box would be located. After all, the presence of a public phone outside any establishment ensured a steady increase in profitable trade throughout the year, so naturally publicans and bookies were usually shouting the loudest. But it was the relative privacy afforded by these main street sanctuaries that trumped all other benefits in a pre-Seán Lemass Ireland where the only options of chatting with an errant daughter in London or scallywag son in Boston were the presbytery or the Guard’s barracks – locations with large flapping ears.
The convenience and privacy of the street corner box was a godsend for keeping family secrets, not to mention its revered position as the seedbed of romance between Paudie, a trainee teacher in Swords, and Gobnait, anchored in Dromahair to an ailing granny. Back in an era when ‘it’ was only a pronoun, some boxes even managed to cast a peculiar technological magic for the benefit of their localities. In one Donegal townland the Telefón was situated on terrain susceptible to occasional flooding, and during which it was discovered all calls could be dialled without charge.
Word quickly spread, and each evening a queue of 20 or more locals would be found patiently waiting their turn to call Boston or Melbourne – each clutching a full bucket of water to prolong the complimentary magic.
It was even said a few romances flourished on those long summer evenings as people loitered for their turn to dial into a global village where coins were unnecessary.
Then, one day without warning, the locals’ three months dream came to an abrupt end when a P&T van arrived and slammed the receiver down on this peculiar Donegal Woodstock.
In the brave new world of 2018, we’re almost at the final goodbye for the Irish Telefón box as yet another icon of a bygone era is dismantled. “And you actually had to leave the house to call a friend, daddy?” the child of 2025 will gasp in amazement. “But how on earth did you vote in ‘X Factor’?”