Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Phone Booth Of Past Returns To Present
PRAIRIE GROVE — With the Prairie Grove phone booth back in place, Mayor Sonny Hudson plunked his quarter in the machine to make the first official call.
He called his wife, Becky, who works in the superintendent’s office for Prairie Grove School District.
“I’m calling you from the phone booth,” Hudson told his wife.
“Cool,” she replied. “The caller ID says PG Telco.”
The actual telephone number for the phone booth is 846-9314 and several people standing around called that number to hear the pay phone ring.
Hudson wasn’t the only one to use the phone booth last week on Tuesday morning. Others lined up to make a call and have their pictures taken in the booth while on the phone.
Prairie Grove Telephone Co. has 15 working pay phones but only one is enclosed in a telephone booth. The booth was knocked over and damaged during an accident June 7 and removed to the company’s warehouse. A Facebook status about the accident prompted local citizens to ask the phone company to bring it back.
David Parks, PG Telco president, said the booth is a novelty in Prairie Grove and has been fun.
“It was a little more of a challenge to fix it up than we anticipated,” Parks said.
Patrick Smith, a construction supervisor, worked on the booth for several weeks. He took it completely apart, straightened out the bent pieces, replaced panels that were broken and installed all new tempered glass.
“Then we shined on it for several weeks,” Smith said. “It took a lot of elbow grease.”
Parks said the company wanted it to look nice but still original. It cost less than $500 to repair the booth, he added.
Compa ny wo rke r s removed the booth from a flatbed truck and placed it on a concrete slab, located in front of Colonial Motel and across from Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park. People driving by honked their horns or yelled out comments to those standing by.
After putting it in place and wiring it for service, workers found they had to make one last repair. When a quarter was inserted, it dropped into the coin return, not the coin box. This was quickly corrected and Smith gave the OK for the first call to be made.
Hudson thanked PG Telco for renovating the phone booth and returning it to its original site.
“This just shows the kind of folks they are,” Hudson said. “It would have been easy for them not to do it. This is one of the many things they do for this community.”
He added, “I appreciate the telephone company going to all the trouble they’ve done for the citizens who did not want it to disappear.”
The phone company does not have a record of when the booth was installed but one retired employee thinks the phone booth was set up in 1959. In the 1960s and 70s, Parks said the change box was emptied twice a month and sometimes was so full that it was backed up. Now, the company’s pay phones generate only $26-$32 per month.
Erma Mathews, who has owned Colonial Motel with her husband for 38 years, said she is glad to have the phone booth back in front of the motel.
“It’s fun to watch it,” Matthews said. “We always would see young people in it so they could have their picture taken.”
“This is a part of history,” Hudson said. “It’s a part of our city.”