Oh, to live again in 1995! The year of peak payphone and working red boxes. It was glorious, but sadly lives on only in our memories: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/pay-phones-coming-back...
"The stark shift happened fast; in 1995, the number of pay phones in the U.S. peaked at 2.6 million, Slate reported in 2022. In less than three decades, that's dwindled to fewer than 100,000."