Payphone Encounters of an ATM Technician

I've been wanting to get this story off my chest for a while now.

Around 5 years ago, I was subcontracted to upgrade a part in a bank's ATM fleet. Did many hundreds of machines within a couple hours drive of here. I had several encountera tied into pay phones.

The first was in a college academic building that had been remodeled sometime around in the 1980s which included adding a partition walls for a couple vending machines and an ATM. All the way behind all of this were 2 payphones on the wall. They were three slot units with rotary dials, made of bakelite I think, from I would guess the 50s or possibly 60s at the latest, but I am no expert.

I remember one of them being physically broken and the other one I was able to actually pick up the receiver and get a dial tone. I thought surely even if the line was still connected something with the phone itself would have failed after decades of non-use. They don't make them like that anymore. Unfortunately I can't find a picture of the phone and at this point I don't remember any idea of where it was.

It's fairly common to have these little abandoned rooms behind the ATMs when they were added in old buildings.

The other story was a gas station in the complete middle of nowhere. I needed to call in to provision something with the ATM but there's no cell service for miles. I asked the worker how they communicate and the old man behind the counter just gestured to the pay phone on the side of the building, like something you would see a movie character do. At some point while I was there, there was a farmer that drove to the gas station to use the pay phone.

Both stories are from just 5 years ago, lol.