Tales of a pay phone

Jose Gonzalez (right), a 29-year-old T-shirt vendor from Dorchester, and Joseph Feldman, a 26-year-old student from Cambridge, represent the roughly 7 million American households with no telephone at all -- land line or cellular. Several times a day, Gonzalez uses a pay phone at the fringe of the Common, the first time one recent morning being a $1 call to his girlfriend to check on their son’s day care arrangements. Feldman, using a $2 phone card purchased at South Station, calls his wife in Peru, and for half an hour they talk about her anticipated move here next month. His card covers 48 minutes of calls to Peru or 100 minutes of local calls. “You can’t beat that,” he says.
(Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)
Jose Gonzalez (right), a 29-year-old T-shirt vendor from Dorchester, and Joseph Feldman, a 26-year-old student from Cambridge, represent the roughly 7 million American households with no telephone at all -- land line or cellular. Several times a day, Gonzalez uses a pay phone at the fringe of the Common, the first time one recent morning being a $1 call to his girlfriend to check on their son’s day care arrangements. Feldman, using a $2 phone card purchased at South Station, calls his wife in Peru, and for half an hour they talk about her anticipated move here next month. His card covers 48 minutes of calls to Peru or 100 minutes of local calls. “You can’t beat that,” he says.