Amish and Mennonites build their own phone booths

As companies cut back on telephone booths, Amish and Mennonites are building their own, writes The Washington Post, in an insightful article on how these comunities are "cutting deals with new technology".

... "In the past several years, Amish and Mennonites - who still ride horse-drawn buggies - have quietly erected at least 12 hidden, private phone booths, posting them behind barns, in the woods and, in one case, inside a former chicken coop.

Called "community phones," they allow them to conduct business -- crucial to surviving amid the region's development pressures -- while holding on to prohibitions against home phone lines and cellphones.

Called "community phones," they are the latest example of how the groups in Maryland and elsewhere have been cutting deals with technology for the past century.

... The new phones hold advantages. The Amish and Mennonites don't have to carry around fistfuls of quarters or buy costly calling cards. Families divide monthly bills. Because the phones are hidden, locked and -- in the case of a metal chamber booth, which was fashioned out of a tank salvaged from a junkyard -- reinforced, the phones are less likely to attract vandals and drug dealers.

There are rules. Families can't post phones too close to homes, and they can't outfit them with amplified ringers that effectively would make them house phones. Some Amish don't cotton to voice mail, but Old Order Mennonites seem more accepting of the feature. For both groups, the idea is to limit forces they think will distract them from faith and family.

"The telephone, and the use of the telephone, is not something we're opposed to. We just don't want it to be the main part of our lives," said Ethan Brubacher, 31, a nephew of Elmer, who owns Quiet Valley Structures, a shed-building business in Loveville. "

emily | 12:35 PM | Public Phone Booths |
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