When I turned the corner, he was hanging by the phone booth that was there, and remarked, "I tried to call you from the phone, but it doesn't work anymore."
He was recalling the many years ago when there were a number of phone booths at this corner near the post office. Back in a time - in his lifetime - when a large part of telecommunications was mediated by telephones and snail-mail, not just mobiles and email.
