Patrick Schlott is still a young man, having graduated from what was then Vermont Technical College in Randolph in 2016. But he is old enough to remember the days when payphones were still ubiquitous.

When he was a student at Montpelier High School from 2008 to 2012, there were still pay phones downtown, and the nearby Berlin Mall had a bank of six phones.

“I clearly remember one time I had to use a pay phone to call home from the mall,” Schlott said.

His use of pay phones coincided with the time when they gradually disappeared and were replaced by the increasing use of mobile phones and later smartphones.

However, the need for public phones has not disappeared. Cell reception is not available everywhere, and in an emergency, having an outdoor phone available without having to knock on a door is exactly what someone needs when their car breaks down or they no longer have cell reception.

With that in mind, Schlott installed a public telephone in the North Tunbridge General Store that can be used free of charge to make local and long-distance calls within the U.S. The project combines Schlott’s lifelong interest in communications technology with a public goal: to help people connect when they lack the means to do so.

“It was just a kind of nerdy hobby of mine,” Schlott said in a telephone interview. But now it is “also a positive benefit for the community.”

The North Tunbridge phone came about after discussions between Schlott and Mike Gross, who owns the store with his wife, Lois. During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Schlott and his wife lived in Tunbridge, though they recently bought a home and moved to Williamstown, Vermont. The Grosses were open to the idea of ​​a pay phone.

One morning last summer they arrived to open the store and there was a young woman sleeping on a picnic table in front of the church and community center across Route 110. She had been camping with her partner in Royalton and, after an argument the night before, decided to walk home to Williamstown. The Grosses invited her in, brought her coffee and let her use the phone to call someone who would give her a ride. She had left her own phone at the campground.

This episode, among other things, showed how important it is to have a 24-hour phone, Lois Gross said in an interview at the store. They let Schlott put the phone into their system, but Schlott is paying for the line.

The phone looks like a pay phone from the old days, but has some key differences. Instead of the information the phone company used to print on the front of the phone, Schlott has attached a card in the old blue and white colors of Ma Bell that says, “Why a pay phone?” At the end of the explanation, he writes, “Think of this phone as a friendly neighbor — who is there to help you when you need him.”

It also includes a board with helpful phone numbers, such as the nearest Blakeman’s towing service in Tunbridge, the post office, the city fire department, a suicide prevention hotline, and the governor’s office. And it has a number so that if someone needs to take a call from a towing company or a family member, they can do so.

The phone has been in operation since the end of March and Lois Gross estimates that at least one person a day uses it.

“Parents came to me and showed their children how to use the phone,” she said.

The main difference between this phone and an old pay phone is that there is no “paying.” The coin slot is still there, but picking up the handset gives a familiar-sounding dial tone without having to pay a dime. Pressing the phone’s buttons produces a tinny ding sound that is less rich than the tones of the analog phones of yore, but no less inviting.

A reporter who recently visited the phone dialed zero and Schlott answered. “The volunteer telephone service consists only of me,” he said, but he also hopes to recruit some volunteers. As a telephone operator, he can help callers reach their desired destination.

While payphones have not disappeared entirely, their numbers have declined sharply. Verizon once operated an estimated half a million payphones. In October 2011, it sold the last 50,000 to a company called Pacific Telemanagement Services, which also bought the rest of FairPoint’s payphones in 2012. Pacific offers both coin-operated and non-coin-operated payphones, it says on its website.

Schlott was partly inspired by similar projects, such as PhilTel, which provides public telephones in Philadelphia, and FuTel, based in Portland, Oregon.

Less a company than a tongue-in-cheek name for Schlott’s ambitions, RandTel is the result of his long-standing interest in how a voice crackles through the wire or the air and reaches a waiting ear.

His mother is from Long Island and his father is from Queens, but he grew up in Vermont. Two of his uncles worked for what was then called Nynex. They always had a few relics lying around, and a classmate from VTC gave him the dial of an old rotary phone. He is also an amateur radio operator.

He studied electrical engineering at VTC and after graduating, he started working at LED Dynamics, a Randolph-based company that designs, analyzes and manufactures LEDs. Schlott’s work on the payphone was no surprise to Bill McGrath, the company’s president and chief technical officer, and his brother Scott, the IT director.

“He definitely has an old soul and is very interested in all things vintage,” Bill McGrath said in a phone interview. Scott noted that Schlott is the kind of person who, when he sees a need, tries to fill it with his acumen.

“He doesn’t care about profit,” he said. “He cares about the common good.”

The McGraths helped Schlott, both with the equipment they had available and with figuring out how to connect the old analog phones to the digital service they needed to use. The McGraths made working in technology seem like every day was a science fair.

“I think the tech community really hits the nail on the head when there’s an opportunity to do a project where you can gain knowledge and do good,” Scott said. “That’s the kind of thing we like to talk about,” he added.

Schlott is looking for more places to install phones and has started collecting old pay phones. The old phones “were the only ones built to last for decades and withstand the elements,” he said.

He hopes to set one up in downtown Randolph soon and hopes other convenience stores might be interested in offering a phone.

“If anyone out there has an idea where a phone might go, let us know,” he said.

For more information or to contact RandTel, visit randtel.co.

Reach Alex Hanson at [email protected] or 603-727-3207.