When I was growing up on the farm, my parents never had a landline phone until I was in junior high. If we had lived in Sterling at the time, we could have used a pay phone. A couple of other locations where a caller could use a pay phone was at 7-Eleven on West Main or J & L café. He isn’t sure whether the public phone was located at the post office or phone company. But when we dial up phone history, pay phones were a valuable way to communicate.