My two cents - Where does the Man of Steel go now?

Poor Superman, he would never have a chance today.

A world in which every man, woman and child has a cell phone attached to their hip or slung in their pocket leaves no place for the man of steel.

The pervasiveness of cell phones has rendered coin phone booths relics. That leaves Krypton’s favorite son stuck when latter-day Lex Luthors take their toll on poor civilians.

The privacy of four green glass walls once provided the Man of Steel the perfect forum for discreetly metamorphosing from Clark Kent’s suit and tie to Superman’s tights and cape.

Envision his troubles now.

A grown man, tucked behind a back alley dumpster, pulling off his pants with one hand while covering the private regions of Krypton with a smart phone in the other hand is hardly the persona a superhero wants to put out.

“Now with cell phones, people don’t use them as much,” said Dallas Filan, general manager of Pioneer Telephone at LaCrosse.

Pioneer has five pay phones placed throughout west Whitman County, but Filan said use of those phones has steadily dropped over the past decade.

Whitman County’s government last week approved a budget amendment that accounted for a drastic drop in revenue from the pay phone in the Public Service Building. Maribeth Becker, clerk for the county commissioners, said the county as recently as last year received more than $2,000 from the pay phone.

Through September of this year, however, the pay phone had earned the county just over $10, bumping the estimate of this year’s proceeds down to $15.

“It just stopped,” said Becker. “It costs us $55 a month to keep that phone there. If we’re only making 10, 15, dollars, what’s the point of having it there?”

Revenue from the county’s classic style pay phone at the front entrance to the courthouse seems to be holding its own.

Because of that drop, many phone companies, both global and local, have begun to shed their stock of pay phones, either abandoning them or taking them out altogether.

Statistics from the Federal Communications Commission show the number of pay phones in the U.S. dropped from two million in 1997 to one million ten years later.

Meanwhile, cell phone ownership jumped from 90.6 million in 2000 to 217.4 million in 2007.

Shrinking usage no longer can support the costs of keeping up Mr. Clark Kent’s wardrobes.

“It just got to be more trouble than it was worth,” said Donna Loomis of St. John Telephone.

St. John Telephone had four pay phones located around its area until about a decade ago.

Phone booths are quite the attractive target for ne’er-do-wells.

Temptation to break glass panes with rocks, to wedge gum into coinslots or to use the booths as a makeshift rest stop made maintenance a hassle.

That was the reason St. John Telephone pulled its pay phone from the school.

Even the coin-op phone in front of St. John Telephone’s Front Street office was beset by savages before its removal late last century.

Loomis said phone company repairmen were constantly fighting a battle to keep the heavy, armored cords in the phone. Regularly they would show up for work only to find the receiver completely disconnected from the base.

So, the company replaced it with a normal chord, and never had to maintain it again.

And if maintaining five telephone pitstops is a hassle, imagine the problem of keeping up thousands throughout the country.

Verizon no longer installs traditional phone booths, preferring pedestal-style, pay phone kiosks that take up less space and are easier to maintain.

The kiosks also meet national standards for accessibility by the disabled, said Verizon spokeswoman Sharon Shaffer.

Designing larger phone booths wasn’t a reasonable alternative because of the space they would take up - whether on sidewalks or in retail locations, she said.

Fortunately, enough relics of a wired past remain posted that a quick drive could afford the Man of Tomorrow the privacy to swap garb.

Pioneer Telephones are spotted at Central Ferry, Dusty, Endicott and LaCrosse.

Perhaps the most aesthetically appropriate phone booth for the Metropolis Marvel would be the antique red rotary dial phone booth posted outside the old Hay Hardware Store.

Filan said Pioneer receives regular calls from antique afficionados about the Hay pay phone.

“That Hay phone’s in high demand,” he said.

Another nod to historical design standards would be Inland Telephone Company’s green receiver-shaped public phone posted along the highway near the city park at Colton.

While it establishes the phone booth motif, the half shell would still leave the last Kryptonian without full privacy on the busy thoroughfare.

Unfortunately, all those options mean a long flight from Metropolis for the man of steel - and a longer wait for us poor humans in need.