99% Invisible - 202- Mojave Phone Booth

Episode Date: March 2, 2016

Situated in the middle of the Mojave desert, over a dozen miles from the nearest pavement, a lone phone booth sat along a dirt road, just waiting to become an international sensation. Mojave Phone Booth 760-733-9969 The piece was produced by … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. At their peak in the mid 90s, there were about 2.5 million payphones in the US. The adoption of cell phones has brought that number down further and further every year. The fully enclosed outdoor telephone box, you know the one that Superman changes in? That is exceptionally rare. Only four of those are left in New York City. That is exceptionally rare, only four of those are left in New York City. After several decades, these little pieces of single-use architecture just disappeared from the landscape. They simply weren't popular enough to justify their existence.

But there's always an exception to the rule. Twenty years ago, a man discovered a phone booth in the middle of the desert that became his obsession, an obsession that he then passed on to the world at large. From the great radio program, Snap Judgment of Oakland, California, producer Joe Rosenberg tells the story of a very special phone back in the mid 90s in Phoenix, where Godfrey Daniels. Uh, my given name is Godfrey Daniels, but I'll go by Doc. He's heading back home after seeing this band, Girl Trouble. And after the concert, someone hands him a copy of their scene.

Remember Zines, if not, don't worry. They're kind of like a pre-internet miniature magazine. So as I was walking home, I was kind of flipping through it and on about the 34th page, there were a couple of letters to the editor. And one of them mentioned that there was a phone booth in the Mojave Desert, miles and miles from any pavement just sitting by itself. And this, for Doc, just made no sense. I wasn't sure that I believed it. Why, why not?

Well, I didn't have any reason to believe it. I mean, I don't know if, in the age of cell phones, if it's the same, but when you were out in the desert in those days, you were on your own. You couldn't call people. So the idea that there could be this phone booth just sitting out in an uncontactable place. It was kind of like if somebody was on the moon, you know, and you could talk to somebody on the moon. Where did he say it was exactly? I'm like, what was the nearest recognizable landmark? He didn't say it was a really short little paragraph.

There wasn't any solid information really other than the number. And so in doc at home he thought, okay why not give it a shot. And I chapped in the number and it just rang. And I let it ring for a long time. And I was just imagining making a phone ring out where presumably no one could hear it except the coyotes. But then there was also in the back of your mind the thought, what if? Like, what if somebody's wandering by?

Who would be out there? Who would pick up? It just really grabbed me. And so I hung up and then I just kept thinking about it. I kept thinking about it all night long. I was thinking about it as I fell asleep and it just somehow got me into its clutches. And so the next morning? I called again. I just kind of became obsessed. Soon Doc found himself calling the phone all the time. When friends visited his house,

he'd twist their arm and make them call it. He even put up a post-it note in the bathroom mirror. It just said, did you remember to call the mobby desert today? But it turned out I didn't need it because I used to call many times today. Like how many times? If I was supposed to be working, I was probably calling at least once an hour. And again, this is all assuming that it actually existed, which I had no proof of. Like on speakerphone or like you would stop everything? No, no, no, no, because I would require explanations. I would just, you know, have the phone kind of cradle against my ear.

You know, just listening to it ring. Doc knew it was weird to keep calling a number with no one on the other end. But if he was ever pressed about it, he'd say it was like being a ham radio operator. One little person, sending the signal as far as he could into the ether. Wondering if another little person was out there, listening in, waiting to be contacted, in that uncontactable place. So, I figured I would be doing this forever. I really didn't think anybody would ever pick up the phone. But then, just one month after he started calling? Just doing my daily call and uh...

... ... ... I got a busy signal. No way! So Doc actually managed to record that call. I look like I'm an idiot, because I keep saying wow! No way! I look like I'm an idiot because I keep saying wow. Oh wait.

And I thought, well, I must have misdiled. So I dialed it again. And it was a busy signal again. I realized okay, either something's gone wrong with the phone company here or Somebody is using the Mlapi phone booth right now. I was Totally hyperactive. My main thing was I didn't want them to get away like I was thinking I need to catch it right when they hang up that phone So I just read I'll I'll read out, and then it rang.

And it rang, it rang. Four or five times, I thought, ah crap. And then I heard a voice say hello. Sadly, Doc was only able to properly record his own words at this now historic moment. But as many times as I had called, I had given remarkably little thought if any to what I would say, you know, and I said, uh, Hello. Uh, are you in the Mojave Desert?

She said, yeah, and I said, you are. Okay, uh, this is going to sound like a strange question. Why are you in I said you are okay this is gonna sound like a strange question why are you in the middle of a hobby desert she said I'm making my calls oh like you live out there and you don't have a phone I gotta say when I looked at the transcript it was kind of funny cuz like you think everything's cool if you're like and she's like cinder mining and she's like cinder blocks and you're like and you're like that's so cool that's so cool that's just so cool that somebody finally answered and she said that she never

heard the phone ring before can you tell your name yeah her name her name's Lorraine Lorraine it's nice to meet you If the phones ever ring it again, pick it up, it'll be me. All right, nice being you. Bye-bye. Was there any sense of disappointment? No. No, disappointment about what? Not at all.

Well, let me put it this way. It's almost kind of like the idea that this phone is ringing out there in the desert and anyone could pick up. But then finally someone picks up and it's just Lorraine. Oh, no, no. See, I look at the exact opposite way. Somebody did pick up and I had no right to expect anyone ever would. So this was great to hear a human voice in place of the ringing. I mean, this was a payoff. It just encouraged me more. And the instant I hung up, I kicked myself because I had forgotten to ask her what was probably the most important question, which is where was the phone booth. But of course, I had no way, I had no way to get in touch with her except to find the thing.

So Doc calls around, does some sleuthing, and a few months later gets his hands on the equivalent of an X-March the Spot map, showing the supposed location of the Mojave phone booth. So I thought, we're all set. So my friend and I took off and traveled all day to the Mojave Desert. And this is in the middle of August

And so it's scorching hot just scorching hot Basically as far as you could see you saw Joshua trees and then we saw this little dirt path that was marked You know danger danger warning not maintained blah blah blah. That was the road. We were supposed to take So we were you know, we were just going along going along and the first I thought oh this is not bad at all But the further along that we went the road would narrow. And the thing was that the sun was going down and the daytime you've got these grand, huge vistas and you kind of have a sense of where you are. But when the darkness drops it's just whatever you can see right in front of you.

And we were ringed by storms. It was lightning almost in every direction. So then I started to think, if we have any kind of a problem, unless we do find the phone booth, we have no way of letting people know we're really in trouble. But at a certain point, just barely in the reach of the headlights, I thought I saw a line of telephone poles. And there was a little, a little jet to the left, and a little jet to the right. And I brought the van to a stop with the headlights just shining right on the mobby phone booth. It was really, it was really quite a moment. And there's bullet holes in it, there's no glass, it's all busted out.

It's kind of a wreck, you know. But to me it was just, it was beautiful. I needed to hear that phone ring. I needed to hear what I had been causing to happen all this time out there. So I called, I called my friend's pager and here I am out in the Mojave surrounded by Joshua trees and lightning, and desert. And now there's a familiar pring! It was just, and it was so loud.

It was really loud. Bell was just crazy loud. For me, that was kind of the moment, is hearing that phone ring. It was everything that I had been imagining when I was calling. After that, ducked imagining when I was calling. After that, Doc thought the story was over. He did keep calling the booth.

After all, someone else could pick up. But that was just for him. He never really expected anyone else to care. Until he did something which would not have seemed risky back in 1997. But which today is obviously very, very dangerous. Gave the booth a web page. And in those days, the internet there wasn't that much on it. So I thought that was about as far as it would go. But yeah, that's not what happened. Next thing, you know, I'd go to my PO box and there would be clippings about the Mahabhi

phone booth from newspapers in languages that I didn't read. It just spread. So I thought, well this is unexpected. And so when Dock and his friends returned to the booth about a year after his initial visit, when they got there, this phone, way out in the middle of nowhere, which Lorraine had said she'd never heard ring, it was ringing off the hook. heard ring? It was ringing off the hook. You didn't have to call anybody. It was just as soon as you would hang up the phone, it would start ringing again. It was just crazy. You'd pick it up and, you know, who's this person going to be? Where are they going to be? And you had no idea it could be somebody from, you know, Vietnam or Iran or just anywhere. Some people would call and you couldn't talk to them because they didn't speak English. And again, most of the time it wasn't about the content.

You're not really saying anything, it's really not the point. It's just the connection. An old trucker guy called and I think he just wanted to be listened to. He wanted to tell stories about his trucking days and he didn't seem to have wanted to be listened to. He wanted to tell stories about his trucking days and he didn't seem to have anybody to tell him to. How many calls did you end up taking that day? It would be over a hundred guaranteed. And admittedly, you're the phone ringing, after a while it'd be like, you get it, no you get it.

It's your turn, you get it. We eventually had to take it off the hook so we could sleep. When they put it back on the hook the next morning, so they could leave? There wouldn't have been a way to leave in silence. I mean, you were gonna have to dress since it was ringing all the time. You were gonna have to drive away from ringing phone. And people weren't just calling the booth. Wow, you guys are so close.

They were visiting, traveling all the way out to the desert, just for the honor of informing callers that yes, the phone booth was real. It's more than real, it's a reality. This is from a short documentary made about the booth, and it's just a montage of people from all over the place, taking calls from all over the place. We're here, where are you? In Glentway, we're from Switzerland, Australia, right on, bro. You were presenting yourself to the world in a way anybody who wanted to could call you There was no control over who could call that phone

He was used to work for the circuit. So you quadrupleed you? You're a paraplegic quad Wait a minute. You got fired from the circuit. It's your best friend left with somebody else How long were you in a coma? A couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, too. I was in a coma. Everybody wants to tell their story and they want someone to listen to a story.

It's kind of fun. You should come out and do this. We're putting the whole thing out here. Did you like the fact that it became popular or would you have preferred it to remain? No, first I liked it. The hesitation came about just because once something like that gets out of control, then you know that the equal and opposite reaction is going to come. The only question was when. The only question was when. And then in May of 2000, Lareen's brother, on the way out to the mine, stopped and answered the phone because it was ringing, of course, and talked to some guy in England who was,

he said he was sitting there with his fiancée, he, having tea and crumpets. And he talked to him for a little while, and then continued on to Lareen's. And then in the morning morning when they were leaving, the booth was gone. In this case, the Equal and Opset reaction had come in the form of the National Park Service. It turned out the booth was almost smack dab in the center of a new national preserve.

When the phone had laid dormant, it hadn't been a problem. But park officials hadn't taken kindly to all the new foot traffic, War for that matter, the ringing. By the time Doc figured out what was happening, it was already too late. Did you go out and see this for yourself? No, no. I didn't go out until I think about, oh, 2009, 2010, long, long after. I mean, once I knew it was gone, there was, I didn't want to go out. Oh, 2009, 2010, long, long after.

I mean, once I knew it was gone, there was... I didn't want to go out. Why not? Just be too sad, you know? I mean... I had a lot of fun there. You know, what's funny too is that, uh... people did keep going out. And they would go and visit the concrete pad that the booth had stood on and a guy made a really nice tombstone for the booth and

everything that anybody brought out there the park service hold off and eventually they came out and broke up the concrete pad and took that away to so it was like it was never there yeah when I was there the only thing left was a few pieces of glass from the broken windows. And people would say, yeah, well, it's not your phone loop. And I would say, yeah, I know, it's not my phone loop. But it's my fault.

You know, it wasn't as though I set out to make a phone loop famous far from it. It's just had I known I might not have done it. I mean, I might still, I don't know, but I might not have. Would the booth even hold the same appeal today, given that we can now reach anyone, anywhere? No, I mean, that's something that I have thought about is whether it could have happened even five years later.

And I just don't think it would have. I mean, that was kind of the magic of being in contact in an uncontactable place. And I don't think you have that feeling now. Did you ever try calling the number again after that? Oh, of course. Come on, Joe. Of course I did.

I mean, they let it ring for a long time. I mean, they left just even though the phone was not there. But... Would that even make sense? Because you're not even making a phone ring anymore in the desert. You're just making a kind of a... Oh, sure. I would know that, but still.

It would be like listening to a song that meant something to you. I don't know. I don't know. I guess I did just like calling it out to the booth and hearing it ring in the end. The Mojave Phone Booth was produced by Joe Rosenberg for Oakland's own SNAP Judgment in 2014. Doc has a book coming out about all this called Adventures with the Mojave Phone Booth. We'll have a link on our website. Today if you call the Mojave Phone Booth number that's 760-733-9969, you'll connect to a conference line where you can talk to people from around the world.

If no one's on the conference line, it plays a recording of the book exploding the phone, which is a really great book. But for the next week, you might just find someone from 99PI on the conference line. That's 760-733-9969 99% of visible is Sam Greenspan to Laney Hall, Kurt Colstad, Katie Mingle, Avery Truffleman, Shereef Usef, and me Roman Mars. We are a production of 99% of visible ink, a project of 91.7KALW San Francisco, and produced out of the offices of Arxine, the finest architecture and interiors firm,

in beautiful downtown, Oakland, California. architecture and interiors for, in beautiful downtown, Oakland, California. You can find this show and join the fine community of people who like this show on Facebook. I'll fave every 99 PI coin I see on Twitter and Instagram. But if you want to explore the 99% invisible activity that shapes the design of our world, I recommend you spend some time perusing 99pi.org.