With the arrival of cell phones Telephone booths became extinct like dinosaurs. Although in some small towns some persist, because many still do not have a cell phone.
But what could a telephone booth do, in perfect working order, 24 kilometers from the nearest paved road? Lost in the middle of the Mojave Desert, there is no civilization close to it. But nevertheless, standing tall and proud, she became a global myth in the late 1990s.
It all started when a man, in 1997was looking at a map of roads in the Mojave when he discovered a telephone symbol. He asked himself the question that anyone would have asked: what is a telephone booth doing in the middle of the desert? He thought it was a mistake, but the adventurer finally got into his car and went to the place to find out if it was true.
Upon arriving at that lost place, he found what he did not expect: There was the telephone booth. And it worked perfectly!
Shocked, upon returning home he wrote a letter to the fanzine Wig Out! to comment on his story. And he gave the telephone number of the cabin: 619-733-9969 (later it would be 760-733-9969, when you change your area code).
The magazine published the story, and a 33-year-old reader, Godfrey Daniels, was amazed and shocked by the news. Trapped by the mysterious event, in May 1997 he called the phone number. Of course, no one answered. But he didn’t give up. Every day he called and recorded his communication.
The mysteries of the cabin
On June 20, He called and was busy. Someone was using the phone! He started calling repeatedly until after the third minute of calling and hanging up, a woman answered him.
Her name was Lorene Caffee, and There was a story behind her and the phone booth.
In the year 1948the Pacific Bell telephone company put the telephone booth there because very close there was a volcanic ash mine, Cinder Summit, and for the miners, that cabin was the only means to contact another human being.
The phone booth was called Cinder Peak Policy Station. The original hand-cranked magneto telephone was replaced by a payphone in the 1960s and the rotary telephone was replaced by a touch-tone model in the 1970s.
But the mine closedPacific Bell he forgot about her and the cabin withstood hot summers, cold winters, rain and winds. And he didn’t give up.
That Lorene who answered the call worked in the volcanic ash mine that her family had opened almost 50 years before. The woman told Daniels, through the call, that she did not have a telephone or electricity (she used generators) and to go get the mail she had to travel 80 kilometers.
That phone booth was his connection to the world. And that day, at that time, he was there to make a call when he heard someone calling. It was Daniels.
The man was shocked and decided to go see the cabin. Especially when Lorene told her that despite being far from the world, she would never move away from there.
When Daniels arrived at the cabin after a long trip, he found the facility in disrepair. The glasses They were gone and the cabin had several bullet holes. Had anyone practiced shooting or There was a sinister story behind those shootings.?
The part of the phone where the coins were accumulated had been stolen by someone who knows when. Because of that, the phone could receive calls and long distance calls could be made using a credit card.
The typical sign of all the cabins with the word «Phone» It was not there either and Daniels placed in its place a metal plaque with the address of his website and the date of his visit “August’98”. In order not to scare anyone, he wrote “we came in peace with all humanity.”
That visit sparked something in Daniels. That I could no longer abandon that cabin. He visited it dozens more times and created a website, «The Mojave Phone Booth Site», so that everyone would know about booth life.
The phone in the cabin was just ringing?
And he was the inventor of the “Mojave Phone Booth Party”, parties in which phone booth fans gathered at the place and They answered calls.
At one of these parties, in July 1999, Daniels and the people who gathered at the place received 72 calls in 4 hours coming from all over the world. The cabin was already known worldwide.
From then on, the madness of Daniels (a computer consultant who, prior to his encounter with the cabin he had tried to found his own country called Oceania, who wanted to run for election in Arizona, and who carried a bust of Richard Wagner on all his trips) reached newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Of tEveryone knew that cabin in the middle of a desert.
But Daniels’ adventure, as if he had discovered a virgin place, brought its destruction. Thousands of people began to arrive on pilgrimage to that telephone booth in the desert.
It was the year 2000. One early morning Chuck Atkins, who had heard the story, called the phone and it was busy. who was at 2 in the morning speaking from the cockpit? There were three possibilities: that there was actually someone, that they had left the receiver off the hook, or, worst of all, that They had removed the cabin.
For hours and hours he continued to be busy. Chuck sent an email to Steve, and although they did not know each other in person, they took the trip together from Los Angeles to the beloved cabin. It was 390 kilometers. Almost a trip from Capital Federal to Mar del Plata.
They arrived and were excited: the cabin was there. But there was a problem: the telephone line was out of order. They called Pacific Bell to fix it.
The company’s response was a bucket of cold water: Pacific Bell and the National Park Service decided, the May 17, 2000remove the cabin. Reason?: Its incredible popularity had meant that the traffic through the place was high and that was bad for the environment.
The Park Service said the area was becoming degraded, visitors were leaving inscriptions and graffiti on the stones around the cabin, and there had even been the beginnings of a forest fire caused by some of those who camped there to answer calls from the cabin.
All lies. Visitors were always respectful of the place and the Park Service never showed evidence of their arguments.
To such an extent they were lies, that the people who visited her left offerings near her and the bullet holes had been covered, so «that she would not be hurt.»
They had only modified something about the environment: with some stones they had formed an arrow to indicate the location of the cabin. The reason? «That even the aliensfrom the air, they could find it.»
Pacific Bell didn’t actually want to remove the cabin. Between the calls that were made from there and the publicity he had obtained, that cabin was a notable source of income. To the point that he had placed new windows in the cabin and the «Pacific Bell» signs with the company logo, which had not been in place for a long time. thirty years.
The popular rebellion was immediate. Thousands and thousands asked for the return of the cabin to that place. And meanwhile, they placed a plaque in the place to indicate the site. The Park Service also removed the plate.
Daniels offered a large sum of money to buy the cabin. His intention was to place it in a secret location so that people could make and receive calls from the historic booth.
The strange death of the cabin
The Pacific Bells responded to thousands of fans at the booth: «We must inform you that after withdrawal, the cabin was destroyed«.
They had killed her, but her spirit was still alive. And he created stories that could fill several books.
Like that of Rick Karr, a 51-year-old Texan. The man said he «received instructions» from the Holy Spirit to answer the calls that came to the booth. Compliant with the instructions of the beyond He spent 32 days camped next to the cabin and answered more than 500 calls, several of them from the same person who claimed to be «Sergeant Zeno, from the Pentagon.»
Or the day a call was received from Kosovo. Someone called from there in the middle of the war in the Balkans.
The cabin was no longer there, but it was still in everyone’s memory.
An independent short film, «Dead Line», a short documentary, «Mojave Mirage», and in 2006 a feature film, «Mojave Phone Booth», was filmed about it, with a simple plot: four travelers visit the booth hoping for it to ring and to contact someone. There are also two books written about her.
The X Files chapter
Y the famous X Files series, shows in a chapter Agent Scully entering the cabin to receive a call. That chapter revolved around the cabin. It’s a shame that they recorded all the scenes in a booth that was a replica of the original, which no longer existed.
End of story. That mythical cabin is no longer there and looking on the map Google Earth where it was placed, It’s chilling to know how alone I was.
But if we give him life, which he had in every call he received and every call he made, he leaves us something. We don’t have to be surrounded by thousands to feel accompanied. In the midst of loneliness, one can also feel accompanied. Even if it’s memories.
GML
