We first visited the (then) lonely Mojave Phone Booth back in November, 1996. Officially known as the Cinder Peak telephone, it has been in this area since 1948. The phone used to be an old crank model but is now a modern payphone, much like any you would see at the corner strip-mall.

On Sep. 20, 1999, I heard John and Ken on KABC Talk Radio mentioning an LA Times article about a remote phone booth in the east Mojave Desert. I read the article and was surprised to discover that it was the same phone we had visited!

After seeing TV reports, first on NBC Nightly News and then KTLA-5, I made up my mind that we were going to visit this booth again, answer it, and see what all the hype was about!

We set out on Oct.1 from our home in San Bernardino, about 170 miles from the Booth. Our drive was uneventful, except that the air cond. on our Sammy was on the fritz, and it was HOT! Arrgh! We filled up our car and ourselves at the new Chevron/Taco Bell complex in Baker, then set off to find the Phone. We had heard that the northern entrance was shorter (later we found this NOT to be the case), and went up and over the Baker Grade to Cima Road.

Turning off Cima onto Aiken Cinder Mine Road, we soon encountered the reason 4x4 is highly recommended for this trip:

AACK! Foot-deep sand. The August monsoons, aside from flooding Charlie's house, washed tons of sand onto the already sandy road. We made it nicely, though, although the Sammy fishtailed in the deepest parts.

After a few miles of driving along seemingly endless telephone poles, we saw the sight we were waiting for:

We got out and approached the Phone.

What a wonderful sight!! A bright, chrome-plated payphone with the number, 760.733.9969, prominently displayed in the little white window (and in 5-foot-high white rock characters in the desert across the road.) Local calls are 35 cents, and someone even left 35 cents at the Phone. My question: What constitutes a local call from here??!!

I took my first call:

(Notice the pink flamingo next to the booth. No, it's not real!!)

It was from two volunteer firefighters, both named John, from Amsterdam, NY. They were bubbling with excitement as they told me about their brand new fire station and '99 International fire truck. They were on their way to a local truck stop, the Buck Horn, which is the main hangout for young people in that area. They called a few hours later when they got back and talked some more.

I took at least 50 calls that evening. I would have taken more, except that a lot of people liked to stay on the line and talk! Many were very friendly and said that I had made their day by answering the Mojave Desert Phone. Others hung up as soon as I answered, possibly surprised that anyone would answer a phone so far from civilization.

Mari tried taking a couple calls but her English is still not that good and she was a little scared of it.

As dusk approached, a young family arrived in a Jeep. They were on their way to visit relatives in Vegas, so they only stayed about 15 minutes (just long enough to deposit a dirty disposable diaper near the Phone, which didn't go over well with us.)

I started tinkering with the Booth and found a plug from the light plugged into an old electrical outlet which is not connected to anything. I put 2 and 2 together and plugged this plug into a power inverter in the Sammy. Wow, it worked!! The Booth was lighted by its own light for the first time in at least 20 years. (I had trouble starting the Sammy in the morning - it almost ran the battery down!! Luckily I had along one of those little 'jumpstarting batteries'. Time to install a second battery.)

Later on, two guys named John and Toby and their dad arrived in a really nice 4x4 Blazer that they had rented just to come out and visit/answer the Phone. They were really cool and brought some extra beers with them, so we had quite a little party by the Phone. John is a film editor and Toby is a construction guy working on the new Staples Center. They got some calls from some chicks in West Hollywood and even got numbers!! Love, MPB style!

A while later, Charlie and his wife (girlfriend?) pulled up in the old orange and white pick-up truck you may have seen on TV.

Charlie, true to form, got on the horn. He loves the publicity surrounding the Phone, but his wife wishes it would all go away. A rancher in the area doesn't like it either, because an alternate road to the Phone goes right through his front yard! Please drive slowly there, or better yet, use Aiken Mine Road.

He really liked the light!! The only bad thing about it (or interesting, depending on your tastes) was that it attracted the nocturnal wildlife. Lots of moths, a few K-rats and a couple stink bugs paid the Booth a visit. We turned out the light for a few seconds and relished the almost complete darkness and a spectacular view of the heavens.

He showed us some pictures in his scrapbook, incuding one of some idiots who took a LIMO to the Phone!

We all took turns answering the Phone and had the time of our lives. Toby and John were busy taking and looking at Polaroid pictures. Charlie and his wife left around 9-10 o'clock (I can't remember, time was no object out there!) The trio of party dudes took off too, around 10:30 (it was a little eerie seeing their tail-lights disappearing over the ridge and realizing we were all alone in this vast desert), and I answered calls until at least 1:30 am. The volume of calls was mind-boggling. As soon as you put the phone on the hook, it would start ringing again IMMEDIATELY.

After midnight I got a call from a guy from Texas who told a tale of how the Phone is geographically in the middle of several military bases which are connected to a vast underground realm belonging to the UFO-people. He said the government put the booth there so that the UFO-people could influence people to call it, and therefore put them under some kind of spell(?). He talked of a secret mine shaft in the area that UFO's come out of at night. I tried to be scared, but only considered myself entertained. (Earlier, Charlie's wife said they sleep out in their truck bed every night during the summer, and they've never seen a UFO.)

It was probably unrelated, but as I was talking to him a giant meteor fell off to the north-east, probably the brightest I've ever seen. It looked like a small blue aerial firework shell and appeared to burn up about 500' above the surface (although it was probably higher.)

At 1:30 the calls were tapering off, and I turned in at the tent. (Marisol had tired a while ago and was already asleep.) I had to leave the phone off-hook in order to get some sleep!! We had a fitful sleep, anyway, because we had forgotten the seal plug for our air mattress! Aargh. The wildlife was pretty quiet except for the crickets (unusual, crickets in the desert!) and the distant hee-hawing of an occasional wild burro.

I woke up before the sun as I always do on camping trips. I took care of 'business' and went over to the Phone. I put it on the hook. RRRRRING! Immediately, it came to life, shattering the morning silence.

Pictures like this make me glad I'm using low-resolution jpegs!!!

I answered the Phone nonstop until around noon, taking more calls than ever.

About that time, a guy named Bob came all the way from Oceanside, CA (250 miles) for a day visit! As he was leaving, a couple from LA came out to visit and took calls until about 4:15.

During that time, I rested my voice, and Mari and I took a stab at locating the rocket camera Dr. Cliff had reported missing.

No luck. Dense shrubbery amidst the Joshua trees would make finding something like that almost impossible.

A few more Booth pictures:

Some weird stuff. I thought it was candle wax but it's hard to the touch and glows in the dark!!

Some old labels. I wonder what they were for? Notice "No-Veg". A cattle rancher's plea not to go vegetarian maybe?! (Sorry, I already am!)

A plastic horse, a beanbag, a cassette. I left the cassette there. It's cued to ELO's "Telephone Line", which I think would make a great theme song for the Booth. ("OK, so no one's answering. Well, can't you just let it ring a little longer, longer, longer. I'll just sit tight, through shadows of the night -- let it ring forever more.")

Also in the Booth were phone books from Portland OR (courtesy Portland Cacophony Society, says Dr. Cliff) and Salt Lake City.

The pole above the Booth. Charlie said the pair of shoes moves up and down the wires as the wind blows. Also, when a light plane flies over, the wires set up an eerie resonant sound.

Best of all, the phone makes peculiar metallic popping sounds occasionally. It really adds to the experience of talking on it, and gives one a feeling of the many miles of copper wire linking this outpost with civilization.

Who is this guy?

I answered the phone from 4:15 till about 5:30. We decided to leave as I was getting hoarse, we had accidentally left one of our cats in the house with no litter box (fortunately he held it), and the air mattress thing. We spent exactly 24 hours at the Booth! I felt bad leaving while it was still ringing, but what can one do?

Some pictures of the way out. We took the west road, which goes through the Aiken Mine site:

This is the mine Charlie used to work at, and one of the reasons the Phone is there. Much of the machinery is still there, but most of what is there is vandalized or damaged by the intense winds that sometimes sweep the area.

A look back from the mine, towards the area the Phone is in, I think! (Phone is not visible.)

The west half of Aiken Mine Road is much better, a little shorter, and you don't have to climb Baker Grade to get to it. It comes out on Kelbaker Road, 20 or so miles from Baker. (If you get lost at the mine, the exits to Aiken Mine Rd. are on the NORTH and WEST sides!)

Our nearly perfect day ended by watching a spectacular missile launch from Vandenberg AFB. We later learned that this was a very important test of a missile defense system. After shooting up like this, the con-trail "ballooned out", then expanded into beautiful patterns.

Call Log

We kept a somewhat accurate log of places we got calls from. Here are the entries::

10/1:

Amsterdam NY	Milwaukee WI	Huntington Bch CA	Santa Monica CA
New Plymouth, New Zealand	Victorville CA	Maine	Tucson AZ
Stockholm	Rockport MA	Virginia	Apple Valley CA
Napier, New Zealand	Macon GA	Napa CA	Ontario CA
Ohio	Washington State	Philadelphia PA	San Juan Capistrano CA
Wisconsin	Alaska	Santa Barbara CA	Montclair CA
Rancho Cucamonga CA	Wyoming	Falmouth OR	Cleveland OH
Victorville CA	Tujunga CA	Redlands CA	Santa Clarita CA
Maryland	Washington State	Tustin CA	Seattle WA
Youngstown OH	South Carolina	Charlotte NC	Missouri
New Zealand	Texas (UFO guy)

10/2:

(Numerous calls from Fort Worth TX were due to a Saturday morning article in the Fort Worth newspaper.)

Montreaux, France	Germany	So Carolina	Florida
Power 106, Charlotte NC	Fort Worth TX	Crowley TX	Mass.
Anderson, KY	Fort Worth TX	Vancouver, Canada	Vetta, Germany
Bangor ME	Dallas TX	Fort Worth TX	Holland
Fort Irwin CA	Burland, Germany	New York State	Fort Worth TX
Pennsylvania	Fort Worth TX	Perth, Australia	Oxnard CA
Waterville WA	San Francisco CA	Alhambra CA	Bremen,Germany
Luxembourg	Newbury SC	Grencoe OK	Germany
Cortez CO	NYC	Cincinnati OH	Providence RI
Greenville SC	Fort Worth TX	Arcadia FL	Kafua, Germany
Denver CO	Hartford, Connecticut	Chandler AZ	Atlantic City NJ
NYC	Baltimore MD	Dublin VA	San Diego
Fort Worth TX	Corpus Christi TX	Montreal, Canada	Modesto CA
Placerville CA	Palm Sprs, Utah (Conference)	Perth, Australia	Detroit MI
Turlock CA	Stuttgart, Germany	Victoria, Canada	Stone Mtn GA
Clairemont NH	Pennsylvania	Fort Worth TX	Germany
Virginia Beach, VA	Denver CO	Holtville CA	Pooey (?), TX
Irish lady from CA	Fort Worth TX	Indiana	TX
Baltimore MD	Milwaukee WI	Palm Springs CA	Perth, Australia
Northridge CA	San Francisco CA	Ohio	Fort Worth TX
New Jersey	San Jose CA	Rhode Island	Fort Worth TX

We left the book we started there in hopes that others will continue logging calls.

Closing Thoughts

So, what is all the hype about? We are still not sure. One caller thought that it may be due to the fact that we Americans and people of other countries live in a somewhat repressed society where strangers rarely communicate except for business needs. The Phone gives perfect strangers an opportunity to talk to each other, and the fact that many people had a lot of stuff to get off their chests suggests that calling the Phone may have some type of psychological benefit.

I was a little curious why nobody called from Latin American countries (Mari would have been glad to take those.) Perhaps it's because they can't afford to call, or maybe because their society lacks a lot of the repressed element alluded to above, and they have no need to call a lonely phone booth. I walked the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico several years ago and was impressed at how easy it is to befriend a total stranger.

We were very happy and privileged to be a part of this growing phenomenon, and hope to visit the Booth again in a few weeks and take some more calls!!

Update 10/25/99: We did! On to Trip #2!

By the way, the Mojave National Preserve has MUCH more to offer than a phone booth! Click here to see pix of our previous trips to this fascinating desert.

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