The Mojave Phone Booth

760-733-9969

OK OK I promised it ……Here it is !

The Thanksgiving Saga that couldn’t be beat.

Well it started November 18^th,1999 the day before I was to go on vacation…I was about to go out the door at the office when some colleagues and I saw an article in our local newspaper about

The Mojave Phone Booth

Absurd as it was …a phone booth out in nowhere that has become a globally famous meeting place.

I was headed from Eugene, Oregon to Cottonwood, Arizona ….by way of Silly Valley to Morro Bay, California where I hoped to see an old friend. I left Eugene on Saturday AM as it was clearing from a heavy night’s rain. Starbucks for Mocha ……….I-5 South. Had a great visit with my pal then blew down 101 through Los Angeles onto I-10 and headed east towards Arizona. By the time I got to Indio the wind was howling. I pulled in to Joshua Tree National Monument at 1:30 AM. By then the wind was running over 70 MPH and I was afraid the gusts would rip my Rocket Box off the roof rack. The car shook through the night. In the morning I went through the park travelling North and took some cool shots.

The next morning I drove through TwentyNine Palms and the north through nowhere to Amboy – home of Roy’s Motel & Café on the old Route 66.

Bigshot entertainers used to party here on their way between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Their signed pictures are on the wall. Now I-40 cuts that section off Route 66 off. It died …. So has Roy’s. The people there are still open … but they feel abused by people who use them for rest rooms but shop elsewhere …they seem bitter about it. Cool Americana just the same. I had coffee …he does have gasoline ….. a good thing to know out here. It’s like water ….you gotta have both.

Heading north I went underneath I-40 heading north toward Kelso …no gas…

Really cool dunes …. The high resolution picture of this shot is unreal but I don’t want this document to take too long to load

I drove the rest of the day and eventually drove down Arizona 89A up Mingus mountain – down into Jerome before zig zagging down to Cottonwood and finally got to Dad’s. Hi Daddio !

So we screwed around with computers and stuff and had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat and that’s how I got all these 8 x 10 glossy photos with the paragraph on the back of each one explaining what it was all about .…Friday I left and headed back up through Jerome and down into the desert again. I took 68 west out of Kingman another Americana special and then crossed the Colorado River into Laughlin Nevada then drove north to Searchlight.Gas in Searchlight !

At about 8:30 PM I had hit I-15 west and took the Cima Rd exit. Down the road apiece I made the Aikens Cinder Mine sign on a piece of something…

Lots of dirt road, rough, then sand, rough …big sand, rough then …Up ahead in the distance I saw a shimmering light ... just like the song yeah! It was the phone. There were three rigs parked there … a jeep, a pickup and a Trans Am ? Somebody was on the phone …..they had a sagebrush bonfire going.

"I’m Robert ‘ Want a beer ?"

It was an instant party. He was a ham radio guy who had conspired to meet these 2 other guys he knew by radio. So the three of them met out here Saturday afternoon at about 2:30 ….I got there after 9:00PM. They had taken close to 200 calls by the time I got there. I started taking calls.

Tom Messina – Ontario

Estula – Poland

James Slater – Fulsher, Texas

Christina – Fort Lauderdale

Rick Hoover – Angelton, TX

Marilyn from Tennessee who thinks we should all be on Pacific Time

John in Canada getting married in Thailand on Sunday

Martin Gruber – Salzburg, AUSTRIA …this is the guy who also called in for repairs to the booth (from Austria) when somebody had stolen the receiver! Hey Martin !

The phone rang as soon as we hung up. The phone rang

all night !!!

And into Dawn …..

I had a great ride in the desert the next morning on my mountain bike. I went up some dirt roads just checking out the scene .....coyote gourds on the ground, voices in the air. Roadrunners !

Back to the booth across the sands and between the sage, cactus and joshua. At my truck, I had 50 cactus spikes in the tires. BIG ONES ! end bike trip for the day.

Things then got wild. My brakes had been making funny noises Friday nite ...so I pulled the wheel off to see what I could do. One of the two bolts holding my brakes together (caliper pins) was missing ! VERY Bad news with the nearest parts shop over a hundred and fifty miles away - maybe they have the part. So the phone is ringing and ringing and Robert answers it "Mojave Phone Booth and Brake ….." We eat a bunch of food and try to figure out how kevin is going to skid that Trans Am out of there. He says at 40 MPH it skates on sand ! We took some more calls.

It still kept ringing.

I put the wheel back on. Played my guitar for awhile.

Robert took some calls.

Everybody took some calls.

And it kept ringing………….

Somebody had to answer it …

Another car came up the road with a couple in it ……look …the phone booth ….it’s ringing …they answered it. We took the opportunity to leave………..

OK John and Barb !

And I am gone !!!

I had to chance it….across the rest of the desert to Bakersfield … I went out through the stop sign while Robert, Bela and Kevin went back out toward Cima Rd.

The Aikens Cinder Mine

.....there were a few mines out there...the phone was a spot in the middle of them so the roads...no ...dirt tracks ...converge there at the phone. Anyway i took some pictures at the mine and spotted an old mid sixties chevy pickup truck...

it's nose in the sand and one of the wheels off..i checked it out and sprayed it with wd-40 to loosen the rusted on part (and to scare away rattlesnakes, scorpions and black widows ) ......then banged the parts with a bolt from some mining equipment that weighed 10 -15 pounds until the bolt came loose ! I tried it on my 1986 S-10 Blazer and it fit ! Saved in the Mojave Desert by a derelict pickup in a ghost mining camp !

Then another 36 miles through the desert to the paved road. I took pictures from the mine, (haven't finished the last roll off yet …so no pics yet ) drove to the view's horizon 5 miles out took a picture then ....drove to that view's horizon 17 miles out ....took another picture .....whew .....endless open ....nobody ....mountains off in the distance all around you ....a few volcanic cinder cones and a lava field break the near view ...sagebrush, yucca, joshua ...

did i mention sagebrush .....a few covey of quail with big plumes hanging above their heads .... and dust. The paved road felt good too when i finally arrived at Kelbaker Rd. There was still nobody around for 20 miles till the next intersection at I-15. I stopped at the stop sign with quiet brakes, smiled and turned west.

I patted my trucks dash pleased that it was carrying a twice historical artifact (the brake pin). Once from the mining days ....and now a millenium artifact from The Mojave Phone Booth. 11/99