Updated 10/24/09

Wow! It really has been some time since I updated this page - about 5 years. It was kind of dead, but the closing of GeoCities, which had been my web home since 1997 or so, prompted me to start dong some updating. I am digitizing all of my old Hi8 and regular 8 home movies and will, in addition to providing better and higher-resolution screen captures, create YouTube snippets of the most interesting stuff.

It has been 9 years now since the Mojave Phone Booth was stolen from us, and it still grates on my mind occasionally, although I have moved on to other desert-related hobbies such as Mine Exploring. (Even that is now on hiatus as the group has gone defunct and I finally sold the old Trooper. It sucks to be between 4x4s but I hope to do some desert trippin' again soon!) The desert is an austere, breathtaking, fun and wonderful place but it will never be the same for me again without a phone in the middle of nowhere, ringing, ringing, ringing....

2005: It's probably futile at this point, but the petition is still online and it has over 120 signatures!! Go to petitiononline.com & let Fran Mainella, NPS Director, know we won't let the Booth fade away without a fight!

2/22/04: The desert toy chest is expanding with our family. We now have an Isuzu Trooper, a 30' motorhome, a classic Glasspar boat, two three-wheelers and a two-wheeler! When the kids get a little bigger it will be fun fun fun!

9/24/01: The Friends of the Mojave Phone Booth extend our condolences to the many people affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11. We wish we could go out to the Booth and talk to people around the world about it, but (thanks a lot, Mary) that privilege has been ripped from us. It has been a terrible time and it would have been so helpful to so many people to be able to call the Mojave Phone Booth and get some uplifting from a stranger in the middle of the desert. We hope that the government is as successful in its campaign to wipe out terrorism as it was in its campaign to villify, then obliterate our beloved, peace-promoting desert icon.

December, 2000: Links page added!

October, 2000: We made a pilgrimage to the site of the former Mojave Phone Booth. It was a moving experience which I share here.

Also: Now that the cat is out of the bag here is a map I made a month or two before the removal showing how to get to the Booth site. Visit the site yourself and see what "natural resources damage" was caused by the Booth! I assure you, the only damage you will see has been caused by cattle and NPS/Pac Bell spoilsports.
Finally: Please join the Mojave Booth club on Yahoo! We would love your input.

MOJAVE PHONE BOOTH ADVENTURES

The quirky and world-famous Mojave Phone Booth still sticks in my mind as the most interesting and memorable of our desert journeys. In fact, I recently commemorated the 10th anniversary of our first visit by creating a YouTube video of the footage I shot out there. 

The Booth has another unfortunate feature: it is a symbol of all that is wrong with letting big government run (ruin?) our national lands. Eight months after our first visit, the booth disappeared forever. Mary G. Martin, the superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve at the time and an avid booth hater for whatever depraved reason, ordered Pacific Bell to remove the booth. Ever since, many people around the world have mourned the loss of this icon as well as wondered in anger how the Park Service could do such a thing and completely get away with it.

Interestingly, another historic artifact within the Preserve, the Mojave Cross, has fallen under attack, this time not from government drones but from misguided church-and-state-separation types who have conveniently overlooked the fact that the Cross was erected as a WWI memorial, not as an endorsement of religion. Fortunately, because it's more important to high-ranking politicians than a "mere" phone booth, the debate over its right to exist has gone to the highest court in the land! The very same Congressman, Jerry Lewis, who's leading the fight to save the Cross, basically told me to 'pound sand' when approached about the Booth several years ago. It appears that the importance of desert oddities all boils down to a politician's opinion.

My wife and I did visit the site several months after the Booth's demise and I created a Booth Post Script page to share our experience and some of my thoughts on the twisted logic behind its removal. Some things have changed, the most notable being (according to Charlie Wilcox) the cows being gone, but I am leaving the Post Script page as-is to convey the frustration I have had with the whole situation. It's futile at this point to wish for the Booth back, but I sincerely hope that someday we have a government with true checks and balances, as well as one that follows, rather than contradicts, the will of the people. We have lost way too many cultural oddities such as this; more disappear every day. Soon, our children and (eventually) grandkids will have nothing but the sanitized, approved version of the country's history -- except for what is preserved on the pages of the Internet. That's one reason why, even though I have never mastered web design (it's painfully obvious!) I have kept these pages online as a labor of love of sorts.

It's probably futile at this point, but a petition to restore the Booth is still online and it has over 120 signatures!! Go to petitiononline.com & let Fran Mainella (now Jonathan B. Jarvis), NPS Director, know we won't let the Booth fade away without a fight!