Phone on the Range : For 16 isolated families, life in the New Mexico desert means lots of elk, lots of open space . . . and only one place where they can make a call.

The snowy hills are dotted with gnarled pinon and juniper trees. Withered rabbitbrush fills the flats, where an old windmill pumps water for a stock tank.

It’s another quiet winter afternoon in the high desert of western New Mexico.

So what is a telephone booth doing here?

With a hinged folding door and plate glass all around, it is ordinary looking, if a little old-fashioned. It is the sort of phone booth Clark Kent might have used.

At first glance, it seems out of place at this dirt crossroads, but for 16 families scattered hereabouts, it is a key connection with the outside world. And while they cherish the area’s splendid isolation, the phone booth gets a lot of use.

Before Western New Mexico Telephone Co. installed the booth in the fall of 1990, people had to drive 20 miles into Datil, a ranching community of a few hundred souls, to place a call.

“It’s a whole lot more convenient than driving to town,” says Ron Goecks, who has lived in the area for several years. “For an emergency, it’s very helpful.”

Goecks, a burly, bearded Wisconsin native, is a salesman for Good Earth Realty, the company that has developed 6,000 acres of old ranchland southwest of Datil over the past nine years. Most of the lots, which range from five to 15 acres, have been sold, but only a handful of owners have built homes and live here year-round.

Goecks, who trundles potential buyers over rutted roads in his mud-splattered, four-wheel-drive truck, says the phone booth is a constant source of amazement.

“A lot of times when I’m touring the property, folks stop and say, ‘Let me get a picture of this. People won’t believe it.’ ”

Lee Johnson lives alone in a snug adobe house she built. Although there is electricity in the area, Johnson does without. Lacking a TV or newspapers, she sometimes loses track of what day of the week it is.

“Sometimes you get kind of lonely and you want a few more people around you,” she says. “I sometimes go a week or 10 days without seeing another soul.”

She drives four miles to the phone booth every couple of weeks, usually to call one of her grown children living in California.

“I love standing at that phone,” she says. “They say, ‘Where are you?’ and I say, ‘I’m at this phone in the middle of the desert.’ ”

A trip to the phone booth can also lead to a pleasant surprise, she says, because “many times, there’s other people there, and it’s kind of a community thing.”

Johnson, who used to work as a registered nurse, says she moved to the Datil area in 1988 because she wanted some peace and quiet. But if residential phone service becomes available, she figures she’ll probably sign up.

“I came out here with the idea that maybe I’d never want a phone,” she says with a sigh. “But man, I do.”

The phone company regards the booth as a temporary fix while it figures out how to bring service directly to the families who have requested it, according to Jim Bucher, vice president and special projects manager.

“It’s a pretty isolated area up there,” Bucher says.

The phone booth sits on a concrete pad, eight miles from the nearest paved road. It taps into an existing line running to an old ranch house several hundred yards away. To upgrade service with buried cable would be too expensive because of the distance from existing connections and the small number of customers, Bucher says.

Plans call for installing a radio-telephone system later this year, he says. Lines would run from homes to a centrally placed microwave transmitter to provide a reliable link with the phone network, he says.

“All they want is ‘POTS’ anyway,” Bucher says. “Just ‘Plain Old Telephone Service.’ ”

Datil and surrounding Catron County, one of the nation’s largest at 7,800 square miles, still has the flavor of the frontier. It is home to only 2,500 people--but four times as many elk. Black bear, mountain lions, bobcats and deer also abound in the mountains, while antelope and cattle herds roam the plains.

Oddly, this phone booth seems at home on the range.

Maybe that’s because of the absence of the graffiti and vandalism that have forced phone companies elsewhere to replace free-standing booths with charmless but more vandal-resistant phone nooks.

Or maybe it’s because this phone booth highlights the balance these 20th-Century homesteaders hope to strike as they pursue a rural lifestyle while availing themselves of some modern conveniences.

The simplest amenities are not to be taken for granted, however. Not everyone, for example, has an indoor bathroom. And after a heavy snow, most people resign themselves to the inevitable and hunker down at home for a few days.

Then there is the distance one must travel on any errand.

The closest store--in downtown Datil--is a half-hour drive. (It takes at least 2 1/2 hours to reach Albuquerque for serious shopping.) Kids routinely spend an hour or more on the bus each way driving to the nearest high school.

But those who have come here seeking refuge from high-pressured careers and the chaos of city life have learned to make do.

Sheila and Chet Akins, who live in a double-wide mobile home on 159 acres three miles from the phone booth, are gone for three to five months at a time, crisscrossing the Lower 48 and Canada in their tractor-trailer rig.

When they’re home, Chet says, “It’s a great feeling to go outside and not hear the phone ringing.”

Nevertheless, the Akinses must check with their dispatchers in Evansville, Ind. two or three times a day to see if they have work. Sheila drives to the phone booth in all kinds of weather, even when rain or melted snow has turned the road into a slick, wheel-spinning mess.

“Every place we go in the (United States), they tear these things out of the wall or bust the glass out,” she says after completing her call. “But nobody ever bothers this one, and it always works.”

The couple uses telephone credit cards for their long-distance calls. And because they have nine grown children to stay in touch with, they’ve subscribed to a computerized voice messaging service in Albuquerque. They manage to run up a $200 monthly phone bill.

Ron Goecks, who often pops 20 cents into the pay phone for a local call when the realty office is closed for the winter, says most people in the area use calling cards for long-distance conversations.

“Some folks, when they go to town, get $20 or $30 worth of change,” he says. “One time I had to call the phone company--the phone was overflowing with money.”

Goecks, who lives with his family four miles up the road from the phone booth, says residents look out for each other.

From time to time a caller rings the phone, hoping someone will answer and deliver a message. Once in a while, he says, it works.

Residents rely on old-fashioned courtesy to decide who gets to use the phone. If a caller drives up, the person on the phone usually asks if there’s an emergency, says Goecks, who has waited as long as 20 minutes to make a call. While long lines are rare, a holiday such as Christmas can cause a longer-than-usual wait.

“It’s a different world here,” says Goecks. “We’re probably 50 years behind the times, and we like it that way.”