Desert Phone

Re “Reaching Way Out,” Sept. 18: I disagree with UCLA sociologist Warren TenHouten, who considers it “pitiful” to call a phone booth in the middle of the desert and wonders, “What’s the most interesting thing that could happen?” Thirty years ago my mother’s college roommate dared her to make a crank call to a number they found on the floor of a public phone booth. That random connection became my father.

I will always be grateful for the serendipity triggered by one anonymous pay telephone; I suspect that those who call and those who pick up the lonely Mojave phone share my appreciation for such intersections of will and fate.

MONTANA MILLER

Los Angeles