At a women’s gathering, my friend Anna offered a writing prompt: “Write a letter to an ancestor.”
Having just come across a broken pay phone, I chose my long-dead cousin Bob for reasons I'll explain.
This week, Bob’s wife Christine died after a long life of accomplishment and struggle, joy, and laughter.
It will take me awhile to write to Christine.
Meanwhile, here is my conversation with cousin Bob, prompted by a love and a pay phone.
March 12, 2026
I want to talk to my cousin Bob, so I hold the stripped Bell wires to my ear at the defunct Bi-lo payphone and connect with him—for free—in the afterlife. As always, his voice is warm and soft.
Cousin Bob broke rules and norms. Almost disowned by his parents for marrying a non-Jewish divorcee with two kids (three strikes, you’re out), he was my role model for rebellion.
The first time I visited Bob and Christine on Long Island in 1968, I was a highschooler. Their home was full of paintings, pottery, LPs, and books. Their table was crowded with intellectual friends who treated me like one of them. Amazingly I could speak and be heard with interest. Picasso, Vietnam, clay, and Nina Simone became part of my reality.
By day, Christine and I worked on her pottery. Afternoons when he returned from teaching college history, Bob and I took outings to the local payphone to rip off Ma Bell.
Do you remember Ma Bell? Do you remember pay phones? A black plastic receiver, a rotary dial, and a metal coin box mounted in a booth with clear glass folding doors connected you to the world, and you only needed a quarter. The problem was the monopoly the Bell Telephone Company held over the phone network. We were about to disrupt that—with a quarter, sticky tape, and a tape recorder.
We giggled our way into the phone booth, squeezed the doors shut, and taped the quarter to a long strand. Dropping the coin into the slot, we’d await the electronic ding-ding that indicated the call could begin. We’d pull out the quarter and rotary dial a co-conspirator—usually Bob’s wife Christine. Sometimes we’d call my unsuspecting parents. We graduated to tape recorder, recording the signal, replaying it, and making free phone calls to anyone we wanted.
I still laugh about these excursions.
Today, at the defunct Bilo in Black Mountain, NC, when I discovered the stripped wires hanging off the receiverless payphone outside, I called Bob in the afterlife. It was a free wireless call. He was pleased.
So, what were you teaching me, Bob—besides how to have fun at corporate expense?
“How to rebel,” he replied gently. “How to live on your terms, how to build your own life in a world of opposition, how to love, how to build a community, how to build family, how to have fun.”
Bob died young and suddenly, on the farm in West Virginia where he and Christine created a community hub for underprivileged Lincoln County youth and a home for their growing family. I visited through my college years and young adulthood.
Bob and Christine were role models and friends as my husband Kadir and I created a commune in Kentucky, built a mud hut, lived off the grid, and battled Ashland Oil Company. That’s a story for another day.
Love, community, family, kindness, rebellion, generosity, joy. These are the enduring messages in my conversations with Bob--and now Christine--in life and in the afterlife. Peace and blessings be upon them.
-Susan Gelber Cannon, June 23, 2026
