I just found this while cleaning house. I don’t know how it could have slipped under my radar. It’s a relic from my involvement with the Apology Line back in the early 1990s.
I helped create the Apology Magazine, and both my parents and sister subscribed as a show of support. My parents thought pretty much everything in these magazines was disgusting. My dad called it “somewhere between ‘ugh’ and ‘double-ugh.'” But they paid up anyway, because that is what parents do.
Apology Magazine Time For Renewal
This subscription renewal notice comes with a personalized message from Allan Bridge to my mother, in the form of a hand-written voice balloon over the dog’s head, saying “Hi, Carole!” My mother and I had dinner with Allan and his wife on one occasion, making it fair to say they were on a first-name basis.
The photo is of Allan’s dog (I don’t remember its name) holding a copy of the magazine which, tellingly, includes a photo of a payphone. The notice also include a typically Apology-esque spin in its phraseology, with a whiff of preachy religiosity tamped by sarcasm: “This is a Time for Renewal.”
It was long after my involvement with Apology ended and my Payphone Project site gained traction that I realized just how central payphones had been to the the Apology æsthetic. This magazine cover was, in fact, what reminded me of how all callers were warned to use a payphone if calling to report something truly horrible. I don’t know that a significant quantity of calls to Apology came from payphones but the ones that did were standouts. The John Hinckley call comes to mind.
A memorable moment of Apology payphone drama occurred in the famous call from “Bernie”, the call that inspired HBO’s film Apology, with Leslie Anne Warren. As that call nears its end you hear the thudding, thunking* sound of the payphone demanding more coins but not getting them. In those moments Bernie probably heard an automated voice saying to deposit more coins. On our end we just heard interruptions and thunks in the connection.
* That’s a word, right?
The payphone would make those thunking sounds a set number of times before disconnecting the call, although I knew payphones in New York that would make those sounds for what seemed like and without ever disconnecting the call.
I don’t remember if that thunking sound is heard in the HBO film. But when you listen for it in the original Bernie call it is, I think, a uniquely payphone sound artifact.
