My quest forced me into something I almost never do. I asked permission to gain access to an area marked “Employees Only” so I could get photos of an old payphone. Unlike the last time I did something like this I was honest about it. I explained that someone once told me an old payphone lay hidden away in this place’s storage room. If it still existed, I asked, would you mind if I took a few pictures of it?

The woman behind the counter laughed, and said no. That, regrettably, was the kind of dismissive negative response I expected. She was working the counter at a concession stand. I persisted, saying those old rotary-dial phones are rare, and that I would only take a minute of their time.

With that she summoned the manager of the place. I asked him the same question. He had no problem with my request, only adding that he didn’t have much time since the place was busy.

He unlocked a door and ushered me into a storage room. There it stood, a rare old rotary dial phone that has probably hung on this wall since the 1970s.

I told the manager the truth: “I have a bit of a payphone obsession.” He was totally cool with it, not responding with the whiff of derision I might have expected. That expectation of ridicule has often stifled my pursuit of these things.

I neglected to look for PRAY, although I wouldn’t expect her to have spread her message by trespassing into a room like this.

Needless to say this phone had no dial tone.

After less than a minute my work was done. The manager and I shook hands, as if we had just completed a critical business transaction. I said “You made my day.” He seemed happy to hear it.

The number shown, 212-846-9428, never appeared on this website’s data museum of old payphone numbers. I called the number from my cell phone and heard a message announcing I had called a non-working number at Viacom. When I called the number from Skype it rang eternally, never connecting to the Viacom message.

It’s been seven years since the last time I gained access to a facility off limits to the public for the purpose of documenting something related to payphones. I lied my way into a Manhattan building, knowing it contained at least one row of old wood phone booths. It turned out there were two rows of booths in an almost church-like room containing the most pristine collection of old phone booths I’ve ever seen in New York. I called it a phone booth museum, in the accidental art sense.

I never revealed the location of those old booths, and in the spirit of keeping others from pestering the unwilling security guard at that building — as I did — I intend to keep it that way.

For the same sort of reasons I don’t want to reveal this rotary phone’s location. There is a small cult of fascination out there of people who find it exciting to locate rotary-dial payphones in the wild. Even if a small number of them made it out to this place, asking where they could find this thing, that would create annoyance for the people working there. I would regret responsibility for that.

All I will allow is that it is not in Manhattan, despite the (212) area code printed on the dialer. The phone dates from before 1984, when the (212) area code covered all five boroughs, and likely dates back to the 1970s.

It seems like a trivial thing, this quest to capture memories of old payphones. But my success in getting to this one makes me reflect on how many more satisfying experiences I could get out of life if I just asked for them.