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An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

uburn University’s help desk is still answering the public’s calls 70 years on By Emily McCrary Foy Information Desk at Auburn University, Photo by Emily McCrary If you sit at the James E. Foy Information Desk in the Melton Student Center at Auburn University, answering the phones on a Wednesday night, you might be responsible for answering a question like this: “If you died on the operating table and they declared you legally dead and wrote out a death certificate and everything, but then you came back to life, what are the legal ramifications? Do you technically no longer exist? Do you have to be declared undead by a judge?” A little later, the phone will ring again, and the caller might ask, “Who is the most famous person in the world?” Your next question: “How do you get the Super Serum in Call of Duty?” And finally, when you pick up the phone close to eleven o’clock, quitting time, you might hear someone blow a giant raspberry then hang up.

They’re not expressly forbidden to ask questions, but this is Alabama, and many of the students working at the desk were born and raised here or come from neighboring southern states. “Is she just sitting in a rocking chair at night and just picks up that phone and keeps dialing Foy?” He wonders: Did she spend all day thinking about what question to ask? He’s a supervisor at the desk, which means he mostly checks people into reserved conference rooms in the student center and locks up the building at the end of the night.

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