Childhood … for Grownups

Despite being suspended from college after the 1968 arrest, and despite his persona non grata status with Ma Bell, Joybubbles continued to embrace the phone system with the same affection that he would a volleyball in the shape of the world in his later years as a collector of all things childlike. He not only reported problems that he had discovered (albeit, usually illegally) but had even, on two occasions, arranged for his own arrest on fraud charges to get a job with the phone company. He also set up seminars via telephone to anyone curious to learn more about how the system works.

On June 12, 1982, he moved to Minneapolis. The reason: that date’s numerology is the same as that of the area code 612. He placed an ad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune seeking people to discuss all things telephonic. One respondent was Gibb, an employee of the phone company who also became his chauffeur and companion on trips to Valleyfair. As Gibb recalls: "We wou
ld go there in the morning and stay till they kicked us out. He would go on every ride in the place, riding them over and over again without ever getting bored."

Joybubbles, who, when Gibb first met him, was known as High Rise Joe, lived off disability payments and money he earned from part-time jobs — the most intriguing of which involved his smelling hog feces for University researches wishing to control the odor of animal excrement. Almost all of his disposable income went to experiencing childish pursuits — including committing every episode of Mister Rogers to tape. This quest reached its zenith when, after saving money from his aromatic career, he traveled to the University of Pittsburgh, whose Information Science Library possessed 870 episodes. According to the Web page of John Fail and Chris Strunk, who interviewed him in 1998, the shows were on an old format that could only be run on players the library possessed, and Joybubbles gleefully went through the monumental task of listening to every one for as many hours as the library was open.

Considering how much he traveled in wonderland, it should not be surprising that Joybubbles wanted others to join him in the sandbox. On an informal and partly tongue-in-cheek basis, he launched The Church of Eternal Childhood as a springboard for finding like-minded adult friends. He also started a call-in story-telling service, Stories and Stuff, through which to spread his youthful exhuberance and wisdom via his life-long friend, the telephone. In this age of paranoia about pedophilia — and taking into account Joybubbles’ own traumatic experiences — observers may have presumed less-than-innocent motives. But, in Ross MacDonald’s view, "To a point, an interest in children and sharing activities is a good trait in a parent or teacher. Only when it crosses a line into sexual interest does the behavior become a ‘public’ problem. For instance, Michael Jackson was simply weird until the whole ‘sleeping in the same bed’ comment. It was really only then that the public ire arose, and even then there were legions of supporters out there."

When Joybubbles passed away from a heart attack last year — "I don’t want to grow old" was a refrain he often said with deadly seriousness — he left behind admirers who saw a playful genius in what others might have regarded as a social misfit. According to Lapsley, "Just as the term ‘computer hacker’ has come to have a good meaning (one who is curious and wants to learn) and a bad meaning (one who breaks into other people’s computers), the term ‘phone phreak’ has a similar duality. The positive spin is someone who is curious about and wants to play with the telephone system and isn’t trying to break any laws. The negative spin is someone who is interested in making free phone calls, which is, of course, illegal."

Though Josef Engressia’s activities certainly crossed the line of legality, he was clearly motivated by technical curiosity and a need to connect with the world. And, unlike the second title character from Chuck & Buck, he respected others’ privacy and knew how to interact with people on a grownup wavelength. Similarly, in his life as Joybubbles, he was driven by a desire to bring joy and love into a world that, he no doubt felt, didn’t offer him much to begin with. It was through his latter-day pursuits, rather than the ones in the sixties that gave him his brief splash of notoriety, that he truly waved his "phreak phlag" high.


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