Lately I've been meaning to replace my cell phone. It's definitely time, but with so many models full of almost unreal comforts and conveniences, I just can't choose.

Little did I know that a trip to the Doc Porter Museum of Telephone History would give me just the dose of reality I needed in the form of rooms and cases packed full of more nuts, bolts, switchboards, booths, wires, poles, and pink Princess phones than you could imagine.

The museum is tucked away in the Heights, on the second floor of 1714 Ashland Street in a building owned and operated by AT&T, which years ago gobbled up iconic Southwestern Bell. AT&T provides curator Oleta Porter and her staff of mostly Southwestern Bell retirees with space and electricity to run a marvelous collection that tells the story of telecommunications through the lens of Houston's rich past.

People use the phrase "hidden treasure" far too much, but let me go out on a limb and say that this is one occasion to risk exaggeration. The Doc Porter Museum of Telephone History may not be as quirky and macabre as the National Museum of Funeral History.

OK, there was one story about a former prison pay phone (now housed in the museum) that someone used to hang herself. But don't let that scare you off. And the hidden part is absolutely true. With no other support than some donations and the generosity of volunteers, hours are limited. Anyone can visit Tuesday mornings between 9 a.m and noon (that it's for the regular hours), but groups of 10 or more can call to set up a tour at another time.

My own visit to the Telephone Museum started, appropriately enough, with a call to the museum office. As I was waiting for Mrs. Porter to let me in, a group of retirees from the Lakewood United Methodist Church arrived arrived in a tour bus. The only thing better than seeing the many phases of the telephone from the late 1800s forward was the glint of recognition.

As our tour guide, Jack Dowling, showed us the magnetic crank telephones typical of the early 20th century, one woman gasped, "My grandmother had one of those." In front of an old army field phone, a veteran exclaimed, "I've used one of those." The same went for the switchboards, teletypes, and candlestick phones of bygone eras. My favorite was the row of telephone booths. There's nothing more delightful or discrete than the quiet of a snug telephone booth.

No, I don't have Superman fantasies, but lately I do fantasize now and then about shoving a cell phone user or two into soundproof boxes to spare my ears.

People make the place

Dowling might be the greatest treasure in the whole museum. Each of his stories starts with a telephone and could happily keep going for hours. Dowling spent decades doing just about everything involved in telephones: Clearing brush for telephone poles with an axe and a machete in his early East Texas days, climbing poles in Houston's legendary 1951 ice storm, and repairing, selling, and installing phones from West Gray and Waugh to Bellaire and back.

People may not have been crazed for the latest Droid or iPhone, but Dowling did tell of the first phone in River Oaks to come in black when everyone had the exact same phone in just a few different colors. It's no surprise that when the company tried to take it back "Over my dead body" was all the owner had to say.

How little some things change.

But don't get so caught up in the stories that you miss all the marvels on display. There's a collection of novelty phones that put to shame the Mickey Mouse phone my parents never bought me. Next to Mickey you can find Kermit, Snoopy, Beetle Bailey, an apple, a cucumber, a Coke bottle, and perhaps the smallest panda in the world. Fixed to the walls are articles and photos that literally map the city's neighborhoods through phone lines and relay stations.

One news clip featured Alice Copeland, the operator who helped a reporter get the news out early on in the brutal 1957 hurricane that left 545 people dead in Cameron, La. Dowling might have been right when he said, "I always tell people, if you were ever an operator, you're bound to go to heaven."

For a place that is, in some ways, full of old news, it's hard not to be surprised by most of what you see.

I was lucky to get a sneak peek at a room full of telephone vanities — ornate wooden cabinets for telephones that made lounging and talking easy. The earliest dates from 1876 and my favorite was the "Lincoln." That's right, Honest Abe is carved on doors designed to hide the clutter of the telephone. Clutter is an apt word for the museum. Porter clearly has run out of space.

I don't have half of my stuff out," she admitted.

Even so, It's hard not to fall in love with every little thing in the place, each cared for and remembered by Porter and Dowling. After Doc Porter's death, Oleta took charge, and her passion more than makes up for her limited resources. To risk cliche again, the whole museum really is a labor of love and it shows.

After all, that's what phones are all about: Intimately whispering something to someone special across improbable distances. Our own phones are so sophisticated now that they really are like magic. Maybe it's hard to see that when we've come to feel utterly entitled to convenience. Perhaps a little trip to the past is just what the doctor ordered.

As for my new phone, I think I'll take the panda.