I have a sort of mania for electronic gadgets. I inherited from my father
a sort of compulsion to try new electronic gadgets. He was always the
first to have the latest electronic whizzbang. This compulsion led me
to getting any number of devices for which I had no real need, such as
a Scanner radio receiver which allowed me to tune in on police, air, fire
and private company broadcasts on special radio bands. Listening in meant
long moments of boredom interlaced with a few moments of great excitement
when the cops were chasing somebody or some gangster was having an argument,
over their cellphones, with his girlfriend who was trying to ‘out’
him on the air.
Because it was on sale, I got myself a CB Base Station at the time of
the CB radio craze. A Base Station is different from a car CB. A base
station is meant for your house. I knew nothing about antennas and all
sorts of things that you need to know to get on the air. There was a fellow
who went by the handle, George, the Book Bandit. Everybody had Handles,
that is to say Nicknames. You might get to know their real names eventually,
or not. It didn’t much matter. George ,the Book Bandit, was a CB
hobbyist, big time. He caught my very faint signal, as I tried to reach
out to talk to people. He happened to be on the Channel I was trying to
broadcast on. My voice was as strong as I could make it but my signal
was very weak but he heard me. This was a man who managed to pluck out
a broadcast from the Solomon Islands that came in on the skip very faintly
on an odd channel. George had good radio ears .
The Skip happens when the scattered patches of relatively dense ionization
that develop seasonally within the E region of the ionosphere reflects
and scatters radio frequencies. When frequencies reflect off multiple
patches, it is referred to as multi-hop skip. E-skip allows radio waves
to travel many miles beyond their intended area of reception.
George and I managed to make contact on air and he got me set up with
a Radio Shack big stick antenna which was mounted halfway down my back
yard. George put my big stick up and anchored it with guy wires. Then
I had a very strong signal. This was really important because characters
out there called carps – who liked to walk over another CBer's signal,
to drown them out. If you had a base station with a good antenna the carps
didn’t stand a chance.
Eventually, a group of adults came together on air. We weren't interested
in hurling insults at each other or talking nonsense about nothing. Well,
we talked nonsense but it was about something. We started to congregate
on the channel that was just above the dime. Channel Ten or the Dime was
the channel that regular CB radios ended on. More expensive CBs had the
upper channels above Channel 10. You got rid of a lot of the riff raff
if you worked above the Dime. We gathered up there and talked. I got to
know some of the regulars like Ingmar. He was a computer systems guy who
remembered when mainframe computer tubes were bigger than beer cans. There
was the Blue Goose. Heavens! There were all ll kinds of people.
Then, I heard Mike, the Irish Viking. I was kind of stuck on him for a
while. He had this great, deep radio voice and I have a weakness for radio
voices. Through Mike I met John, the Earthworm who lived in a basement
apartment. Along came Starfighter who was a born communicator. Starfighter,
also known as Craig, later went to to do some regular radio broadcasting
as a DJ on AM radio., not making much of a living at it but still....
At that time I was into Dungeons and Dragons. I was a Dungeon Master and
ran games where I made up the plots and told players who had won each
fight . I transferred Dungeons and Dragons to the CB radio. We met on
one of the legal upper channels and had a game going with dungeons, of
course, with grey stone corridors and with great hairy monsters with green
dripping fangs and red flashing eyes and swords of magical power. I would
throw the dice for the gamers. We had quite a good game going there.
One time, a trucker, who was just cruising the dials, started ‘sandy-bagging
, just listening in but not speaking) . Finally he couldn’t stand
it any more and he shouted out. “What do you mean there’s a
green hairy monster coming down the corridor after you and you pulled
your sword and you’re going to stick him in they eye? YOU’RE
ALL CRAZY!!”
Well, maybe we were but we had a lot of fun. We grew quite close in the
game. Role-playing games are funny. They have a gestalt, a sort of a group
existence. At one time if someone was wounded in the game, seriously wounded,
then an accident would happen to them in real life and that got a little
Oooh, oooh, oooh – spooky. It was all part of the game.
The big event I remember in the Dungeons and Dragons game on the CB radio
was when John the Earthworm fought Death and won. His father-in-law had
just passed away and he was very fond of his wife and had seen her suffering
while watching the old boy go, so he had a bone to pick with Death.
When he came into the game I, more or less, extemporaneously, created
a skeleton monster called the Death Man, or something like that. John
was a Paladin, one of the good guys, he got out his sword and he fought
death. It was a fierce fight and the dice rolls were going against him
but he kept on. He lost some blood and he lost some points and then he
WON! That was a really, really big deal.
You heard tales on the CB from older folks who had some kind of story
worth listening to. There was an old trapper who got on one night and
talked about the guy he knew up in the bush who had a mink jock strap.
The fur was on the inside. Go figure.
Then, there were veteran’s of WWII who had been in battle and would
talk the strategy and tactics of certain battles in their corner of the
war. George the Book Bandit had been in Germany in WWII and he had had
some adventures there.
CB Radio had its time in the sun. Nothing lasts forever. The CB radio
was a really great fraternity of radio people and I learned from it. CB
radio's legacy is that I can still talk about anything to anybody, anytime
- and that is useful!
© Sonia Fricker Brock 2005
http://www.soniabrock.com
