An American Lion

CB Radio Setup

I have to admit that, while coming of age and being a man in the 1970s, I engaged in some rather unsavory behavior. I wrecked a lot of women. I slept with a lot of sports cars. I ate a lot of meat. I talked on the C.B. radio.

Father became enamored the the C.B. radio when he discovered that, relatively cheaply, he could put a C.B. radio inside of the cab of each of the riot control vehicles we were selling and turn, through the miracle of communications, six vehicles into a coordinated, powerful, crowd-flattening juggernaut.

That meant that all of us boys, and my sister Diedre, had to learn how to properly enter a C.B. radio network, use the appropriate 10-whatever codes, and properly leave the network by signing off. For example, for me to call up Father and tell him that the transmission was out on one of our R-362 Crowd Sweeper vehicles, I would have to ask for permission to enter the net. I would have to say something like,

10-41 [radio test], this is Sugar Foot, over (Sugar Foot was my “handle”).

Father would reply,

10-4, Sugar Foot, this is Tater Tot (Father’s “handle”). 10-67(prepare to copy message), 10-8 (stand by).

An hour or so would go by. I’d do a 10-41 again, and then Father would wake up and holler at me in the clear.

These lengthy harangues in the clear, abandoning all pretense of using 10 signals, would inevitably end up being recorded by HAM radio operators all over the Northeastern United States. For years, during the 1980s, Father’s lengthy diatribes were handed around at trade shows and exchanged via mailing lists. He is widely credited with inventing the words “Fuck Stick” and “Pigeon Fucking Toad.”

I can certainly see how this exact same thing could have happened to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:

[…] a few years later the young Sarah became enamored of Todd Palin, a quiet boy who’d moved to town to play basketball at the high school. He drove Sarah to practice. He owned both a car and a truck. He was polite. Her family approved. All was great.

But with four teenagers in the Heath household, calls to members of the opposite sex on their single phone line were banned. Sarah and Todd found a way around this when they discovered that if they stood on their respective back porches they could talk to each other on the VHF radios he used on his fishing boat in the summer.

They talked that way for months – until they discovered that the commercial trucks barreling through towns could hear them.

Instead of love, I experienced nothing but abuse on the C.B. radio. And, just like poor Miss Palin, the haters were listening and recording my conversations. Somewhere, those love notes over the open frequencies were recorded by horny truckers, and put on cassette tapes, and filed away. For her sake, I hope they don’t pop up at the next Republican National Convention.