[RKDinOKC]

The Stick here, got your ears on.

My Dad was really into CB when I were very young. Remember in Kindergarten the teacher ask me my phone number and I didn't know it, but I did know my Dad's CB call letters and handle, KEH-4697 the Rubber Duck. Which was really a better way to get ahold of him in a real emergency because everyone he know would respond. And that was way before the movie Convoy.

Back then when we traveled when we stopped for gas or food we would always meet up with some CBers at some cafe. We had a drawer full of cards they traded that had their call letters, handle and address on them. It was a lot more social than just watching out for speed traps.

We had a 66 Chrysler 300 and my Dad had some kind of amp thing hooked to the regular car antenna that made it work as his CB antenna. The other CB guys with the big whip antennas all over their cars and trucks were always impressed with it. Later he had a Plymouth Grand Fury with air shocks jacking it up in the back and a trunk antenna like the crazy guy with the trunk full of rabbits in the movie Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. When he got his next car. a 76 Plymouth station wagon, it wasn't worth putting a CB in it.

We also had a really nice base station with a directional beam antenna on a tower. There was a controller to be able to point the beam in a any direction. It was a Browning Golden Eagle. When you hit the button to talk it would send a ping carrier that was supposed to clear the frequency and make your transmission clearer. I remember we could talk to my brother that had a big whip antenna on a Jeep CJ in Tulsa with it.

This was when there were rules and a license was required for CB radio and it was policed by the FCC. If you bumped up you transmission power over the limit they would come pull down your tower and take your radio equipment. Later they dropped the max transmission watts and opened all the channels so no license was required. That's when CB went to heck and the really serious guys went HAM.

When I got my 77 Cutlass it had a CB built into the factory dash car stereo. Too bad that by then CB radio had lost it's usability.

The last time I drove by our old house the Antenna was still there.