I recently watched an old movie titled “TAPS” (1981). It stars Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise – all of them were very young back then, so this was a nice look back at a little of their early work. Somewhere in the middle of the movie I had to step away for a few minutes to do something, so I paused it. This is the frame I paused on.

It’s a normal frame from the movie, but for me it struck a chord. See the black CB Radio console on the desk? I know that radio! We had several different models of the “President” line of CB Radios! That there is the Dwight D. Eisenhower model. I knew it very well. We actually had several different President models, each had a different president’s name as it’s model name. That model, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the top of the line – the best one they made. That speaker on the right was actually a completely separate component and was just an empty metal box with a speaker mounted to the front. My dad managed to find another speaker, or took it from another Eisenhower he might have picked up at a rummange sale or flea market, and I was able to splice the wires to connect them both so we could have a speaker on both sides of the base station. It made it look more “balanced” and it sounded nice that way, even though CB Radio was mono anyway. I remember him being pretty surprised I wire that up and make it work.

My dad’s CH handle was “Redbeard” and mine was Redbeard Junior.  Blue Goose was Ted Meimar, a good friend of ours who sold us a lot of electronics, video games, and computers back in the day, and Utility Man was a very loud neighbor who lived across the street from us.  I remember Utility Man would install huge powerful “kickers” on his CBs that would overpower several CB channels at once for miles and miles when he talked–often for very long periods of time–on any CB channel.  Some users became so annoyed with his disruption that he sometimes got his coax cut–they’d sneak up to his house and actually cut his coax (the wire connected from his CB to his roof antenna or tower antenna) so he wouldn’t be able to broadcast.  Kickers were illegal actually, so I can understand their frustration.

CBs were a big thing back then.  We didn’t have cell phones, and most wireless portable telephones (wireless home phones) were unencrypted, so people could also use a scanner radio that had the same band of frequencies as those phones and scan the band, find conversations in the neighborhood and eavesdrop on neighbors’ phone calls.  Both sides of the conversation too, nothing left to the imagination.  Again, totally illegal, and I wouldn’t necessarily admit that my dad or I listened to any, I’ll just say that I verified the “Proof of concept” when I learned about it.  Ah, the good ole days.

Can you imagine if President radios were built these days?  We’d have a “Donald J. Trump” model… there’s a really funny joke right there, but I’m not gonna touch it.