get your CB radio on

In the last couple of years of the 70’s, or perhaps early 80’s, my parents decided to get a station wagon (the British call this an Estate Car) to better haul our growing family and groceries around. The one thing I requested when they went with my grandfather to the car lot was that they get a "radio in the way-back".

When they came home with their brand new Chrysler Lebaron station wagon I lept in through the side doors and crawled my over the seat into the way back. I looked in the two wheel well storage compartments before asking my parents "where’s the radio in the way back?" to which they pointed to two speakers in the back door.

What I’d wanted, and thought I was asking for, was a CB radio like the ones that I always saw truckers using as we passed on the highway. We’d also had friends, the Nears, who had one in the glove compartment (glove box in British) of their deisel rabbit. Whenever I went out in their car, I’d say into the radio: "this is rabbit one – anybody on the I-74, over" and, if anyone answered, I’d usually fall into fits of laughter before saying "over and out good buddy". I’d wanted – hell, I’d probably dreamt for days – of all the fun I could have with my very own CB radio in the way back of our new Crysler but my parents misunderstood me and got me two speakers, connected to their AM radio up front, instead.

I just came across a piece in the BBC News Online magazine that not only rekindled the memory of a CB radio I once desperately wanted, but how similar CB was to online chat:

With far-fetched sounding call signs for users, CB became a space for a community of users, admittedly mostly young and male, who wanted to talk and share music.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it. And today, CB radio, at least in the UK, has gone pretty much the same way as 8-track…