Sunday, January 24, 2010

8-Tracks, slide rules, landlines, CB’s and other fossils of interest

Now If you did a double-take, scratched your head and had to look up what a 8-track, slide rule, landline or CB is you’re digging up fossils used by those of us in the 60s to the 80’s days. We were rocking to the Bee Gees, Queen, Foreigner, The Eagles and Beach Boys as the technological revolution was winding up and throwing us fast-forward (8-track & cassette tape machine terminology) into the 21st century.

Every upstater, redneck, trucker, four-wheeler or Smokey worth his or her handle (CB nickname) had a Cobra or Midland Citizens’ Band radio under the dash with a linear and fiberglass antennae hanging off the back bumper or side view mirrors. They were a lot of fun, kind of like a wide-open party line radio to converse and trash talk as the occasion dictated. Channel 9 was the emergency channel and 19 was the jumping on spot to find your buds and slide off to another channel. These were the precursors to the cell phone walkie-talkie function most phones have today.

So next time you hit that push to talk button on your Facebooked, YouTubed, Twitterfied, messaging smart phone remember you’re just holding a  modern CB that you’re paying a heckuva lot more to use… Isn’t progress wonderful?

Keep the dirty side down and shiny side up, did anyone just hear C.W. McCall in the background?

TK

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