RateItAll: The Opinion Network

A friend of mine bought a '72 Cutlas with a CB radio already in it. He used to drive around just for the purpose of finding someone on the air to talk to while he was driving. The novelty of that wore off in about a week and he traded the radio in for a state of the art Jensen casette player and a graphic equalizer that was the sive of a lunch box. He blew the speakers with that after another week.

I was a CB operator in the late 1960s before it was taken over by the general public in response to the mandatory 55 mph speed limit imposed after the first gas crunch in 1974. In those earlier days CB radio had rules and regulations and they were enforced. At one time a license was as much as $120.00 and you took a great risk if you operated a CB set without one. I knew several people who had their equipment confiscated for rules violations, the most common offense being a station running too much power. You had to give your call letters every 12 to 15 minutes (I was KLD-5006) and it stated in the rules CB was to be used for business purposes and not "for idle chit chat," but that rule was not enforced unless they were going after someone who had multiple violations and were looking to revoke his license. The guardian angels of CB (I believe it still exists) was an organization called R.E.A.C.T. (Radio Emergency Associated Communications Teams) whose members would monitor channel 9 seeking to help people in distress. In the days before cell phones, R.E.A.C.T. could make the difference between life and death when a mobile CB operator came across a road accident. Some parts of the country still do not have 100% cell phone coverage and in those areas R.E.A.C.T. (and CB in general) is still vital. Once the general public started buying CBs by the thousands it became impossible to enforce the rules and over time the FCC simply reduced the amount of allowable power and let it deteriorate. In the mid 1970s when CB was at its height of popularity I would attend swap meets and "coffee clotches" where folks would meet for breakfast usually on a Sunday morning. In 1976 I met two brothers and we have remained friends for over 30 years. Although they live in New York and I live in Florida, at least once a year they get together and come down for a visit. Their friendship has been the best thing I got out of CB radio. Although it is still popular among truckers and many people who drive for a living, CB radio has lost much of its feeling of being a family not just because of the internet, but relaxing the rules and allowing just anyone to broadcast without consequences has brought this once honorable and disciplined form of communication down to the lowest common denominator.