Looks Like We Got Us A Convoy

Back before I had an iPhone, before I had a 286, a Commodore 64, a Vic-20, an Atari, or even cable TV, I had a CB radio.  I guess it wasn't mine; it belonged to the family.  But I sure used it a lot.  During the 70s, and well into the 80s when I started driving, my family had a CB radio in every car, and one big one in the dining room.

It was on all the time.  We talked on it before school, after school and right before we went to bed at night.  Everyone I was related to had a CB handle.  My dad was "Winemaker", mom was "Green Onion", my brothers and sister were, in order, "Goldilocks", "Nightcrawler", "Bookworm", "Pepper" and "Dopey".  I started out as "Dribbler" but later changed it to "Pretzel" after I found out more people associated my handle with a slobbering kid than a basketball player.

We talked to my grandma "Granny B", my aunts and uncles, and any random truck driver who had his ears on.  One of the few rules was to stay on Channel 13 unless the static got really bad.  And, stay off of Channel 9.  That was reserved for police emergencies. 

When I was 11, my life was made complete when I won a radio that I could also use to listen to CB radio traffic. 

I was never particularly artistic, but I turned it up a notch because I knew what prize was at stake.  With that radio, I was able to hear "Convoy" on WMAQ one minute and real life truckers the next.  It couldn't get any better than that.

You know that age when you are too cool

to go trick-or-treating, but you really want the candy?  That's the age that I was in 1978.   I had no idea what I wanted to dress up as that year, but I knew that I wanted to go.  My friend Wes told me that he was going to dress up as Paul Stanley for a Halloween thing he was having at school.  He suggested that we use his extra face paint to dress me up as my favorite KISS guy, Peter Chriss.  That sounded like a pretty cool plan to me.

I went over to Wes's house that night to get my makeup on and found out there had been a change in plans.  Wes's face reacted badly to the makeup that he had had on all day.  I was still going as Peter Chriss, but we had to brainstorm to come up with a costume for him.  We improvised, raiding his step-mom's and his older sister's closets and make-up kits to dress him up like a woman.  He used the same wig that he was going to use for his Paul Stanley costume, and the whole outfit came together pretty well.

I thought I looked pretty cool, but despite the drumsticks and uncanny resemblence to Peter Chriss, most of the old ladies thought I was supposed to be a cat.  I finally got tired of explaining myself and just started agreeing that I was just a cat.

Wes's purse doubled as a great place to stash all the candy that we collected.  Before we left, he cleaned it out to make room for the candy and I got to see a feminine pad for the first time.  We were quite the pair that night, walking around Philo as a cross-dressing Paul Stanley and a drum-playing cat.