In TD Marlo’s story, The Night They Broke Down Midtown Joey’s Door, the author finds himself standing on the toilet in his Brooklyn bathroom, leaning out the window with a hand-held CB radio pressed against his ear.

Marlo has ordered the miniature set from the Philip Morris catalogue after cashing in thousands of Marlboro cigarette air miles. Immediately after the UPS courier leaves, he dashes about the apartment robbing remotes and a cassette player of enough batteries to fill the portable unit. He has it in mind to resurrect himself as “Tweety Bird,” his CB persona of two decades ago.

Coughing, with a smoke dangling between his lips, he tentatively keys the mic: “Break, break…eh Fonzie, Godfather, Black Jack, you be in there good buddies?”

Surprisingly, someone responds who actually remembers Fonzie and his ’75 Duster, reaffirming the old adage that CBers never die, “they just go 10-8, 10-10 on the side.”

But standing on his toilet with a six-inch antenna, it occurs to Marlo that to return to the Polyester Era and resume the role of Tweety Bird, he’ll have to get a “real CB radio base station, big stick antenna, a new linear amplifier, lose 50 lb., and pull Fonzie’s 1975 Duster out of the scrap heap.”

Worried that his wife will come home and find him in the bathroom calling himself “Tweety Bird,” Marlo puts the batteries back in the TV remote and opts for Welcome Back Kotter reruns instead.

The golden age of CB began in the mid-’70s and lasted for about 10 years. Now the domain of truckers and a few hobbyists, the radios were originally intended to be cheap, short-range communication devices for small business operators. But there was a time when mobile units and home bases were all the rage among the general population.

North America has always had a love/hate relationship with truckers. But in the late ’70s the romance was at its coziest. “Trucking also has a dramatic quality, which has served as an image for popular entertainment,” says sociologist/ trucker Lawrence J. Ouellet in his book, Pedal to the Metal. “The combination of travel, danger, mystery, the potential for adventure…suggests the existence of heroic qualities.”

And heroic is what Hollywood gave us. Within a few years, four trucker movies and a TV series (Movin’ On) caught the masses’ attention. Nashville helped promote the image by producing a number of trucker/CB songs.

The film with the most profound impact was Convoy. The movie’s signature tune, by C.W. McCall, features a narrative track that mimics CB chatter and static. The song and movie tell the story (supposedly based on a real incident) about an incongruous group of truckers who find strength by banding together to defy a wicked bureaucracy that is stacked against them.

Overnight, CB sales shot up astronomically and specialty stores opened in strip malls. CB aerials and whip antennas appeared on cars and a network of clubs formed across the country. Signs were put up on Canadian and U.S. highways announcing that authorities were monitoring Channel 9, and communications centers were installed in some police stations.

Channel 19 became known as the truckers’ channel. The designation changes to Channel 1 east of Quebec and some western truckers used to also use 1. French speaking truck drivers gravitated to channel 10 in Quebec and 12 in Ontario.

Tom Jones was working as a radio inspector for the Department of Communications in Regina when the CB craze hit. “It was unbelievable,” he says. “We went from issuing about 10 licences a week to about 300 a day.”

The association of CBs and trucking brought with it a rich terminology that was unique to the subculture – trucker talk. People now had their “ears on” when they were using a radio. A cop with a radar gun became “Smokie Bear taking pictures.”

An elaborate system of “10” codes (originally developed for police officers) was adopted, some of which remain in common use today. “Ten-four” has come to indicate an affirmative response, and “What’s your 20?” is understood to be an inquiry about one’s present location.

“I’ve been using a CB for 30 years and I’m still using it the same way I did when I started,” says Roger, a shunt man at the Triple Crown rail yard in Toronto.

Roger (CBers are reluctant to give out full names over the air) sets his radio on Channel 19 and uses it as a dispatch tool. He can talk to other drivers and tell them where to drop their trailers and where to pick up their outbound loads.

More importantly, he sees the CB as a safety accessory. “My first time on the road in 1972, I got a call that there was a truck across the QEW at a curve on the way to St. Catharines, (Ont.)” says Roger. “Without hearing about it on the radio I would have hit him.”

“It’s a useful tool no doubt about it.” says Const. Doug Fenske, a former truck enforcement officer with the Aurora detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police. All the truck enforcement cruisers in the Toronto area are equipped with CBs. Fenske has occasionally used one to stop trucks. “Instead of putting on the lights we can go on the air and ask them to pull over.”

Const. Bettina Schwarze (“Goldielocks”) of the Brighton OPP has been using a CB for the last eight years. She’s found the radio to be helpful in critical situations. In one instance drivers called her about a wrong-way vehicle. “If it hadn’t been for Big Iron and couple of other drivers who pulled over and relayed messages, I’d have lost him.”

Ham radio enthusiast Paul Denby agrees that trucking is the perfect niche for CB radio frequencies. “You’re not going to pick up your cell phone and call the truck in front of you. But for $100 you can walk into any truck stop and get a pretty decent set that will allow you to talk to the people around you.”

Truckers use CB for a variety of reasons. The have an almost obsessive interest in the location of police cruisers and road conditions, but much of the chatter concerns day-to-day working activities. At times the radio is a diversion to stay awake on a long haul.

Some commerce also occurs over the CB, much of it illicit. I’ve overheard operators in truck stops selling televisions and even a hand gun on one occasion. Less-than-reputable massage parlors in the southern U.S. will use women broadcasters to lure drivers.

Much of trucker slang is playful, poetic, ironic, sometimes self-deprecating, and often naughty or crude. It is a cartoon world full of cartoon images. A driver may refer to his own rig as “a bucket of bolts.” A passing ambulance may be described as “a meat wagon in the hammer lane.” Logbooks are often called “swindle sheets” or “comic books,” while “chicken coop” has come to replace inspection station in truckers’ lingo.

An empty load might be described as a load of “post holes,” “sailboat fuel” or “dispatcher brains”. A restaurant could be called a “chew n’ choke” or worse.

“Good Buddy,” which was once a term of camaraderie between two drivers has come to mean homosexual. “Lot lizard” is a label applied to prostitutes. The imagery for non-spousal women is based on animals, while wives are usually referred to as mama — as in, “I’m goin’ home to chase mama around the house.”

Over the years, isolated attempts has been made to clean up chatter clouding the airwaves. The most famous case occurred in 1998 when several truckers were charged with using “superfluous and obscene language” by the Broadview, Sask. RCMP. The charges were eventually discharged, largely because CB operators have not needed to be licensed since 1987.

Tom Jones of the Spectrum Management Branch of Industry Canada admits that the frequencies are wide open for anyone to abuse. “You can turn off the set,” he says. “But, realistically, there’s very little that can be done.”

Jones’ department will respond with the full weight of the law if they receive complaints about overpowered sets. Canadian and U.S. specifications require that CB transceivers operate on no more than four watts of AM power. “Ninety-nine per cent of our complaints are about linear amplifiers,” he says. Usually what happens is th
ey start knocking out all the TV sets on the block.

Talk amongst yourselves. Just don’t interfere with the TV set.

Convoy might be playing. n