C. B. Radio

You know sometime you hear or see something that sparks a memory of the things you use to do, or the organizations that you’ve belonged to. Well I was going through my profile and thought I would go through my interests list and settled on, ‘Country Living’. As I scanned through the list I ran across a person in Australia, and I remembered a Man in Melbourne Australia that I used to chat with almost every night on my CB radio. His name was Allan. Now this was back in the mid 70’s to early 80’s, it was on one of the upper frequencies on Sideband. I was in Southwest Louisiana and it was about 9:30 pm in Louisiana and Allan was eating lunch the next day in Melbourne. I thought it was pretty neat, given the fact that it was on a directional antenna that I built myself. It was a 4 element shooting star, along with a Maverick 250 upper and lower booster backing up a President Washington 40 channel upper and lower sideband. Anyway, in 1973 a group of guys were on the air chatting and one of them suggested that we have a, ‘coffee break’, and invited anyone who was listing to join us at the West Lake Park. I think that there were 8, maybe 10, (I have a bad memory) people showed up and as we all got to know each other someone said, Hey, why don’t we form a club? Well that how it got started! We got back on the air every afternoon after work and talked to a lot of people and decided to have an organizational meeting. We set a date, time and place and when everyone got there we held an election of officers! To make a real long story real short, after about a year and a half, the president resigned in midterm and as Vice President, It was my job to finish the term. I was re-elected the next 2 elections. I had just started building my home and had to resign because I was unable to conduct club business as I was working evenings and weekends on the house. I guess you are wondering what the name of the club was. The name was, “Bayou ‘C’s C B Radio Club…! By this time, we had 173 families. We had a youth club that elected their officers and conducted their business themselves. We had a Non-profit tax exempt and Charter. Our charity was the Muscular Dystrophy. In 1975 we had one of the largest Jamboree’s / Coffee Breaks, in the South! We were able to donate almost $6’000.00 to the Muscular Dystrophy. There were other ways our club served the community and travelers. We helped re-store the old Rail Road Depot to convert it into the Depot Museum In Sulphur La.. We would set up at the road side park on Interstate 10 west of Sulphur on Holiday weekends and invite travelers to stop in and for some free coffee and donuts, soft drinks and stretch their legs and wake up before they got back on the road. Everyone who stopped would sign in, we had people from all over the US stop in for a rest. We were able to get the supplies from local merchants and gave them credit in the American Press.

Oh, by the way, My Handle locally was, The Lord Braxton. And on Skip, it was The Unit 41 S.W. Louisiana. I talked to people all over the United States, Canada, South America, Australia, The U.K., U name it…. Anyway, I thought I would through that in…..