TRIBAL PROGRAM NEWS
Highlights from
Siletz Tribal Head Start
Above: Head Start staff attend pre
service training in August to get ready
for classes to start.
Right: Sarah Naegele looks over the
Second Step curriculum at Salem's
open house that will be used during
the 2004-05 school year.
Far right: Springfield parents Bambi
and Craig ReGester and their son,
Riley, look over Policy Council
information for the school year.
Walt’s Words of Wit and Wisdom
by Walt Klamath
Well by golly, it’s been a while
since I have had anything to say, would
you believe. Have not been doing too
well on the communications end of the
whatever it is.
Trying to think of something to
write about is sometimes difficult; have
written about everything I know. Some
times while cutting wood, I point out
where these different homesteads were.
They tell me I should write about them.
Well, I have written about all of them
in the past, I think.
Anyway, today I think I will write
about CB - citizens band radio. This
was quite the rave at one time.
I started CBing around 1959. Then,
we had to have a license that cost $5.
We were supposed to sign off with those
numbers. I don’ know if anybody did.
All of us had skip names (handles).
As time went on, the license went to
$20. Then for some reason, it was re
funded and we didn’t have to pay for a
license, but were supposed to have one.
*•
• Siletz News
CB radio was an addiction. At the
dinner table was a Lollipop microphone.
We would talk and eat, mostly talk.
We lived in the valley of bent
needles. In the area between 65th and
82nd and Clatsop and Flavel streets in
Portland, there were 100 antennas in
trees poles and on rooftops.
There were large drooping ones,
forgot what they were called. There
were ones that looked like wind
stripped umbrellas, there were straight
sticks, and everyone thought they had
the best reception. If anyone did have
good reception, they were experts and
were on demand to put antennas up.
Cars had two or more. They called
them co-phased and they were sup
posed to do great things. Then there was
a little box and amplifier that boosted
the four-watt output to several hundred
watts. These were called lenears.
The box cost a dollar a watt. They
did get out, and attracted the FCC be
cause they are a little illegal and Portland
seemed to have a surplus of FCC agents.
October 2004
I traded a White’s metal detector for
my first CB radio, approximate value
$4. It was a five-channel Johnson, the
Cadillac of radios at the time, according
to those who owned one. It cost around
$500. Now, a 40-channel costs $29.95
The one I had was a Laffette. It had
29 tubes and 19 transistors, and it worked
on battery or house current. A car battery
would run down in about 20 minutes.
The favorite pastime was talking
“skip,” talking to people all over the
world. Skip is some kind of atmospheric
phenomenon where radio waves go
straight up, hit the ionosphere, and
come back to earth at least 750 miles from
the transmitter. Where it hits, one can talk
as if you are next door. That has changed
some over the years, but not too much.
Most of us had QSL cards. I don’t
know what QSL means or meant, but
when we talked to someone on skip, we
asked for a card. Some of these cards
were very humorous.
Many of us had kind of a cliche. That
is, say, the channel 7 bunch that the
higher channels looked down on. The
channel 19 bunch considered themselves
the elite, channel 11 was a trash channel.
The biggest and most powerful sta
tions were those who were on welfare.
They had the big 1,500-watt lenears and
ham radios to trigger the lenear.
I still have a radio or two around
the house, one in the hunting rig and
one in the car, but very seldom hear
anyone except during hunting season.
I hear truckers on the road, on the free
ways. Sometimes I can tell when it’s
time to find a detour or sometimes the
road conditions in the winter.
I had one on the boat when I was
commercial fishing, listening to all the
lies out there and adding to them. I
guess it was fun, but it was spendy.
They also have been a big help to
some people. For instance, channel nine
is reserved for emergencies and many
of us have responded to someone’s call
for assistance on nine and directions on
getting places, so I suppose they also
could be called a tool.