In my small logging town youth, we were allured by the charms of the Citizen's Band radio. Not only was it a necessity for many a working man and woman, but it became a popular method of communication for people out on the road looking for conversation, and hobbyists locked away in their wood-paneled dens. The lexicon of CB infiltrated our "civilian" lives as we asked for our neighbors' 10-20 or broke away from the radio for a 10-100. My friends and I knew the words to C.W. McCall's "Convoy" by heart (try me) and begged to be handed the mic while riding in the front seat of the pickup to see if we could find someone out there who'd talk to a kid using her dad's handle.
The handle was the thing. I imagine for some, finding the appropriate handle was akin to coming up with the perfect band name. Some folks lived their handle. Our next-door neighbor, whose actual name escapes me at the moment, had the moniker "Elkhunter." Yeah. He shot the wapiti. His wife's on-air name was Mrs. Elkhunter. Their Doberman Pinscher, Duke, had floppy, uncropped ears and tail, and was always tied up in the back yard, presumably not allowed to assist in the task of game hunting. Mr. Elkhunter's log truck was usually parked in the front yard not far from Duke's domain of dog waste and Elkhunter's spent beer cans. I think all the man saw was the path to the front door, the refrigerator, the first cold Heidelberg, and the chair in front of his CB radio. He had a dog in name only, and maybe the same was true of his wife. He was a logger, a hunter, and a presence on the airwaves. Though they were the folks I thought of when I first heard the term "white trash," they were a people of a certain kind of pride, all emanating from that big antenna affixed to the back of their beige aluminum-sided house.
Imagine my delight when, nearly twenty years later, I bought a modem and connected via my Macintosh to the rest of the world. I was in my dingy basement office, calling that bulletin board system somewhere over in Bellevue, Washington, talking to anyone else out there awake at 2:00 a.m. It was 1975 all over again, and the cacophony of the connecting modem was no different from that of tuning in to an available channel on a CB radio. I now had my own bandwidth, thanks to the BBS. The first thing one had to do before signing onto the service was to supply some basic info — and come up with a user name. A handle.
My first handle was the uninspired and diminutive "Speck," used until I moved from that rat-infested basement. Months later in my new apartment, I reinstated my account on the BBS. I needed a new name to reflect my recent life chapter change, and came up with the spur-of-the-moment pseudonym of "Lucifester." When asked of its meaning, on one given day I might wax poetic about the root "luc-" meaning "light" and "fester," to undergo decay; together, to shed light on the creative rot. On another day, the truth is revealed: I love combining words, especially to humorous or questionable effect. I'm not one to follow any particular religion, so "Lucifer" is just a cool-sounding name to me, one I might give a cat, a gerbil...or a Doberman Pinscher. Same goes for Uncle Fester. In the end, the name generated a lot more interest and mystique than the forgettable "Speck," and I just haven't been able to let go.
Nor have I been able to let go of the original appeal of personal communication, of broadcasting some inconsequential message to anyone who will listen. As the red LED and microphone are replaced by flat screen and mouse (not much different, really), I'm really no different from Elkhunter. Except that he'd probably call the beer I like to drink rotgut bullshit. God bless him.
Revised 1/2010. ©1999-2010 R. Pelikan unless otherwise noted.