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Bronson pulls up to a red light around San Francisco,
beside a man in a station wagon. The station wagon man
strikes up a conversation with the question - "Taking a trip?" Bronson says - "What's that?" The station wagon man repeats the question and Bronson replies - "Yeah." The station wagon man says - "Where to?" Bronson replies - "Oh, I don't know. Wherever I end up, I guess." The station wagon man then says - "Pal, I wish I was you." Bronson - "Really?" The station wagon man says, rather sadly - "Yeah." Bronson replies - "Well, hang in there" and rides off, down the Big Sur coast, over the Bixby Creek Bridge... |
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Weekly Intro... "Long Lonesome Highway" |
- The image of a field
radio operator, hunkered down in the field, has been with me since a
kid. Around the age of 9 Little Brother Brian and I received
walki-talkies (Westinghouse) for Christmas and I recall being completely
fascinated. Mother and Father later remarked that months of "can you
read me" and "over and out" nearly drove them crazy! This was probably
my initial exposure to personal electronics and gadgets, which turned
into a lifelong fascination. The walkie-talkies arrived on the heels of
the
Combat TV series that we watched every Tuesday night at 7:30 PM.
Mother had a weekly meeting on Tuesday evenings, so it was TV night for
me, Little Brother Brian and Father. Father would always make popcorn
and we would watch Combat. Our after-school and weekend play was filled
with reenacting scenes from Combat, and I was forever trying to call in
reinforcements with a piece of wood shaped roughly like a field radio.
Those Westinghouse walki-talkies dovetailed right into these
reenactments! We also had miniature soldiers and equipment - the "men,"
as Gil Chandler called them - and I was always fond of the radio
operator. To this day, images of field radio operators, in a foxhole or
behind a broken wall, trying to establish communications, run through my
mind when I'm placing laptops and other gadgets into a backpack, or
making camera connections in the field...
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