Breakfast In Peace (BIP)...for once!!

You might think a title like this belongs in the 'Cooking' forum, or maybe even the 'General Discussion' forum, but I placed it here for a reason. Read on, and you'll see why.

This is a product of another thread, but I thought this element might be worthy of a post all it's own. And yes, it's about being able to eat your breakfast in peace...at long last!!

You see, I grew up in Wyoming during the massive energy boom of the mid 70's through the mid to late 80's. It was an energy boom so massive it likely saved the entire country from economic chaos and ruin. It wasn't easy though, not hardly. In fact, it was brutally difficult sometimes, many times. And it was always BLISTERING COLD (except when it was SCORCHING HOT...never in-between). (Oh, and we won't even talk about the wind!)

It was a time long before the creation of the cellular telephone, but people still needed to be able to communicate over long distances. It was critically important. Lives depended on it! In an environment as wickedly harsh as Wyoming's, in an industry as disastrously dangerous as the energy industry, people's very lives absolutely depended on being able to communicate. And where there was such a critical need, there would be a way. And there was, which brings me to my point...about breakfast. Breakfast In Peace (BIP).

Right about now you're probably thinking to yourself...HUH????? Well, believe it or not, there actually IS a point here, and it might surprise some. ...

I remember walking into the "mall" in Rock Springs, WY once. The year was about 1979 I think. They had a small car show going on inside. One of the exhibits was from Motorola ...it was the very first "cellular phone". I can remember the guy from Motorola explaining how this new "revolutionary" 'cellular' technology worked, and thinking to myself that it would be decades before that ever caught on in Wyoming. And I was right. I remember the Motorola guy saying how spectacular it would be, how it would change the entire world...people could actually make a phone call from their very own car!

I told the Motorola guy we'd been making phone calls from our trucks for years already, this was nothing new. (kinda' rained on his parade I guess). And I can honestly remember thinking, the greatest thing about this revolutionary new "cellular" technology was...I might finally be able to eat my breakfast at the cafe in peace at 3am, without truck horns honking in the parking lot every two minutes!! And, you might ask yourself what the heck that means, right?

You see, back then we used radio-telephones in our trucks. When someone called you the radio telephone dispatcher sent a tone, specific to your truck's radio. When the tone was received by your radio it was wired to the horn of the truck, so the horn would honk just like a phone ringing, over and over until someone answered it (which meant going out to your truck to do so). I can remember sitting in the diner eating breakfast and there being what seemed like an ocean of honking truck horns at 3am in the parking lot, so many sometimes nobody could tell who's phone was who's, and 20 guys would run out to the parking lot to see if it was them. (They fixed this problem later by also hooking up the parking lights to the same system, then the horn would honk but the parking lights would flash too, so you could visually see who's truck it was that was receiving the call. At least then somoe of us could finish our eggs and hashbrowns then without running outside at -35F below zero every two minutes!).

It was a slice of life so crazy that most cannot even imagine what it was like. A world so foreign to most that it might just as well have been another planet. A world where "revolutionary" new technology like a cellular telephones really just meant being able to eat your breakfast (or dinner) in peace for once.

So now you know...the rest of the story.

P.S. I would take years to disconnect the phone from the vehicle, even with cellular phones, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel at least. Who knew, back then, that this "revolutionary" new technology would eventually come FULL CIRCLE right back to those days, by bringing that honking truck right inside the restaurant...with every single person in the form of a cell phone????

Progress.

You have become one of my favorite writers. Your stories make me want to return to Wyoming, it been about 15 years since my last visit. I think I’ll try for autumn, you know the middle two weeks in September, between the hinges of hell and ice in my mustache. I surly miss the sound of them Bull elk bugling near sundown and the gold of the aspens. Thanks for stirring a memory or two.

a reply to: Nickn3

Yes, it's a truly magical place, but not for the weak or meek. The memories are vivid because of all the character it took to make them happen. Character which had to be earned the old fashioned way.

I absolutely love Wyoming. It will always be "home" for me, even though I live a state away now. The history is rich and real. The things Wyoming taught me about myself and what I was capable of are endless.

And there's one smell which cannot be duplicated anywhere else on Earth. It's the smell of rain on the high desert sage brush. It's not like anything else in the World! Only someone who's lived there would recognize that smell above any other, and embrace it the way it embraces you.

I remember the earliest days of the net.
Waiting 20 minutes to see a picture of some titties.
I remember saying "This will never catch on."
Now it borders on being a pestilence.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
I remember the Motorola guy saying how spectacular it would be, how it would change the entire world...people could actually make a phone call from their very own car!

Frank Cannon, a TV private eye in the early 1970s, had a mobile telephone in his Lincoln Continental. It was really a car radio service that would patch his phone (which was actually a two-way radio) into the phone system.

In a way it's simialr to cellular phones, but instead of a cell tower automatically connecting your call to a phone system, there was a base station from which an operator working for the mobile car phone service manually connected your in-car radio transmitter to the phone system.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Yep, that's how ours worked. It was like this big party line. I'm sure some people listened, but nobody cared. Half of it most people wouldn't have understood anyway. We had multiple channels, and we'd usually just turn off an active channels. Oh sure, there were lovesick and horny guys calling their wives, but it was like listening into someone's bedroom...(channel change). Silence was good. Never wanted to break up the loud rock & roll screaming in the cab. AC/DC ruled the day.

You couldn't use them like a 2 way radio, they didn't work like that. You could only talk to the radio dispatcher or the caller. Everyone could hear a connected call on the channel, but you couldn't call radio to radio unless you had the radio operator connect you to the other unit (something we did often).

It wasn't cheap (something like $5-6 dollars per minute), but it was critically important. You kept the conversations short and to the point. Nothin' but the facts, maam. Range was about 100 miles or more. There were protocols too. They could drop all calls if there was an emergency like a blowout or something. You could initiate this function from any enabled radio, but it better be real, and it better be very serious (like loss of lives) or else it was BIG trouble!