LIM (Tom), was another colorful local CB’er who was active from early 1976, until about 1978. LIM stood for "Little Italian Missile" (or, as I once coined, "Little Italian Monkey"). Tom was about 3 years older than me, and I had met him through Mitch. Tom was of slight build, with dark hair, dark penetrating eyes, and a moustache. He had a slight resemblance to actor/comedian Joe Piscopo in his younger days. Tom and I became pretty good friends, and he was actually trusting enough to offer the use of his car (a 1974 Ford Ranchero) for me to practice learning to drive on when I turned 16 in early 1976. Tom and I teamed up for many road adventures such as the 1976 Explorer Road Rally, and several "DF" hunts, including later Channel 6 club sponsored "rabbit" hunts. Tom started off in CB with a Hy-Gain Hy-Range 1 mobile rig, and then traded up to a Midland 13-830, 23 channel PLL rig. His Midland was the very first PLL rig that I had the opportunity to experiment on for expanding channel coverage (Did I say that Tom was a trusting soul?). When Tom finally decided to set up a base station, he and I "stole" a half-wave ground plane antenna from a recently vacated house at the end of my street, and threw it in the back of his "truck" in a night time operation vaguely reminiscent of a Dukes of Hazard episode. We later put the antenna up at his house, and then rigged up his mobile radio on a slide mount so that he could easily use the radio on both his mobile and the base. Tom's home was in the Borough of Norristown, where he lived over a local store.
When the Channel 10 group disbanded and some of us moved on to Channel 6, Tom moved there with us and eventually joined the CB club soon after I did. He became involved in many of the club’s activities, and eventually held an elected office (you had to be at least 19 years old to be eligible).
Tom made his living by working second shift as a mainframe computer operator for a company who leased computer time on their mainframe, to other companies who couldn’t afford their own computer system (Remember, this was the mid 70’s and the "PC" was only a pipe dream then).
Tom was also one of those suave "smooth talkers" and a real "lady’s man", and he had his share of girlfriends, both on and off the air, including Vickie (Super Boomer). But he finally ended up marrying his "high school sweetheart".
Eventually, my own selfish pursuits would basically throw a wrench in the works with respect to our friendship. I had agreed to build Tom a 2 tube base 75 watt amplifier (I had built 2 before). He had purchased most of the parts, and I had been slowly making progress building it. But at some point I became distracted (mostly due to a passing love interest), and never finished it. Tom became annoyed at my sudden lack of progress and felt personally betrayed as a result, and soon soured in his opinion of me. We never really had a chance to come to terms with this before Tom pulled up stakes and moved away. I came across the still semi-completed amplifier in my attic when I was packing up to move away in late 1999. I left it there, along with some other junk as a memorial to the past, as I doubt if Tom would have any further use for it now, after 25 years had passed by.
Today: Tom’s employer had transferred him to the Dallas Texas area around 1978, and I lost track of him. I have recently come across some information which leads me to believe that he's back in Pa. and I may try to track him down at some point.