"Uncle" Chuckie (Chuck, A.K.A. "Rare Bird"), was a local who originally hung out on channel 12 in the mid 70's, and then later joined the Channel 23 group, which eventually evolved into the Channel 30 group by the early 80's.  I first met Chuck in the late 70's, as he was the uncle of one of the member's of the Channel 6 group.  He found out that I worked on radios, and soon became a regular customer.  Chuck was fun loving guy who enjoyed tweaking people. He was an instrumental instigator, who's actions precipitated much of the ruckus heard on this audio clip.  He was also the one who first issued the challenge to a game of football between the Channel 13 and 23 crowds.

 

Chuck's radio stable consisted a Hy-Gain 623 in the early days.  But he was also a wheeler-dealer, and had owned many different radios throughout the years, including a Cobra 135, which he eventually traded to Art, a Cobra 139, a TRC-458, a Yaesu FT-757, and an assortment of mobile rigs.  Chuck liked to horse trade, and he was always bragging about the good deals which he managed to get on all sorts of things, from radios to cars.  Chuck and Art would swap stuff back and forth in a comical, almost game-like ritual.  Chuck had no shame when it came to bargaining, and it was he who actually managed to wear the guy down from $50 to $15 for the the broken TRC-458 he was selling at a hamfest, which I ended up with.  Chuck was a riot at hamfests.  You had to work hard to keep up with him.  He would arrive early, when the doors first opened, and would take a quick run around to sniff out any really good deals. Then he'd take a slower second and third pass.  We'd usually be ready to leave by the time most of the rest of the gang were just getting there. 

 

Chuck was given the nickname "Uncle Chuckie" due to the fact that he was a good 20 years older than most of us at the time, and he was pretty much adopted by the younger members of the Channel 30 crew.  Chuck's home became a frequent meeting place for many of these same locals back in the early 80's.  The gang liked to congregate in our cars at a local shopping center parking lot.  And when the cops would eventually chase us out when it got too late, we'd end up at Chuck's, as he was only about 1/2 mile from the lot.  Chuck also had an antique Coke machine, which he kept stocked with 16oz cans of Schmidt's beer (Another guy with bad taste in beer) for those times when we used to stop on by for a "cold one" and to shoot the B.S. for hours.  Chuck built a nice little radio "hutch" in an alcove off of the back corner of his kitchen at the back of his house, which only had enough room for 3 or 4 people, but many times he had a  more over, and the extra people would spill out into his kitchen.  In the warm weather months, Chuck would run a coax cable out to his front porch and he'd run his radio outside, and the visitors would congregate there.  Many fun pranks also found their roots here, including the "Bush Boogie" and the "Bottle Rocket Launcher".

 

Chuck got his ham license at the same time that I did in 1981, and hung in there with us when we started migrating to ham radio in the later 80's, and amassed a collection of ham rigs to rival those which he had collected in his years in CB.

 

Unfortunately, as with many many good things in life, these fun times were not destined to last.  When I got married in 1984, and had a lot of my former free time diverted, Chuck seemed to take offense at my sudden unavailability when he needed a quick mike wiring, or when a radio job which I used to turn around in one day might now stretch out to a week.  It would seem that in order to remain a member in good standing among Chuck's inner circle of friends, meant that you had to be able to be there on demand when Chuck needed something.  Past history meant nothing I guess.  I guess it was also naive of me to assume that friendship should be based on more than just the concept of symbiosis.  Looking back on it, from the objectivity that the passage of time affords, it did seem that many of Chuck's "better" friends were all somehow "connected" to various services, which Chuck could avail himself of (at discount rates of course). 

Today: Chuck has, as far as I know, given up talking on CB radio, but still maintains his ham station.  He will occasionally pop in there for a while, and then disappear again.  I don't think he really got over our little falling out almost 20 years ago now, and I get the impression that he feels uncomfortable running in the same radio circles that I do.  Chuck also took the passing of his wife to cancer a bit tough, so this may also explain his loss of interest in radio.

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