Building on the CB craze, the movie Smokey and the Bandit came out in the summer of 1977 . . . I was 14 and crazy about Burt Reynolds!!
Burt played "The Bandit" . . . as he was known on the CB . . . hired . . . actually DARED . . . by a couple of Texas big shots to get a load of beer across county lines . . . pursued by "Smokey" (that's lingo for police) who was played by the comedian Jackie Gleason. Jerry Reed, a popular country singer at the time, played Bandit's sidekick truck driver Cledus Snow.
That movie sent usage of the CB over the edge, and for Christmas that year I got my very own "base station." A lot of kids had them, and we used them, more or less, like your cell phones today . . . mostly to carry on conversations deep into the night. We could even talk to some of the truckers traveling along 11-E, and we all thought that was cool.
Of course, everyone had a "handle" . . . the name you went by on the radio . . . mine was "Starduster." Sounds ridiculous now, but at the time, I thought it was pretty cool. I don't recall any other friends' handles except for Allison's . . . "Dreamweaver" . . . she lived just down the road. I think the only reason I remember hers is that I helped her come up with that one.
Lucky for me, my base station was small enough that it could also be mounted in my truck. It would come in handy when I started driving long distances . . . especially after I moved to Florida. I loved traveling with those truck drivers . . . chatting the entire way from Orlando to Jeff City with some of the most hysterical characters. Sure, there were some pretty bad guys that drove trucks, but for the most part they were all pretty friendly . . . and protective of a young, single girl on the road.
I think I saw Smokey and the Bandit a dozen times that summer. Bandit's car was the coolest 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am . . . the local boys could barely wait to get their hands on a car as cool as that. I actually dated a guy a few years later who owned one . . . yeah, I won't lie . . . the car was the first thing that attracted me to him!
Of course I Googled the original promo car . . . it sold last year for half a million dollars!!
"East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'
We're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' Bandit run!" ~ Jerry Reed, Eastbound and Down
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