Jim, as I recall there were a couple people on this list, I forget who they
were, it's been a while since it came up but I think we had a couple of them
on this list at one time.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Gammon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2015 1:12 AM
Subject: Re: Before There Was Caller I D
> Wow Phil, you was one bad boy! Glad I wasn't your friend back
> then. We might have gotten into some big trouble together. Were
> you one of those Blue Box guys? You don't have to answer that. I
> was not. 73, Jim WA6EKS
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Phil Scovell <[log in to unmask]
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date sent: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 20:34:08 -0600
> Subject: Before There Was Caller I D
>
> School was out and to the best of my knowledge, this happened in
> 68 or 69.
> Two teenage blind friends of mine were talking on 75 sideband
> late at night;
> probably about midnight or a little after. My roommate from the
> school for
> the blind was spending a few days with me in Omaha. He lived in
> a small
> town 35 miles west of me. I was tuning around the band as my
> friend and I
> were talking in my combination bedroom hamshack when I came
> across our two
> buddies from school. We sat and listened to them rag chewing for
> awhile and
> then I got an idea. Using my own private line my mom let me
> have, because I
> was running a lot of phone patches, you understand, and because I
> simply was
> able to talk my mom into it, I dialed one of the guy's home phone
> numbers,
> letting it ring once, and then hanging up. A minute or so later,
> I dialed
> the other guy's number, letting it ring once, and then hanging
> up. They
> both commented on their phones ringing. I did it again and then
> again.
> Eventually, they figured out something was wrong so they took the
> phone off
> the hook because, they said, they didn't want their parents to
> wake up. A
> few minutes later, they reported on the air that they were
> putting their
> phones back on the hook so my finger, using a touch tone phone of
> all
> things, dialed them up yet again. Finally, they said they were
> leaving
> their phones off the hook for the rest of the night. Never once
> did they
> put two and two together and my friend and I never told them what
> we had
> done. However, and this is the funny part, a couple days later,
> I was
> talking to one of these guys and he said, "Man, did I screw
> something up big
> time." I asked him what he was talking about. He told me about
> someone
> ringing his phone in the middle of the night but he said, instead
> of taking
> the phone off the hook for the rest of the night, he shorted the
> two phone
> patch leads together which grounded out their phone. He promptly
> forgot
> about it. The next day, the telephone company came and asked to
> check out
> their phones and phone wiring because they had traced down a
> neighborhood
> short to their house. So my friend had shorted out an entire
> neighborhood.
> No, are you crazy? I never, to this day, told either one of my
> friends who
> had dial their phone in the middle of the night; especially since
> one had
> screwed up half the little town he was living in at that time.
> Don't you
> tell anybody either. Of course, that couldn't work as well today
> with
> caller I D. Oh, sure, you could block your call, I guess, but
> don't rain on
> my parade.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
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