The “old-timer”

The “old-timer”.

By Matt Erickson, KK5DR

Gus sat in the early morning light streaming into the kitchen window. He slowly drank his coffee while contemplating the near future. It has been over a year since his beloved wife passed, leaving him alone in the big old house. The last ten years had been hard, he watched his wife slowly fade away until she was but a shadow of a human, but Gus stayed at her side, lovingly attending her every need, foregoing his own life for hers. When it ended, he thought how the burden was now lifted, but for the next year he was depressed. Finally, one clear winter day he woke up and felt the need to make a change, he was going to clean the old house and sell lots of the lifetime of collected stuff his wife left there.

Gus spent the morning clearing out closets of old clothes that were once hers, and shoes that she would never wear again. All the stuff was carried out to the large three car garage that only had his old truck in it. His plan was to sell the stuff at the spring flea market in town, so he boxed each stack of items in various categories to keep it all organized. Gus stopped for lunch and thought about how empty the house would feel with all her stuff gone, while he ate his sandwich. After lunch, Gus was working his way up towards the attic, and soon found a box set in the corner that said ICOM on it. Gus realized that this was the old HF rig he had placed up here when his wife became ill, he had lost his desire to operate ham radio at the time. He had always intended to get back to it, but honestly had forgotten about the radio. Gus went downstairs to his old office, which at one time had been his radio room. He went through files and soon found an amateur radio license certificate, and it was going to expire in about 3 months! Humm, Gus thought to himself, would it be worth renewing? Gus returned to the attic and brought the box with the radio in it, down to the office. “Well, I might be able to get some good money for this”, he mused. Then, in a moment of spontaneous action, Gus decided to hook up the radio and test it. He opened the box and out came, a beautiful IC-781. Gus stood staring at the dark radio, “no antenna” Gus muttered. He had removed the antenna years earlier due to storm damage. The tower still stood, empty out in the back yard. Gus punched 468 divided by 3.935MHz into his pocket calculator, which instantly told Gus the length of the wire he needed to get from the garage. Out at the workbench covered in dust and accumulated clutter he found an old soldering gun and a short length of solder. Gus fashioned a center insulator out of a piece of PVC pipe (good enough for a quick test). “Coax!” Gus blurted out. He quickly went back up to the attic and moved boxes around and found a coiled up stack of coax cable. “Hope it is long enough” he thought. Gus looked out the window at the afternoon sun sinking fast, but the wind was soft and there was no ice on the tower, so he put on a jacket and gloves, and grabbed the antenna, feed-line, & some rope to tie it & him to the tower. Half way up the tower, Gus ran out of gas, so he tied off his body to the tower leg, and began securing the antenna. The sun had already set when, huffing and puffing Gus stomped into the house, and went to the office to pull the coax cable in through the access port that had sat plugged for years.

Gus stopped the project to make supper, but he wolfed his way through the meal, because of the growing sense of excitement he had. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, Gus went back to the radio room and said, “Well, here goes nothing.” As he pressed the power button on the radio. The radio sprang to life, and the display slowly grew brighter and brighter, and Gus could hear static, but he was not sure if the transmitter would work. Gus grabbed the microphone, and keyed it while he watched the SWR meter. All he said was his call sign a couple of times, and saw that the match was OK and switched the meter to power output and saw that it too was good, then Gus un-keyed. He sat back in the chair satisfied that the old radio was good and would some bring a good deal of money at the market. Nearly a minute passed, and a signal came out of the speaker, “Gus… is that you? The other station gave a call sign and Gus sat with mouth a-gape. It was a ham friend that Gus had not spoken to nor seen in many years, but some how he had recognized Gus instantly and was now waiting for a response. Gus keyed up again, and told him, “Yes Mike, it is your old pal Gus, back on the air after an long absence.” Mike quickly responded telling Gus how much he had missed his old friend, and how sorry he was about Gus’s wife. The chat went back and forth for several minutes, as the two “Old-Timers” got caught up and renewed a friendship that had laid dormant for far too long. Soon another voice joined to two, and Gus was thrilled, it was another old friend who had been alerted by Mike through an e-mail. The three sat chatting for hours, and there were more joining the group with each passing minute, but soon Gus looked at the clock and realized that it was past midnight, far past his bedtime. He told the group of friends that he must shut down and head for bed, but promised them that he would try to get on the next evening for an hour or so.

Gus signed off and heard the others all bidding him a good night and please come back soon.

Gus reached up and shut down the radio, and sat in the partially darkened room for a few minutes, he picked up the license certificate and looked at it. He thought to himself, “tomorrow, I’m renewing this…”