WHEN I WAS A BOY, I was for a while the head of a broadcasting network that stretched from one end of my home town to the other. It consisted of 107 small radio transmitters built from kits. Mine was the parent station, WPLR; the other 106 were repeater stations that extended my transmitter’s range like a string of pearls. We created the network to circumvent a Federal Communications Commission rule that restricted the range of an unlicensed AM transmitter to 250 feet, and it worked, but in the back of my mind there lurked the suspicion that what I and my 106 cohorts were doing was illegal. Every time we went on the air I grew a little more paranoid.
I guess it began to show, because my friend Spike asked me, “What the heck is the matter with you, Peter? You’ve started exhibiting signs of worry — wringing your hands, biting your nails, pulling your hair.”
“I guess I am worried,” I admitted. “With all those transmitters out there, I keep thinking that somebody’s going to hear us.”
“That,” said my friend Matthew, “is the idea.”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Not just somebody, but — somebody from the FCC.”
“But we’re not breaking the law,” said my friend Raskol. “None of our transmitters broadcasts more than 250 feet.”
“Yeah,” I said, “technically, that’s true, but when I imagine myself working for the FCC — ”
“Oh, brother,” said my friend Marvin. “Here we go.”
“There I am,” I continued, “working for the FCC, and we’ve got a fleet of trucks with antennas on them. We cruise around trying to pick up signals from illegal transmitters.”
“Trucks with antennas?”said Raskol.
“I’ve seen them in movies — one movie anyway. Some fascist goons were after a group of underground satirists — ”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Spike.
“These people were trying to undermine an oppressive and gloomy government by making fun of it, so they had to go underground — keep out of sight.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, the fascist goons had a truck and they drove around the city, with a goon in the back of the truck, with earphones on, listening to a radio, and on the roof of the truck was a circular antenna with a handle that the goon could turn to figure out what direction the signal was coming from. The goon was listening for the signal from the satirists’ transmitter, and he would call out, ‘Kapitan! Id’s gedding veaker!’ or ‘Id’s gedding stronker!’ and the driver would go screeching off in a new direction, and when they found the hiding place they broke in and blew everything up. So, when I imagine myself working for the FCC, I picture myself in a truck with one of those antennas, driving around everywhere, listening through earphones, searching for illegal transmitters. First I discover a transmitter with a range of 249 feet, so I say to the other FCC guys in the truck, ‘It’s okay, boys. Leave it alone. Why don’t we go get some coffee?’ Then after we have our coffee we go back to work and this time I find a transmitter with a range of 251 feet, so I say, ‘Okay, boys, we’re goin’ in and shut it down!’ and we do. Then we take our lunch break, and after that we go out on the road again, and this time I find a transmitter with a range of 249 feet, which is okay — ”
“And you say, ‘It’s okay, boys. Leave it alone,’” said Marvin.
“Right. But then I find another one with a range of 249 feet that’s broadcasting the same thing, which makes me say, ‘Hmm,’ and then I find another one like that, broadcasting the same thing, which makes my mouth twist into one of those grins that Spike grins when she’s asking somebody if he wants a fat lip, and then when I find another transmitter broadcasting the same thing at a range of 249 feet, I say to my fellow FCC workers, ‘Hey, boys, we’ve got a kind of a technical question here,’ and we go get some coffee and slices of pie and talk it over and come to a decision.”
“What decision?” asked Spike.
“We decide that some kid is trying to use a technicality to get around the law, so we call for reinforcements, and in a couple of minutes we’ve traced the signals back to the original transmitter. I call out, ‘That’s it, boys! That’s the ringleader. Let’s get him!’ and in seconds a squad of enforcers wheels up to my house, pounds up the front steps to the stoop, breaks through the front door with a fire ax, stomps up the stairs to my room, blasts my transmitter with machine-gun fire, and drags me away to the hoosegow.”
Spike couldn’t help herself. She pulled the curtain aside an inch or so and looked out the window to see if there were any FCC trucks cruising around. “We’ve got to go underground,” she said.
[to be continued]
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