Chapter 3

And a camping I went. I had a ball, leaving early on Saturday morning and taking half a day to work my way to the back side of my property. It took the rest of the day to set up my tent, build a fire ring, gather firewood, and generally get my camp organized.

I finally had to quit when the sun went down so I could cook my first real camping supper. Warm up really - Wolf Brand Chili and Ranch Style Beans, what else? I washed it down with a couple of - cool from sitting in the small stream - Lone Star Long Necks.

Of course I hadn't brought along a portable tv or radio, much less a satellite tv rig. I was camping out. So I was bored shitless after supper until I made myself go to bed around nine PM.

It was my last camping trip with only two mules. Of course I'd brought a lot more crap than I'd needed, but it didn't matter as much as the boredom. If I tried to bring a portable tv and a Satellite system I'd have to leave a hell of a lot of stuff I might need, with only two mules to pack it on.

I toughed it out until Monday morning when I packed up everything and headed back home. One other important lesson I'd learned was to never fork my bronc again without my cell phone.

After all, if I'd brought my phone, I could have called the guy in Missouri to make sure he had another mule. It would have passed some of the time while I was cooling my heels out in the woods.

As soon as I had my horse and mules put away I called Missouri. I guess the man knew a sucker after he'd already fucked him once on a mule deal, because he came right to the phone personally after he heard who it was.

Yes, as a matter of fact, he'd traded for another splendid mule since I'd been up there, two in fact. Sure, he'd be glad to hold them until I could come up and take a look at them tomorrow. No, no trouble at all.

I went back out to the barn and put away all the camping gear I'd left lying right where I'd set it when it came off the mules. I fed all my stock, hooked the trailer to my pickup again and hauled my ass back to Missouri.

I hadn't really thought of buying two more mules, since one would be more than able to carry the Satellite Dish and a portable tv. What the hell, I didn't want to have to go right back up there for another one when I ran across something else I just couldn't bear to be without while I was roughing it. So I'd made up my mind to buy both mules before I even got there, as long as they were a good deal, you understand.

Not twenty miles north of Conway Arkansas I got a speeding ticket. I'd halfway noticed a car coming south flashing its headlights at me, but I put him down as an idiot. Abnormally, the officer was pretty friendly while writing my ticket.

"Man, am I glad you came along. All the guys who live around here have CB radios and it makes it tough to write a good ticket with them telling each other where I am. Hell, I'm surprised someone didn't flash their lights to let you know where I was hiding," he said.

"No officer, I didn't have a bit of warning. I guess I should be more careful to make sure and obey the law," I said.

"No need to get carried away about it. I ain't mad at you for speeding or nothing. Live and let live is what I say."

Note to self, buy CB radio and learn how to use it.

I think I got my money's worth this time with the mule man. It wasn't because the mules were any cheaper, though they were nice big well-mannered mules. It was because he knew the scoop about CB radios and where to get them. In fact, he went to Springfield with me and helped me with my selection.

I'd noticed them before in truck stops and had assumed it would be the best place to get one.

"Aw naw, you don't want one from a truck stop. All they got is the legal type and you just can't get out with one of those puny things," he said.

So we dropped in on a friend of his in Springfield, a friend who just happened to own a CB radio repair shop, and instead of wasting a hundred and twenty five dollars on a puny Cobra 29 with only forty channels, I got an RCI 2995 DX Ranger for seven hundred and fifty dollars or thereabout.

Of course the Ranger would operate on the ten through twelve meter bands after the free with purchase illegal modification, and it could broadcast and receive in AM, FM, and both upper and lower single sidebands, whatever they were. Why, it was thousands of channels.

Neither my mule man nor my CB man bothered to mention what I was mainly interested in was only channel 19 in the CB (eleven meter) band, or the CB band was the only one I could legally use, if my radio had been legal in any form or fashion in the first place.

The next portion of my CB education concerned boosters, as in linear amplifiers, with which I could illegally jack up the output of my already illegal radio, and thus transmit farther on the channels I wasn't supposed to be transmitting on in the first place.

Somehow it all made perfect sense to me at the time. Especially after I learned about the Turner Road King RK-56 Noise Canceling microphone. The one which would give my Big Radio that distinctive Big Radio sound when I transmitted.

Boy, was I happy I'd asked my mule man if he knew anything about CB radios. Alas, my mule man needed to get back home, he had some mule business to take care of I guess.

My new CB man said he could have my radio ready to install by early tomorrow morning, and after I asked, it just so happened his son was an expert at installing CB radios, and did I perhaps need an antenna and some coaxial cable?

I got all of it straight, and with my new fear of things breaking down, brought on no doubt, by my considerations and deliberations over the extra mule, I bought two complete radio setups, but chose to have only one installed.

I'd just keep the other one as a backup, especially after my CB man told me switching one radio or linear amplifier out for a different one was a trivial thing, and his son would be happy to show me how.

I got my mule man back to his home just in time. He said it would be fine for me to leave my new mules and the trailer at his place until I had my CB radio installed and was ready to roll. With everything settled, so far, I drove back to Springfield and found a motel room for the night.

Bright and early the next morning I drove over to my CB man's place and his son was raring to go. I pretty much watched the whole thing and I must say he was very efficient.

I had a couple of questions about things, like when he used exactly nineteen feet of coaxial cable from the rear of the linear amplifier to attach it to the antenna, which was mounted in the center of my pickup's roof. Actually, the whole antenna production seemed illogical to me.