"Dan/W4NTI" wrote in message ...
"N2EY" wrote in message

The end result, though, was that most hams went to the exams extremely
overprepared. Wasn't worth taking a chance on failing.

73 de Jim, N2EY


But you know Jim even if they did prepare, A LOT FAILED, it was really an
exercise in who could overcome the nerves.

Absolute fact!

I had to take a 90 mile train ride to and from to take my test. I was 13 at
the time, and my mother came along. We spent the night at my aunt and
uncles.

Years later I realized it was the 'original incentive licensing'. He stern
words were " You better pass this thing the first time, we ain't doing this
again". I nicknamed her 'Old Sarge'...but never to her face.. hi. Sure do
miss her.

Hee! I was brought up in the same area where Jim lived, the FCC office
was only a trolley & an elevated ride away so neither of us had to
walk ten miles uphill both ways in blizzards to take the exams.

My Mom was brought up under well-heeled circumstances and had an older
brother whom she often referred to as a "ham radio operator". I never
met him because he passed away young around 1922 long before I was
born. He had a whole room full of radio gear and had, as she explained
it, the "first radio tubes in town". I suspected for a long time that
he was an SWL type, not a ham.

Time marched on and it got to be time for me to take my Novice exam, I
was 15-16 and roamed the rails at will by then. I told Mom I was going
downtown to take the gummint test to become a ham radio operator.
"That's nice dear, I don't remember Joseph taking a test though. Be
home for dinner" and that was the end of my folk's involvement to that
point. Until I actually got on the air and tore up every TV set on the
block. Then it became "Joseph didn't do that, turn that thing off!"
Oops. Thus it was that I became the "80M Midnite Stalker", I only got
on the air after midnite when the TV stations were broadcasting test
patterns and/or shut down.

We have a nickname for our Mom too. She has four sets of X-Ray eyes,
can hear whispers six blocks away and has radar the Navy would kill
for. We got away with *NOTHING*. The best way to get any of her ten
grandchildren back in line was to threaten to call Spooky Old Alice
and have her swoop in on her broom and deal with them. OhYeah it
worked! So for decades now she's been known universally as The Spook,
or just "Spook" or "Spooky". Her e-mail address was .
She'll be 90 in a couple weeks. She spends a lot of time in what we
call "Alice's World" these days but she's still kickin'.

Dan/W4NTI

w3rv