Cooperative Living February 2020 - 38

ThrowBack | by Howard Zehr, Contributing Writer
Above, Howard Zehr got into amateur radio as a teenager.
Right, decades later, Zehr is still at it and finds a sense of
community through old-fashioned connections.
Retiring into the Boyish Pleasures of Ham Radio
I
'm a septuagenarian amateur radio operator in the internet
age, a ham radio hobbyist who operates almost exclusively
with the Morse code, a form of communication not even
required for emergency use anymore. I'm one of those boys
who embraced ham radio in the 1950s and are still at it.
I haven't gone out of style yet.
Despite the rise of cellphones and the internet, there are
more licensed ham radio operators today than ever, about
750,000 in the U.S. alone. In part, this is due to new platforms
and available modes like satellite communications and moon
bounce. While women amateurs remain a minority, their
numbers are increasing.
Several times a week, a group of ham operators gathers at
a Shenandoah Valley Wendy's for lunch. Most are retired from
a wide range of careers. Attendance varies. Sometimes talk is
about radio, but often it includes other topics except politics.
There is a shared understanding in amateur radio that politics
is off-limits.
Lately I've been pondering two questions. Why did so
many of us get into amateur radio as young boys in the 1950s?
And now in our senior years, why are we still at it?
COMING OF AGE
Susan Douglas' book on the history of radio, " Listening In:
Radio and the American Imagination, " has some answers.
She argues that the interest among boys was partly due to
what was happening in the 50s and partly due to the nature
of 20th century masculinity.
In the post-World War II era, radio waves were again free
for non-military use. The radio spectrum was, as Douglas
says, an undeveloped wilderness. Between 1954 and 1959, the
years when I became licensed, the number of ham operators
nearly doubled.
Ham radio, says Douglas, was a place where men could
36 | Cooperative Living | February 2020
" escape the constraints of conventionalized masculinity " while
still pursuing masculine interests. In other words, it provided a
way for boys who didn't fit the John Wayne style of masculinity
to find a place.
Boys like me.
I was shy, an introvert. I was not very competitive and not
at all interested in sports. I loved to invent and tinker, often
fashioning things out of junk parts. Electronics, and especially
radio, provided an arena in which I could explore, create,
develop skills and even achieve some level of technological
competence.
I had won a crystal radio on my paper route. While trying
to figure out why it didn't work, I met local ham operators and
an elderly radio repairman, a networking skill which would
turn out to be important in my professional life.
On the air, I chatted with people around the world with
similar interests. Though our brief chats were rarely profound,
there was a connection. Locally, I found a few peers who
shared my interests.
THE CODE CONNECTION
Like many men in my cohort, I was off the air (QRT, in
radioese) during much of my work and family life, reengaging
during my late 50s after the children were gone and becoming
more active as I moved toward retirement.
Why have I returned to it after a satisfying career in
unrelated arenas?
In my younger years, I liked to fish, using ultralight gear to
increase the challenge and excitement. I have given up fishing.
However, radio is a kind of electronic catch-and-release
fishing.
It relies on skill, involves interesting gear, and has the
excitement and serendipity of hooking something or someone
you can't see, and no person or creature gets hurt. As in
co-opliving.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF HOWARD ZEHR
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living February 2020

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