Nov 15, 2011

Postcards on Ebay - Ronald G. Mudge

Like many people I visit the Ebay web site frequently.
One of the categories I peruse is the postcards section for the State of New York.
The total number of listings this morning was in excess of 94,000.

My interest is strictly local.
When I narrowed the search by typing in "Marathon, NY"
a listing of 12 postcards was shown.

My eyes were drawn to a postcard sent by
Ronald G. Mudge of Marathon on Aug. 7 1958
from Cincinnatus, NY where he was born.

Ron was a life-time ham radio enthusiast.
His call letters were KN2UZF.
The card was went to a ham radio operator in Whippany, NJ.
Ron's age is penned as "16" on the card.
Ron passed away at Cortland Hospital on July 29, 2009.
If you click on the picture a larger version should show.

I bought my first CB radio from Ron as did many others.
Channels 2 and 3 were our local channels.
Many folks in the greater Marathon, NY area owned Citizen Band Radios
and monitored the transmissions on these channels.
It was called "sandbagging".
We identified ourselves with creative monnikers.
The truckers passing on I-81 used Channel 19.

George V