Crashed The Gate Doing Ninety Eight

This is the untold story of the very first electronic social network in America: The CB Radio. Citizen's Band Radio grew from to a small number of hobby users to a cultural phenomenon in the 1970s. The adoption by millions of Americans forced the FCC to give up nearly all regulation. CB life created it's own "slanguage, "music and values. What started with mostly truckers grew during Arab Oil Crisis and eventually went widespread. Users adapted CB's to their own economic and social uses. This adaptation changed the character of the radio use eventually making the radios truly the Citizen's Band. And then they disappeared... The book culminates 23 years of research with 296 pages, 44 illustrations and more than 200 sources. Interviews include Hairl Hensley of WSM, Bob Cole of aka the "Midnight Rider" from KIKK (now in Austin) and Bill Fries aka C.W. McCall the "Rubber Duck."

Dr. Samuel Allen was at the epicenter of the American Civil War, Missouri. As a slave-owning native Virginian that lived in the shadows of pro-Union Columbia and a Union occupied Jefferson City, he was challenged at every turn with the new state of affairs after the outbreak of the Civil War. His southern Boone County home in a township, country and state was split on the issue of slavery. An old veteran's simple suggestion caused this respected doctor to end up imprisoned. This is the saga of his life, imprisonment and release in southern Boone County Missouri. Dr. Allen found himself not only in a situation of local complications, but one of national implications. President Lincoln wanted to rejoin the Union and pushed for a policy that benefited Dr. Allen. The intervention of a Congressman and this new policy returned Dr. Allen to his home and practice.

“A lighthearted, entertaining trip down Memory Lane” (Kirkus Reviews), Don’t Make Me Pull Over! offers a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips—before portable DVD players, smartphones, and Google Maps. The birth of America’s first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming—sans seatbelts!—to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations. In the days before cheap air travel, families didn’t so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them—from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks. Now, decades later, Ratay offers “an amiable guide…fun and informative” (New York Newsday) that “goes down like a cold lemonade on a hot summer’s day” (The Wall Street Journal). In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including twenty-foot “land yachts,” oasis-like Holiday Inn “Holidomes,” “Smokey”-spotting Fuzzbusters, twenty-eight glorious flavors of Howard Johnson’s ice cream, and the thrill of finding a “good buddy” on the CB radio. An “informative, often hilarious family narrative [that] perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips” (Publishers Weekly), Don’t Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, how its evolution mirrored the country’s, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together—for better and worse—have largely disappeared.

Barry and Maureen are delighted when they are approved as tenants by the Association, an exclusive gated community, until they discover the draconian punishments that could result from any infraction of the rules.