Tag: Dave Kulka

Here’s To The Phone Phreaks

I sent him a shot of record grooves magnified 1,000 times. He’d seen it before, but to quote Dave, “It’s neat stuff.” It really is.

I swapped emails today with Dave Kulka in Burbank. We first met when we were in our teens–a story in and of itself since I lived in Flushing, NY while Dave was a resident of Greenbrae in Marin County just north of San Francisco. Dave’s company masterfully repairs and restores older audio equipment used in recording studios.

record_groove.jpgFor years Dave was a mastering engineer. That’s the person who supervises the process of taking a song from recording to the lacquer masters that produce phonograph records. Knowing Dave, his records on your turntable sounded just like the session sounded in the studio. He is detail oriented.

I sent him a shot of record grooves magnified 1,000 times. He’d seen it before, but to quote Dave, “It’s neat stuff.” It really is.

In return Dave sent me a link about “phone phreaks” and a book being written about them. These were people who:

listened to the clicks and clunks and beeps and boops to figure out how calls were routed. They read obscure telephone company technical journals. They learned how to impersonate operators and other telephone company personnel. They dug through telephone company trash bins to find “secret” documents. They solved puzzles.

model 500 phone.jpgOK–that’s a little on the romantic side, but not incredibly far off base.

The author claims there are still phone phreaks today, but why? Forty years ago making long distance calls was expensive!

There were different rates in effect for different times of the day. People would wait to make calls after 7:00 PM or after 11:00 PM when the rates fell. A daytime call was outrageously pricey!

Nowadays long distance phone calls flow like water from a faucet. Most cell plans don’t even bother to differentiate long distance from local because there’s really no incremental cost in carrying either! Nearly all the costs are fixed whether you make calls or not.

This crime has been solved by pricing it out of existence. Isn’t that strange? That doesn’t happen too often.

History Channel’s 1968

For me, 1968 was the seminal year. I graduated high school, left the comfort of my family to travel out west with a pen pal I’d never met, and started college.

I watched Tom Brokaw’s paean to 1968 last night. The History Channel is running it.&#185.

For me, 1968 was the seminal year. I graduated high school, left the comfort of my family to travel out west with a pen pal I’d never met, and started college.

In July 1968, I was working at Sears on Northern Blvd. Flushing. It was a store so obscure, until I worked there, I didn’t know it existed (I’d lived in Flushing nearly 15 years at the time). I was saving my $1.50 an hour wage to buy record albums.

In 1968 I bought Janis Joplin, Blood Sweat and Tears (pre-David Clayton Thomas), The Doors and Cream albums. As I remember, the going price for an album was $2.79. I was also going with my Cousin Michael and our friend Larry to concerts at the Fillmore East in the pre-stylish, quite seedy, East Village.

1968 is when I registered for the draft.

The Vietnam War was raging in the late 60s. The real controversy started a few years earlier, but by ’68 it was a festering national sore. Even with film instead of videotape, and without the immediacy of satellites, we were seeing more of the battles and horrors of war than we do in Iraq. Anti-Vietnam War sentiment was rising – rising rapidly.

1968 was the year the police went wild at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I remember the horror in the face of Dave Kulka’s mom as she watched (while Dave and I didn’t) at their hillside home in Greenbrae, California.

Lyndon Johnson was abandoned. Bobby Kennedy as killed. Richard Nixon was elected. Men circled, but didn’t land on, the moon.

Of my 57 years, 1968 was undoubtedly the most historically significant. I wonder, in retrospect, if I was less cognizant of the nuts and bolts of the social and political tumult than I thought I was at the time? There was so much going on.

I liked how Browkaw treated this year. I remembered most, though not all of what went on. He connected some dots that I had not. I was disappointed in myself for not doing that sooner.

It was funny to see Tom Brokaw talk about his suited and skinny tied self, while portray his inner life as significantly hipper. Was he, or was he just a wannabe?

If you get a chance, this will be two hours well spent.

&#185 – The good news about cable TV is, even if you’ve missed it, it will run again… and again.

Old Mail Returned to Sender

Last month I wrote about hearing from my old friend Dave Kulka. He was Dave Kulka, now he’s David. That happens when you grow up I suppose.

I wonder why I haven’t become Geoffrey?

Dave and I have spoken on the phone a few times since then. Recently, he came across some letters I sent to him from the late sixties to the mid seventies. Now, he’s sent them back to me.

They came yesterday before work, but I have been scared to read them. Isn’t that weird? I wasn’t sure what I would find – what I had said – what I was like. I’ve always been good at avoidance in situations like this. A few minutes ago, I finally picked them up and began to read.

Assuredly, I am not the same as I was then. That is not good nor bad, just fact.

Now that I’ve peeked, here’s what I know. I was very free in what I said. I talked politics, social issues, personal stuff. Then, as now, I wasn’t scared to show myself warts and all. These letters talk about success and failure.

It’s a shame there were no spell checkers or grammar checkers back then because I was in desperate need of both! Most letters were punched out on an old Royal manual typewriter. Once you typed a letter, it was stuck on the page, difficult to remove.

Was there Correctype in 1968? Not in my house.

I’m going to upload a small piece of one of the letters just for a little feel of the times. It was sent two days before my 18th birthday. The header said what was foremost in my mind: In two days I’d be registering for the draft! In 1968, the prospect of Vietnam petrified me. Getting a draft card was the first step in the process. It didn’t mean I’d get drafted – only that I could.

It is interesting to see me refer to my mother from a teenager’s perspective. I hope she can see it in her heart to forgive me for the kind of kid I was… though the letter implies she read this as it was being written. It is also interesting to look at how I was nonchalantly making plans to fly across country, my first time away from home, to meet someone I didn’t know in a city I’d never been to!

Over the next few days I’ll look for a few more snippets to post. However, I’m not sure that there is a letter that doesn’t have at least one embarrassing passage I won’t put on the web. There are warts and then there are warts. I’m no longer 18.

Having a Blog – The Fringe Benefits

I like writing in my blog. Hopefully, that’s obvious. Whether anyone reads it or not, it’s an opportunity to vent and reflect. There are, unfortunately, far too few places to do either.

A side benefit of having a blog is the web presence it gives me. Do a Google search for Geoff Fox and you’ll find me first, even though there are other Geoff Foxes – most more accomplished than I am.

Once you’ve found the website, getting in touch with me by email is simple. From time-to-time I get a note from someone I knew a long time ago who stumbled across this site. One came in tonight.

Actually, I’m lucky I found the note from Dave Kulka, because it was in my spam box, snuggled between herbal Viagra and mortgage offers&#185.

David Kulka here. Geoff, how the hell are you? We haven’t spoken in a

long time. I was sifting through DX artifacts and other memorabilia

from the past and came across a batch of old letters from you. You

were certainly easy to find on Google.

Email seems insufficient for catching up after 30 years, why don’t you

give me a call. 818-xxx-xxxx.

73’s

David

He’s David now, but I first met Dave Kulka in person in August 1968. We had met through correspondence and a mutual hobby, broadcast band DX’ing&#178, months earlier.

I had just turned 18. Dave was a few years younger. We planned on meeting for the National Radio Club convention in Los Angeles, visiting another radio nerd in Riverside, CA and spending some time at Dave’s house in Marin County, just outside San Fransisco.

This was my first time away from home by myself. I was flying cross country to meet a stranger. Who knew what he’d be like?

At 18, I was naive. There was never a question of fear or worry. I remember getting some incredible 1/2 price youth fare on TWA and flying from Kennedy Airport to Los Angeles.

There’s not a lot I remember, though a few individual events stand out.

The convention was held in an older, somewhat worn, hotel in Hollywood. I believe it was the Roosevelt, but I might be wrong. Within an hour of being in LA and checking into the hotel, I got myself arrested for jaywalking at Hollywood and Cahuenga! I think Dave got pinched too.

When we went to the desert in Riverside, it was as foreign a place as I’d ever been. I remember how bare the ground was, and how we were fairly close to a bluff which overlooked Riverside Airport. I went there a few times to watch the Hughes Air West Fairchild F-27’s takeoff and land

One day while we were in the house in Riverside, everything began to shake. I could hear plates and glasses rattling. Earthquake! It scared the living daylights out of me… though Dave and the home’s owner, Don, made like it was nothing. To this day, it’s my one and only earthquake.

Spending time in Marin County was also an eye opening experience. Dave and his family lived in a beautiful home on the side of a hill. There was a deck which ran from the side to the back. His parents cars were parked on the narrow road in front of the house. Their auto registration was somehow affixed to the steering post. Having grown up in apartment 5E, this was all culture shock.

I remember Dave’s mom. I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd today, but I remember thinking she was pretty and young for the mom of a contemporary. Mostly I remember her during the days of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

This was the convention where Mayor Daley attempted to quash the dissent of the anti-war movement. There were riots in Chicago during the convention. It was all televised live.

Dave’s mom cried. It was a soft, emotional cry. Over 35 years later, that moment is strong in my mind. I remember her standing there, turned 3/4 away from the TV, in an emotional state because of something going on half a country away.

I didn’t understand the significance of what was going on at the time. Dave didn’t either. But her emotion from that night is still strong in my mind.

Dave’s uncle, Leo deGar Kulka, was the proprietor of a well known recording studio in San Fransisco. We spent a lot of time there, though I never met Uncle Leo.

Like I said, Dave could have been a weirdo – who knew? I was going out there on blind faith. But, he turned out to be a nice guy, and it was a trip which still stands out in my mind.

Tonight, on my way home from work, I called him and we spoke for a while. He has had an amazing life, traveling through much of Asia. These were not tourist jaunts to capitols, but trips through the countryside – places where Anglos are oddities. That kind of world traveling is one thing I’ve wanted to, but never will, do.

He sounds bright, self assured and content. On the phone I told him he sounded happy with his life, but I think content is a much more fitting word.

Dave’s in Burbank, in the San Fernando Valley, designing and installing recording studios. He is married with no children.

We get out there every once in a while. Next time, I’ll have to see him. How much could he have changed in 36 years?

&#185 – I always hope I find all the non-spam in my spam box, but, as good as popfile is, I am never sure. The downside to having a website like this is the amazing amount of spam I receive – hundreds of pieces every day.

&#178 – Broadcast band DXing is a hobby where you try and listen to distant, often foreign, broadcast stations on the regular AM dial. Using sophisticated, incredibly nerdy equipment, I was able to hear Europe, Hawaii, even Africa on an AM radio from the East Coast. I haven’t been involved in years, but still know the calls of most of the dominant clear channel stations and many of the strong regionals.