Play One on TV

Happy Birthday to Dustbury! Drop by and congratulate Charles Hill on ten years of quality web presence (and ignore his humble protests, which are part and parcel of his charm.)

I’ve had the privilege of knowing Charles for much longer than the life of his website. Charles and I are veterans of that grand predecessor to the Internet community know as “Bulletin Board Systems”, or BBS for short.

Back in the halcyon days of the early 1980’s (when men were men, except for heavy metal rockers) most computer-based socialization took place in two venues: the hideously expensive Compuserve and its imitators (including Quantumlink, the predecessor to America Online), and on local BBS systems. A BBS system was simply a computer that was attached to an incoming phone line, acting as a dedicted message base and email processor. BBS’s were small one-computer affairs, usually run by hobbyists on a limited budget, and could only handle one caller at a time. However, they were free and thus were incredibly more popular in my household than any of the online services.

During this time, there were several quality BBS’s available in Oklahoma City. Each was a labor of love (or at least obsessive-compulsiveness) as the computers of the era did not multitask — making your personal computer into a BBS was an expensive and time-consuming proposition. Each BBS attracted it’s own sort of clientele, kind of like bars but without the alcohol (not that you could tell). It wasn’t uncommon for each BBS to have 10-20 “regulars” that tended to set the tone for the discussions, be they political, humorous, cultural, technical, juvenile, or even downright silly.

Amidst this early noise and confusion, a few writers tended to stand out through the quality of their posts, and Charles was one of the most noticeable. He went by a variety of pseudonyms (which we called “handles”, a la the old CB radio lingo) but I knew him mostly as “Nick Danger — Third Eye”. At one point, I would have sworn he had a twin sister, but that assumption was quickly corrected the first time I met her… er, him in person.

Nick Danger’s voice was a beacon of wit and complete sentences in a wilderness of electronic noise. It didn’t matter what the topic — music appreciation, global warming, computer brand wars (my computer is better than your computer), or whether or not L. Ron Hubbard actually wrote Mission Earth — “Nick” never failed to deliver a heavy dose of smarts, charm, and knowledge with each and every post. The depth of his knowledge was astounding, and the volume of his output was intimidating. Although I sound like a fawning fanboy, I can honestly say that Nick Danger was one of the primary reasons I continued to frequent local BBS’s. Of course, I don’t have to worry about describing the impact of his writing, as his web page is more than description enough.

I wandered off the BBS scene in the early 1990’s, much to the relief of my wife, who wanted her telephone line back. By that time, the BBS community had discovered networking, and message bases that previously sported 30 users were now seeing posts from ten times that many. It was impossible to have a personal conversation with 300 people, so I sadly unplugged the modem and went on with my life.

It was with great joy that I found the Dustbury site in the latter 1990’s. Knowing that it was an Oklahoma website, I recognized Charles’ inimitable style and verbal animation long before I spotted his name at the bottom of the page. I have been a regular reader ever since, even after his conversion to this weird blogging thing.

So, it is with fondness and some nostalgia for “the good old days” that I wish Dustbury a happy 10th anniversary, and hopes for many more anniversaries to come. If men are measured by their influence in the lives of others, then there aren’t enough yardsticks in Home Depot to measure the length of Charles’ influence on his readers.

May his keyboard never caplock!