THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501270793
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PATRICIA HUANG, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 164 lines
Knock down the drive-in movie theaters, take away the secluded ``make out'' spots, close down the curb-service burger joints - and young people will still find places to congregate in their cars.
In Great Bridge, this American teenage tradition lives on in a new generation. But some locals in their teens and early 20s say they're tired of being migrants, forced off one parking lot after another.
Several years ago, the group began congregating on weekends in local parking lots to meet the faces behind the voices they spoke to on their CB radios and do what teenagers like to do most - talk, laugh, gossip.
The activity is innocent, they say. They insist that their social gatherings don't involve alcohol or other drugs. But, they said, they feel branded by some local store owners and residents as troublemakers.
``Everybody that drives by thinks that we're just a bunch of rowdy kids causing trouble, but we're just sitting there talking,'' said Brian Ross, 16. ``(The community) doesn't understand what we're doing, and yet they keep telling us we're doing wrong. We could be out drinking and doing drugs, but we're just sitting there in parking lots, talking, and we get run off. It's kind of funny.''
But Ross, a Great Bridge High School junior, said he's not too surprised.
After all, he had a similar impression of the teenagers he saw in parking lots before he became one of them last year.
One night, while conversing on his truck's CB, two students invited him to meet them. ``The next time, they introduced me to the whole gang,'' he said, adding that he meets many more people through this hobby than through school.
In much the same way, Ross met his girlfriend Chelley Worrell, 17, a student at Oscar F. Smith High School.
Worrell, whose CB handle, or radio nickname, is ``Daisy,'' stood chatting with a group of girls on a recent Thursday night by the Wilco Service Station's car wash off South Battlefield Boulevard. Jacked-up trucks with CB antennas lined one side of the parking lot. Making occasional trips to the service station's convenience store for soft drinks, candy and cigarettes, the teens were content with spending several hours standing around outside to mingle, look at their trucks and shoot the breeze on a January evening. During the summers, as many as 20 or 30 cars are involved.
Mike Waterfield, 25, whose CB handle is ``Renegade,'' and Samantha Gibbs, nicknamed ``Gypsy,'' are two of the ``old-timers.'' They reminisced about the group's formation.
``We didn't even know each other's real names for two and a half years,'' said Gibbs, 19, as she motioned to Waterfield.
The two spoke in CB lingo about their mutual friends - ``Termite,'' ``Red,'' and ``Soul Man''.
Sometimes, they said, the group plays a game called ``Foxhunt.'' It's a rendition of the game of hide-and-seek, involving vehicles equipped with CB radios. A needle on a meter of the radio indicates how close or far away a signal is being transmitted. The person who hides is dubbed the ``fox.''
``We have cops that get in with us and play with us when they're bored,'' said Steve Stancill, whose CB handle is ``Blue Fox.''
``And they'll scare the hell out of us,'' Waterfield added. ``They'll put on their blue lights behind us and we'll think we're getting pulled over, and then they'll pass us and get on the radio and laugh.'' That's called ``tagging the fox,'' he said.
A police car pulling up to the crowd at the car wash didn't faze the group. Some of the teens eagerly approached the car to see if the officer was a familiar one they consider a friend. He was.
``When I sit here, I get to know them as people, but I also get to know their vehicles,'' Chesapeake Police Officer Dion Solari said from his police car. A crowd of young adults gathered around his driver's side window to chat with him. Solari, who makes regular nightly rounds of the Great Bridge area, said he often stops once or twice a night to check up on the CB crowd and talk to them. Police officers occasionally get complaints from store owners and residents about the teens for noise and litter, he said.
``What happens is that a few ruin it for the many. Some of them have hung out like this all their lives. . . I'd rather have them here. Then I know where they are hanging out,'' he said.
He scanned the crowd of laughing teens scattered about under the bright fluorescent lights of the car wash parking lot. ``I've never seen or had a problem from any of these kids. They even ask me if they can ride with me. And we have a ride-along program that I tell them about,'' he said. ``I think the city of Chesapeake really needs a place for young adults to hang out at.''
Solari and other police officers, who said that they have never seen any of the teens with alcohol, take pride in the rapport they have established with the group.
``Now, I'm not saying they're little angels, but they've always been cooperative with me,'' said Officer Neal Falcone, who also patrols the same beat. ``In fact, they've given me information several times on people, you know, (suspects, runaways.)''
Asked what they would want if they could approach the City Council with a request for Great Bridge young adults, members of the CB group said they would like to have a parking lot of their own. Their only indoor gatherings usually occur at the home of their friend, Nathan Wagner, ``in the garage with a kerosene heater, a pool table and a radio.'' They can't frequent places such as bowling alleys or diners unless they have money to spend, and they said local community centers are for little children.
CB cruising and hanging out with the CB crowd is much cheaper. And so far, they are content with the Wilco Car Wash parking lot that the service station managers have given them permission to use. It has been their exclusive spot for the past three months.
But just across the street, within view, is another parking lot they once had permission to use. That is the side parking lot of the Advance Auto Parts store, where their loitering privileges were recently revoked.
The auto parts store's manager, Bob Wood, said that when the teens asked him for permission, he was immediately sympathetic and understanding. ``I was more than willing to help them,'' he said. ``I said `sure' right off the bat if these certain conditions were met.''
They seemed to be simple conditions: loiter only after store hours and don't leave garbage or litter in the parking lot. The first condition was honored, Wood said, but after only a week he found an increasing number of bottles and wrappers of all sorts littering the grounds.
Over at nearby Millwood Plaza, where the group also has been banned, Tread Quarters store manager Mickey Boos said he never had any problems with the group. ``I never came to my store in the morning and found it trashed,'' he said. But the young adults were forbidden from the parking lot when employees of another of the strip mall stores called the police to complain.
``People often complain because they don't feel comfortable with a group of kids. If there's no problem then there's always the excuse that it doesn't look good,'' Boos said.
CB radio can be an inexpensive hobby that requires little more than the cost of the radio, although some of the CBers pay as much as about $300 for their systems.
Channel 14 on the CB radio is home base for the Great Bridge group, but they say that on clear nights they can be found channel surfing, sometimes hearing conversations from as far away as Texas.
And sometimes, typical of CB radio users, they'll hear word of strangers' accidents and help out by calling the information in to police.
Among their own group they are even more conscientious. When Keith White, 20, one of the CB crew, crashed his truck in an accident that hospitalized him for nearly two months, support poured out from the CB radio community, who used the radio to spread the word of his intensive care condition.
Another of their group, Warren T. Trueblood Jr., was memorialized in a sense over the CB radio when he died last year of a heart attack at age 23. His friends mourned his death, telling tales of him over the airwaves.
``That's how we all found out he died,'' Waterfield said. The others nodded their heads, as they began to recount tales of Trueblood and the days news of his death traveled through their network. Waterfield stressed the usefulness of the instrument and their hobby.
``We'll get lost or stuck, and it's like, `Hey, help.' '' he said. ``And they do.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by STEVE EARLEY
[Color on the Cover]
James Baswell takes a break from talking to friends at a gathering
spot to talk to other friends on the CB radio in his truck.
Several CBers chat it up with a Chesapeake police officer. Officer
Dion Solari said he checks on the CB crowd and talks to them.
Vehicles line the parking lot of a Wilco gas station on South
Battlefield Boulevard where CBers meet.
If they're not yakking on the CB, left to right, Brian Ross, Robbie
Brunner, Amanda Byrd and Billy Buyrn are talking it up in person.
Ed Etheridge, right, leans against his modified '79 Ford pick-up,
nicknamed the ``All American.''
by CNB