P. L. of Orange and the Shoebox of Hate

A long time ago in simpler days
Which now seem like May in December
There was this CB radio craze
You may be too young to remember
It was Citizens Band radio
And drivers all talked to each other
Of gossip and roads and when to slow
Down if the cops should be a bother

This started with truckers but then spread
To everybody else and it led
To odd situations now and then
For example I remember when
My mother would be watching TV
And when someone using a CB
Would pass the house it would interfere
With something she was trying to hear

Mom got upset about little things
So she wrote to "The Troubleshooter"
In a very well-written letter
In those days before the computer
Not expecting the trouble it brings
To go against what is popular
In a column in the newspaper
I just wish that she had known better

But my mother weighed in as "P. L.
Of Orange" and she really caught hell

Angry men thought she was a man too
And wrote in detail what they would do
To P. L. of Orange if they knew
Where she was just because she complained
The Troubleshooter writer explained
People were crazy he was lazy
And forwarded their letters to her
She kept them in a shoebox of hate

We never knew who those people were
But she is dead now and it is late

+Steven Curtis Lance



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