The problem with working from a home office is, you’re at home, and there’s always something that needs to be done. Last Tuesday afternoon, after things slowed for the day, I decided to begin work on a project I’d been putting off for a very long time, which was cleaning out and organizing the attic. I delayed starting this, because I knew it was going to be a major job, probably requiring an architect, a structural engineer and an inspection by the United States Department of Attics—I had a shit-load of boxes up there.
            With mild apprehension, I wandered into the hallway and very slowly pulled down the folding attic ladder. I hate pulling down the folding attic ladder in the hallway. I have this paralyzing fear that a massive, rabid squirrel has built a nest on the inside of the door, and it will hurl itself down and bite me on the head. I was lucky this day, just some bits of pink insulation.
            I climbed the steps, pulled the light chord, stood and assessed the work. I looked at all the boxes stacked on the plywood flooring, and just as many sitting on the rafters.
            “We’re gonna need more plywood,” I said loudly.
            “What?” yelled Rita, my wife who also works at home.
            “I just said to myself, ‘We’re gonna need more plywood’ and it reminded of…”
            “We’re gonna need a bigger boat?” Rita asked.
            “Actually,” I said. “I was thinking, I gotta have more cowbell.”
            “I don’t understand.”
            “It’s a phrase from an old skit on Saturday Night Live,” I said.
            “I got that; I just don’t understand what cowbells have to do with our attic.”
            “Thanks honey, I gotta get back to work.”
            I wasn’t really sure what I planned for the attic, but I brought a measuring tape and one of those big flat pencils, the kind real carpenters have. I was going to measure and then write notes on the rafters and joists about where to move boxes to better organize the attic space. I moved a few boxes around trying to figure out how much more plywood I was going to need, and I wrote some measurements on a joist. But my neck was starting to hurt from looking up, so I sat down on a box, pulled another box close, and began calculating how many sheets of plywood I needed. When I was done, I stood to take a picture of the measurements and calculations I wrote on the box, a Mayflower Van Lines box, and I noticed “Walter’s Office” was written in the top corner.
            Walter was my dad. I wasn’t really sure what was in this particular box. After my dad died, we sold his house and donated most of the furniture to the Goodwill. I hired Two Men and a Truck (misleading since there was a man, a woman, a boy and a dog) to box up the things in his office, bring them to my house, and put them in the attic. This box had been pushed to the back and never opened. Inside, wrapped in layers of paper, was my dad’s old Johnson, Viking II ham radio. I was overwhelmed. The sight of the Viking’s head image on the radio brought back a flood of memories. Memories of sitting on the floor of my dad’s office, every Sunday before sunrise, listening as he called my grandad on that ham radio. We lived in Massachusetts and my grandad’s home was very far away in South Carolina. We didn’t see him often and back then long-distance calls were expensive, so my dad and grandad became amateur radio operators—hams. The start of each conversation was always, wonderfully, the same.
            “This is K4EXK calling K4ECU, come in. Over.” my dad would say.
            “This is K4ECU, how’s it going son? Over,” my granddad would say.
            “Everything’s good dad. I have Riley here with me. Over.”
            “Riley, my favorite grandson. Over.”
            I’d always laugh and squeal out, “I’m your only grandson, Grandad, and I’m “Over” too.”
            I’m amazed I still remembered both of their call signs. Funny how there are some things you remember forever, even though you hadn’t made any effort to memorize them. Other things, like my wedding anniversary date, I seemed to forget no matter how much I tried to remember it.
            I stared at that ham radio transceiver with its familiar black and gray front, the Johnson Viking II name in Tiffany blue letters, and the silhouette of the Viking’s head above the name. It had a dozen dials, toggle switches with lights, and plugs for microphones. There were two little meters; one displayed radio channels, and the other had a little needle that moved with every noise. It had a distinct smell that pricked my nose and my memory even more; the smell of electronics, circuit boards and vacuum tubes. I breathed it in, closed my eyes, and I was six years old again. The front of that radio had been the center of my attention, as I sat on the floor of my dad’s office on Sunday mornings. It brought Grandad’s voice into the room, and the little needle jumped and danced with his every word.
            I turned my attention back to the box and found the microphone, the speaker and a metal box containing a half-dozen, carefully packed, vacuum tubes. I also found a big stack of post cards mailed to my dad from ham operators he’d talked with over the years. He’d had them taped on the wall in back of the Johnson Viking II. Coiled up at the bottom of the box, was the very long cable my dad used as the antenna, the cord, and of course a rock.
            I stood in the backyard, the next morning, holding the rock. I turned it over and over in my hand.. I was sure my dad had carefully selected each individual piece of his ham radio equipment. I’m certain he knew exactly what brand, model and types of accessories he wanted. But the rock; the rock was probably the most difficult accessory he had to find. The rock had a critical purpose, needed to be a specific size, shape and weight. I stood holding the rock, imagining my dad searching vacant lots, the side of the road, the woods, until he found exactly what he needed. I turned it over and over again, looking at the shape, feeling it’s weight, imagining him decades earlier doing the same thing. I could hear him say, “Yep, this one will do the job.”
            Then, I did exactly what I had witnessed my dad do every time we moved to a new house. I looked up into the pine trees and picked out a tall one, close to the house. I carefully tied the cord around the rock, looping and crisscrossing it several times. I reeled back and threw it all the way up into the tree. The rock cleared one of the limbs and fell to the ground pulling the cord along with it. Then, I tied the end of the cord to the antenna cable, pulled the cable up and over the tree limb and tied the cord around the trunk of the tree. I’d brought that length of cable out of retirement, and it was now my ham radio antenna.
            I went back inside. I have to pause, and thank Al Gore for inventing the internet (so he claimed, although it was Tim Berners-Lee). I found out everything about amateur radio operators except a reasonable explanation of why they’re called hams. I learned that ham radio had been essential in places where there were no telephones. Today, in spite of the ubiquity of mobile phones, there are still more than 750,000 licensed amateur radio operators. Some of the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are hams, and occasionally talk with ham operators down here on earth. I found out what radio frequency to use to talk with the ISS, and found a link that tells me when it will pass over my house, which just so happened to be today.
            I was so excited I popped into Rita’s office.
            “Guess what I’m doing today.”
            “What,” she said, not looking up from her computer.
            “I’m planning to talk with the astronauts on the International Space Station.”
            She said distractedly, “That’s nice sweetheart, have fun.”
            Rita didn’t seem to share my excitement. I had poked the end of the cable through my window from outside, so I pulled it in and connected it to the back of the radio. I shut the window as much as I could and sealed the gap with duct tape.
            I flipped the on/off switch.
            Nothing happened. Nothing.
            Disappointed, I stood, looked through the vents on the top of the radio and saw that all of the huge old tubes, except two, were glowing. I opened up the back, removed the dead tubes and was lucky to find replacements in the box of spare tubes. Good old Dad—always prepared.
            I flipped the switch and the screens on the radio snapped to life. Just in time. The ISS was about to pass overhead. I reached over to press the microphone button, but realized I didn’t have an amateur radio license or an FCC call sign. I decided, it probably wouldn’t hurt if I used my dad’s old call sign, K4EXK.
            “This is K4EXK calling the International Space Station, come in. Over.”
            A little static—then silence.
            I called out a few more times, okay, sixteen, then decided they must be busy doing space walks or docking Instacart space capsules. I turned everything off and went up to the attic to measure and draw on the rafters with my carpenter pencil.
            The next day, I again called out to the ISS, since they still should have been in range, but there was no reply. I spent a while listening to conversations on other channels. I was amazed at where some of these people were located. Many of them were thousands of miles apart. Looking through the postcards my dad had collected, I realized he’d made connections all across the country. I decided maybe I’d try and connect with some of them.
            I pressed the button and said, “CQ, CQ, CQ, this is K4EXK. Over.”
For those non-ham people out there, CQ is ham operator code for, “I wish to contact to an amateur station.”
            I waited a few minutes, heard nothing, and tried again.
            “CQ, CQ, CQ. This is K4EXK. Over.”
            Suddenly, clear as can be, “K4EXK, this is K8AGR, that’s kilo, eight, alpha, gamma, radar. I’m beaming west from North Carolina. Over.”
            I hadn’t been this excited since the season finale of Game of Thrones. K8FGH was an older retired gentleman who’d been active as a ham for 41 years. After a surprisingly dull conversation about his grandchildren, he got down to business and asked me to send him my ham postcard. I had an image of every room in his house wallpapered with ham postcards. I promised him I’d send one, but I didn’t have any, so I rummaged around until I found a postcard from Panama City Beach. Rita had found it in our hotel room and liked the view of the beach, especially the tanned, young life-guard in the foreground. I wrote my dad’s call sign and a nice note on the back, added a stamp and walked it out to our mailbox.
            Friday afternoon, when I was done with work for the day, I rolled my chair over to the Johnson Viking II and CQ’d a few times.
            After my second attempt, I heard, “K4EXK, hello. This is K8FTZ replying to your CQ. Over.”
            I replied, “Hello, K8FTZ, this is K4EXK. Over.”
            “This is Evan Garin. Nice to meet you over the radio.”
            “It’s nice to meet you also, Evan. I’m Riley Wilkes.”
            “Where are you from Riley?”
            “Wayne, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia.”
            “Philadelphia, great city. I’m out in Denver.”
            “Denver, Rita and I vacationed out there last summer. Normally you think of Denver as a winter vacation spot, but it was great place to go during the summer. We went to the Rocky Mountain State Park, and we took a train ride, what was that, the Durango and something…”
            “Silverton,” said Evan.
            “That’s it, yes. It was great.”
            “So, what do you do for a living, Riley?
            “I work for a mobile phone company. I’m a customer care supervisor. How about you?”
            “I’m a commercial real estate broker.”
            “Whoa, times must be tough for you,” I said.
            “You know it. Since no one is going into an office right now, we’re not doing much business. So, we’re working with our major clients, helping them determine ways to repurpose some of their existing space. Not much money in that, but hopefully they’ll remember us when things improve.”
            “Sounds like a good strategy.”      
            “Riley, you said you and Rita live in Wayne. Are you two married, kids, grandkids?” asked Evan.
            “Married, yes—no kids. How about you?”
            “Yes, well, I was married,” said Evan, and then a long pause.
            Unfortunately, my wife recently passed away. Cancer, she had a long, difficult fight.”
            “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
            “No, no, I’m the one who’s sorry. I know it sounded like I was looking for an opportunity to bring up Emily’s death, fishing for sympathy.”
            “No, it didn’t sound like that at all. I’m really so sorry.”
            “Thank you, Riley. Hey, I’m so sorry about this, but I need to go. I have to pick up my dog, Hank, at the groomer. I just got a text that she’s ready. She’s a golden retriever, such a sweetheart. My wife brought her home when she was just a puppy, carried her into the house in her purse.” Then after a long silence Evan said, “Anyway, it was great talking with you, Riley. Give me your address and I’ll send you my ham postcard.”
            “It was great talking with you, and give me yours also. I’ll send you a Panama City Beach postcard. At least I think I have another one; if not, one from Las Vegas.”
            After we signed off, I went to Rita’s office, kissed her and told her I loved her.
            “What was that for?” she asked “It isn’t Sunday afternoon.”
                     

Daniel Norman received his BFA from the University of Georgia. Previously, he was a senior executive and an inventor at AT&T Mobility, holding numerous U.S. patents. He is also a past member of the board of directors of the Florida Literacy Coalition.