1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae]

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Today, at least, Levi's are name-brand jeans which I think are acceptable to cool teenagers. Were they sufficiently no-nonsense, honest working pants in 1988?

Yes. A bit expensive, but also a quality product.

No-nonsense people might just shop at Sears or JC Penney, both of which did a lot of mail-order business (useful in rural areas). They had their own house brands (Toughskins or Arizona jeans, respectively), as well as the national brands. "Wrangler" and "Lee" were other mid-to-downmarket brands.

Are Leatherman or Gerber viewed as 'serious' multitools?

Either would suit; both are popular brands. The US military issued a Gerber product (the MP600) for quite a while, though I'm not sure when they first started. (Also the Canadian forces, though the Brits went with Leatherman.)

What about typical survival flashlights? How heavy was a typical one?

The weight is in the case and batteries, so I wouldn't expect that to change significantly. Maglite was certainly the go-to brand, though if you wanted light, I'm sure you could get a waterproof, floating, plastic model.

What kind of radio did FBI agents have in their cars by 1988 and how did they work?

Before cellular, they'd likely have had a Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) radio-telephone, probably made by Motorola or GE. This was a radio system tied into the regular phone network. VHF radio, with about 40 channels total, though many base stations and mobile units supported fewer channels, even as few as two -- which is a significant limitation, because one channel supports one phone call, and if the channels are busy, you just have to wait. About a 50-mile range. By the 1980s, you could direct dial with DTMF signalling. The car needs a 19" antenna mounted on it, so not quite as big as those giant CB whip antennas.

Were there any useful and affordable devices like a portable electronic or fuel heater that would make sense to have in the car?

A Coleman camp heater? Certainly nice to have if you're stranded, but I wouldn't expect anyone to actually pack one unless they were planning on camping or had a pretty serious survival/prepardness bug.

Same with a radio beacon. It'd probably be military surplus (e.g. AN/PRC-90), or else an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), which was really designed for crashed aircraft. VHF at 121.5 or 243 MHz, so I think those are LOS, meant to talk to search aircraft and eventually detectable by satellites, but not something you can use to call for ground-based help.

How would one make coffee in a survival situation?

Why, you put the coffee in your metal cup sitting on your Coleman camp stove; real men spit out the grounds or just eat them :) Failing the camp stove, a fire works fine. Probably pre-ground coffee, though the Civil War practice of issuing whole beans and just smashing them with a rifle butt would still work. Coffee wasn't a hipster foodie product yet, so the survival kit might well just have instant coffee powder (like Folgers); dissolve it in hot water, no filters, percolaters, etc.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Back in the '80's, Levi Strauss jeans were just normal blue jeans. Everybody wore them. There's also wrangler brand jeans which I think date to back then.

See, this is the value of asking the forumites. The characterisation-signals sent by various brands are very different in Iceland and Europe, not to mention that thirty years have made a lot of difference. Thanks.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

For other clothes, see if you can look up any on-line copies of the Sears Roebuck & Co catalog from the late 1980's. The clothing section can give you an idea of the brands that people wore (also, J.C. Penny's and Macy's (Nordstrom where I lived, but I think it was Macy's back east)). Frankly, the only memorable brands were the jeans. Everything else was just "a flannel shirt" or something (well, there was also Nike and Reebok and other footwear, but that's for athletic shoes, not manly man boots).

Good suggestion. I'll check that out.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

If your agent comes from Texas or the American Southwest, Stetson hats might still have been a thing. Being from the Northwest and California, myself, I don't really know as much about that culture.

Judging from 'No Country for Old Men', Stetson hats were very much a thing in 1980.

Frank Corelli is from New Jersey, however. His duty posts have included Marquette, MI (2 years); New York City, NY (3 years); Philadephia, PA (6 years); and Boston, MA (4 years), before the current assignment to Maine.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Men's Wearhouse was founded in 1973. It is an accessible, affordable, no frill men's dress clothes retailer.

Would you find one in Philly (where he was posted during the late 70s) or in Boston (his last duty post before Maine)?

Originally Posted by lwcamp

They are definitely serious multitools and quite suitable for macho types. I didn't hear about the Leatherman brand until the mid '90's however, so it might have taken a while to become a thing. Back in the '80's, people tended to use Swiss Army knives (see, for example, that '80's TV show MacGyver).

The pliers that come on Gerber or Leatherman multi tools make me, at least, associate them more with practical, manly, handy types than Swiss Army knives, which look kind of sissy. And I say this having owned both since the early 90s. :)

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Maglite made flashlights in all sizes, from six D-cell beasts down to finger-length flashlights that could easily slip into a purse or a car's glovebox. All were waterproof and exceptionally durable. Of course, being the '80's, they used Edison bulbs and alkaline batteries rather than LEDs and Li-ion cells.

And he'd have Maglites, rather than Streamlight, Pro-Light, Brinkmann, B-Lite or Bianchi?

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Are we talking two-way radios, here? Because receive-only radios were installed in just about all cars (with a tape deck), and you could get portable one-way radios about the size of a man's wallet.

For two way radios, you have walkie-talkies, which would have similar performance to modern walkie-talkies. Maybe ten miles range (less depending on terrain), about the size of a telephone hand/head set (you know, the part you talk into, that was connected to the main body of the phone by a curly cord. NOT the modern cell phones, which are much dinkier).

Can't help you much on the vehicle-based radios.

I'm thinking about vehicle-based radios. Corelli's personal truck is his take-home car and he has a standard FBI radio for the period in it. I simply don't know how far that radio should be able to reach.

If it can reach 15 miles, that means he might be able to reach Lt. Dufresne or one of his part-time deputies in Allagash, though the odds are against it, as they won't be in their cars during a storm.

20 miles would give him enough reach to try for the station radio that the Aroostook County Sheriff's Office and State Police jointly maintain in St. Francis. It's possible that Lt. Dufresne would be manning that radio or have one of his six part-time deputies doing so, for public safety reasons. They could probably relay him on somewhere, but the facilities there are pretty small-time.

35 miles would get him Fort Kent PD and they could relay him almost anywhere, I figure. Including State Police headquarters in Houlton and the FBI resident agency in Bangor. Of course, Agent Corelli does not trust Sgt. Berube of the State Police, who called him from Fort Kent, as he felt that Sgt. Berube was far too anxious to see the FBI agents leave Allagash before the storm hit.* He might be hesitant to use any means of communication that might allow Sgt. Berube (who has an office in the Fort Kent PD building) to listen in, unless the alternative was worse.

*Of course, that may have been less interference in the investigation than an honest attempt to avoid having three federal agents and a civilian working for the FBI come to harm during what appeared to be turning into a terrible blizzard.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Get a propane tank, and various accessories: a camp stove, propane torch, propane lantern. Electronic heaters would have been crap, because the battery tech just wasn't there and it doesn't look like you are interested in situations where you have access to household current. Back in the '80's, I don't remember any of those modern mini propane tanks, you would get one of the big white tanks that was maybe 50 cm in diameter and tall.

Sounds good.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

I think those chemical hand warmers were a think back then. Definitely stock up on those.

Definitely. The current temperature is -13° F and the wind is approaching gale force. The storm warning did not, perhaps, indicate that it would get quite that cold, but it was pretty clear it wouldn't be nice out there.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

And a map. Get a map of the area. And not just any map, a USGS survey map, with topographic elevation lines and all that. With a compass and manly man orienteering skills, getting lost just got a whole lot harder (unless you're in a blizzard, in which case getting lost is pretty much assured if you move around at all).

Heh.

Corelli has a road map of the area and a compass in the car. If an USGS survey map that includes northwest Aroostook County was easily available in Bangor, Maine, then I imagine Corelli has one of those.

How much space would it take up if he had USGS survey maps of the entire area covered by his resident agency, i.e. Aroostock, Hancock, Penobscot, Pitcataquis, and Washington counties of northern Maine?

As it happens, however, Special Agent Rene Ledoux is an amateur cartographer and an honest-to-God map enthusiast. The player made a point of mentioning that immediately upon being informed that he was driving to Maine*, he stopped to find the best maps he could of the part of Maine to which he was going. So I imagine that he'll have USGS survey maps of the right area and probably some aerial photographs and survey records to boot.

*From Boston, as the New England Division is his duty new assignment and he had just landed there to speak with the SAC.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Yes. A bit expensive, but also a quality product.

No-nonsense people might just shop at Sears or JC Penney, both of which did a lot of mail-order business (useful in rural areas). They had their own house brands (Toughskins or Arizona jeans, respectively), as well as the national brands. "Wrangler" and "Lee" were other mid-to-downmarket brands.

Sears and JC Penney sounds like it would suit.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Either would suit; both are popular brands. The US military issued a Gerber product (the MP600) for quite a while, though I'm not sure when they first started. (Also the Canadian forces, though the Brits went with Leatherman.)

Judging from this timeline, it seems that Leatherman is about the only option in the 80s.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The weight is in the case and batteries, so I wouldn't expect that to change significantly. Maglite was certainly the go-to brand, though if you wanted light, I'm sure you could get a waterproof, floating, plastic model.

Bah. He'll go with steel.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Before cellular, they'd likely have had a Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) radio-telephone, probably made by Motorola or GE. This was a radio system tied into the regular phone network. VHF radio, with about 40 channels total, though many base stations and mobile units supported fewer channels, even as few as two -- which is a significant limitation, because one channel supports one phone call, and if the channels are busy, you just have to wait. About a 50-mile range. By the 1980s, you could direct dial with DTMF signalling. The car needs a 19" antenna mounted on it, so not quite as big as those giant CB whip antennas.

Thanks! That's really useful information.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

A Coleman camp heater? Certainly nice to have if you're stranded, but I wouldn't expect anyone to actually pack one unless they were planning on camping or had a pretty serious survival/prepardness bug.

Corelli cannot be called a crazy over-preparing survivalist nut, for one thing, because you don't want to call a stern and formiddable FBI agent that, especially not one who is (in)famous for the number of shooting incidents he has been in. But if you were sure he didn't hear you, it wouldn't be inaccurate to suggest that he might be in the habit of always preparing for the absolute worst case scenario and his ex-wife would be quick to tell you that his idea of a fun vacation was entirely too close to SERE training.*

*A criticism that would always puzzle Corelli, as he would always take care that his family was fully equipped and supplied for their arduous and lengthy survival hikes.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Same with a radio beacon. It'd probably be military surplus (e.g. AN/PRC-90), or else an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), which was really designed for crashed aircraft. VHF at 121.5 or 243 MHz, so I think those are LOS, meant to talk to search aircraft and eventually detectable by satellites, but not something you can use to call for ground-based help.

In High-Tech, TL7 beacons are described as requiring DF equipment in rescue vehicles to find them. Would that only work for aircraft or are there models that also reach ground vehicles?

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Why, you put the coffee in your metal cup sitting on your Coleman camp stove; real men spit out the grounds or just eat them :) Failing the camp stove, a fire works fine. Probably pre-ground coffee, though the Civil War practice of issuing whole beans and just smashing them with a rifle butt would still work. Coffee wasn't a hipster foodie product yet, so the survival kit might well just have instant coffee powder (like Folgers); dissolve it in hot water, no filters, percolaters, etc.

Instant Folgers on a Coleman camp stove sounds good.

If you're trapped in your car by a blizzard, though, can you use a camp stove in there?

[acrosome]

Kerosine heaters were also pretty popular. But not for in a car, I don't think. In a house, camper, trailer, or tent, sure. In a car I think most would just run the car heater intermittently. People still kill themselves pretty regularly via CO poisoning using propane and kerosene heaters. For camping, a propane heater would probably be more likely.

PLBs are affordable nowadays, but I think you'd have to be truly wealthy to even consider getting one in the late 1980s. A CB radio might be more the ticket. They made handheld units.

Here's how to make cowboy coffee. You just let the grounds settle and pour the coffee off the top. But, yes, this was before the days of coffee snobbery and instant coffee was a big thing.

I remember seeing the early, simple Leatherman tools as a child in the 80s. They were around. Still, a lot of people had a Victorinox. They're more of a old man thing, though.

Regarding map sizes: a single standard USGS map sheet is about 56x69 cm including the marginalia, and weighs 34 grams. (I just measured one.) To see how many you need look here. If you want real verisimilitude you could download the actual maps for free, but beware, the interface is antediluvian. Elsewhere on the USGS site are historical maps. Anyone wanting reasonable detail (e.g. hunters or hikers) will use 7.5-minute quadrangle maps, which cover approximately 11.5x14.5 km, so an entire county would be one hell of a lot of map sheets. If you zoom in on that USGS site every rectangle is one 15-minute quad, so it's four 7.5-minute quads. There are also 30-minute quads commonly published, where each covers four 15-minute quads or sixteen 7.5-minute quads. There are ways to download all of them for free on that USGS website I linked.

By the way- do you ever set games in Iceland? :)

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I was looking through old photos from 1980-1985 from that area and holy ****! It was just a post-apocalyptic ruin. There were parks overrun with homeless (Tompkins Square Park), entire alleyways that were just trash heaps large enough to have wrecked cars stacked on top of each other and, of course, the ca 30 famous squatters' communes that Rent so memorably* commemorates.

Most of my female victims are believed to have been prostitutes. Would there have been any particular part of the 1980s Village that these should have frequented? I don't imagine that he'd have been dubbed 'The Werewolf of the Village' if his victims came from the Tenderloin, so was there a particular area where the Bohemian semi-professionals picked up trade?

New York was a lot grittier back in the day. It's been cleaned up quite a bit since then. Speaking of Tompkins Square Park, there was a riot there August of 1988, when police tried to crack down on the homeless and the drug dealing.

I used to take the train into Manhattan some weekends with my friends back in high school in the early 80's. We mostly hung out around Greenwich Village, but I don't have any personal knowledge about where hotspots for prostitution were. I wouldn't doubt it was there, though. I know from walking through Washington Square Park, you could get any drugs you wanted there.

In the 80's, Times Square was probably the easiest place in NYC to find streetwalkers. It looks like someone checked out Craig's List to see where illicit sex is going on in Manhattan today. They found some in Greenwich Village around Waverly Place and 6th Ave. If it's there now, it probably was even more in the 80's. Since there were gay and BDSM clubs in the Meatpacking District, there was probably prostitution going on there too.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Would you find one in Philly (where he was posted during the late 70s) or in Boston (his last duty post before Maine)?

I'm from the Northwest and California, remember? Sorry, I didn't spend time in the East during the '80's, so I can't help you there.

Originally Posted by Icelander

The pliers that come on Gerber or Leatherman multi tools make me, at least, associate them more with practical, manly, handy types than Swiss Army knives, which look kind of sissy. And I say this having owned both since the early 90s. :)

I certainly find the Leatherman tools more useful that Swiss Army knives. A real manly man would only worry about the utility and not the sissy look - form follows function. Of course, manly man poseurs might have a different take on things.

Originally Posted by Icelander

And he'd have Maglites, rather than Streamlight, Pro-Light, Brinkmann, B-Lite or Bianchi?

All I can say is that in the '80's, I used Maglites and am not really familiar with the other brands. The others might be as good, or maybe better (although its hard to see how). What I can tell you is that Maglites were damn good flashlights for what they had at the time.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Sounds good.

And don't forget a flint striker, like one of these
https://img1.fastenal.com/productimages/0865053.jpg
After all, you're going to need to get the torch lit somehow.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Heh.

Corelli has a road map of the area and a compass in the car. If an USGS survey map that includes northwest Aroostook County was easily available in Bangor, Maine, then I imagine Corelli has one of those.

USGS definitely has a detailed topographic map of everywhere in the United States (they're the United States Geological Survey, in case that's not clear. They are a government agency, their mission is to map and survey everything, and they have). So yes, Aroostook County is quite thoroughly mapped and those maps are available to the public at low cost.

These maps are really nice, and are very detailed, showing minor changes of elevation, landscape features, watercourses, some measure of vegetation (forested vs. not forested), and even old dirt roads and trails.

Originally Posted by Icelander

How much space would it take up if he had USGS survey maps of the entire area covered by his resident agency, i.e. Aroostock, Hancock, Penobscot, Pitcataquis, and Washington counties of northern Maine?

Each map is roughly the size of an unfolded newspaper page. Folded up, you could probably keep all the maps for that area in a moderate sized cardboard box - a bit bigger than a shoe box, I'd guess, but not too much bigger.

Originally Posted by Icelander

As it happens, however, Special Agent Rene Ledoux is an amateur cartographer and an honest-to-God map enthusiast. The player made a point of mentioning that immediately upon being informed that he was driving to Maine*, he stopped to find the best maps he could of the part of Maine to which he was going. So I imagine that he'll have USGS survey maps of the right area and probably some aerial photographs and survey records to boot.

Well there you go. They're set as far as maps go.

Luke

[Mr_Sandman]

As for jeans, designer jeans first became a thing in the 80's (Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and Guess). I don't think anyone who saw themselves as manly would be wearing them though. Levi's were the top brand of 'real' jeans. There were also Wrangler and Lee jeans.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Icelander

If you're trapped in your car by a blizzard, though, can you use a camp stove in there?

Technically, yes, although it might kill you. These are supposed to be used in a well ventilated area, and CO poisoning is a real thing.

If you really need to cook something in a blizzard (as opposed to just eating your store of jerky and granola bars and tins of beans and tuna), get one of the tarps from your survival kit (yeah, that should include tarps, too) and rig up a quick shelter outside (perhaps in the bed of your truck, or beside it), and do your cooking there. But really, in a blizzard? Best to wait it out.

You can have a thermos with coffee in it, though. That'll keep warm for days.

Luke

[Mr_Sandman]

According to this timeline, Men's Warehouse started in Texas and moved to the west coast first. Didn't go national until the 90s.

Today's Man was on the east coast in that time period.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Technically, yes, although it might kill you. These are supposed to be used in a well ventilated area, and CO poisoning is a real thing.

That's why I asked.

In the 1990s, I used a small, modern paraffin stove to cook inside a small cabin without major problems and I think you could make coffee on one in a truck without succumbing to CO poisoning.

But I don't know how much more flame and CO is involved in the 80s.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

If you really need to cook something in a blizzard (as opposed to just eating your store of jerky and granola bars and tins of beans and tuna), get one of the tarps from your survival kit (yeah, that should include tarps, too) and rig up a quick shelter outside (perhaps in the bed of your truck, or beside it), and do your cooking there. But really, in a blizzard? Best to wait it out.

Probably good advice.

Of course, if they're caught in a blizzard, their car might be well and truly stuck, with the roads impassable even if they dig it out, until the county finishes plowing roads where people live and gets to a back road where few people ever drive. Which might be days.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

You can have a thermos with coffee in it, though. That'll keep warm for days.

Warm, yes. Unconsumed, not necessarily. :)

I expect Corelli has at least two spare thermoses which he filled with coffee after the storm warning and the coining of his plan not to leave town, but rather drive to a cabin where they risk being caught in the weather before reaching it.