Dick Bulger got the idea the way he got most of his ideas: three Michelobs deep, shirt half-buttoned, standing in the glow of a dying police scanner while a hot plate warmed up a roast beef sandwich that had no business being called food.
He’d been listening to some especially terrible old buzzards on the air all week. The kind of guys who said things like “I’m just asking questions” right before saying something so stupid it could peel paint off a garage door. Dick sat there in his stained Revere Beach t-shirt, nodding grimly, cigarette hanging off his lip like a broken antenna, and said to nobody in particular, “These bastards need educational outreach.”
Now, Dick did not know what “educational outreach” meant exactly. But he knew two things: one, ham radio people love getting mail. Two, ham radio people love paperwork even more than they love pretending a bad signal report is a personal attack. So his magnificent brain produced a plan.
He was going to print up his own SWL reception report cards.
Not normal ones, of course. Dick had no interest in tasteful tradition. He wanted custom stock. He went down to a sketchy print shop near the rotary with a USB stick full of the worst possible source material: a low-resolution selfie of himself wearing sunglasses indoors, his beard full of what may have been onion ring crumbs, and a second image where he looked like a dockworker who had just been cursed by a sea witch.
The print shop kid asked, “So you want your face… on a post card?”
Dick slapped the counter. “Not a postcard, kid. Authority crest.”
He had them print the front side like a classic SWL card, except instead of a station logo it was a huge sepia-toned portrait of Dick pointing accusingly at the viewer like Uncle Sam after a three-day bender.
Dick mailed these things out by the dozen. Not randomly. He was selective. He kept a handwritten ledger titled IDIOTS, which was just call signs, PO boxes, and brief summaries like:
- “Racist with Heil microphone audio”
- “Thinks Mussolini had good posture”
- “Calls everyone snowflakes, owns seven decorative eagles”
- “Unbearable on 40 meters, probably smells like coins”
Every envelope got a carefully completed reception report. Dick took this part seriously. He might be a slob, but he respected procedure.
Then he’d stamp it, seal it, and add a little flourish to the back of the envelope: a tiny hand-drawn black flag and the words MONITORED BY THE PEOPLE.
The responses started coming in after about ten days.
Some recipients were furious.
One guy from Indiana sent back a letter that was so mad it had three different underlines under the phrase “YOUR SOCIALIST THREATS DO NOT INTIMIDATE ME,” which only delighted Dick because the original card had not contained any threats at all, just a note that his transmitted opinions “showed poor harmonic balance and troubling authoritarian overtones.”
Another ham mailed the card back with “RETURN TO SENDER” written on it, but not before circling Dick’s face and writing, “THIS MAN LOOKS UNWELL.” Dick framed that one.
A third guy, perhaps most devastatingly, corrected Dick’s formatting in red pen and noted that his UTC time conversion was off by six minutes. Dick stared at that card in silence for a full minute, then muttered, “Now that’s a real son of a bitch.”
But not every response was hostile.
A few people actually loved them.
One older ham from Vermont wrote, “I disagree with some of your politics, but this is the funniest QSL-style card I have ever received, and also you were correct that my modulation is overdriven.”
Another sent back his own card featuring a cartoon raccoon with a dipole and the note: “Solidarity, brother. Also, please stop using scented envelopes.”
That started a correspondence circle.
Before long Dick had accidentally founded a loose fellowship of lefty weirdos, retired union guys, cranky ex-punks, one lesbian physics professor in New Mexico, and at least two baffled Canadians, all exchanging signal reports and anti-fascist essays through the mail like some kind of proletarian radio salon.
Dick became insufferably proud of this.
He referred to himself as “a pamphleteer of the ionosphere.”
He bought a rubber stamp that said RECEIVED IN STRUGGLE.
He began signing cards:
Yours in resistance and acceptable SINAD,
Richard “Dick” Bulger
Director, Bulger Listening Bureau
Naturally, he also became a menace at the post office. He’d march in carrying bundles of these things held together with old coax and demand “the revolutionary forever stamps.” The postal clerk, who had seen enough of him to know better than to ask questions, would simply weigh the stack and say, “No liquid in these, right?”
Dick would puff out his chest. “Only truth.”
The clerk would nod the weary nod of a public servant staring into the abyss.
The funniest part was that Dick never stopped being Dick. He was still disorganized, still smelled faintly of stale beer and electrical dust, still got into arguments with his own printer, still used a butter knife to clear paper jams. Half the cards had crooked margins. A few had mysterious grease spots. One reportedly arrived in Ohio with a slice of salami stuck to it. Yet somehow that only improved the effect. Nobody could accuse the cards of being corporate. They radiated handmade fury.
And somewhere out there, in shoeboxes and desk drawers and cluttered shack tables across America, hams with terrible opinions still occasionally come across a stiff cardstock portrait of Dick Bulger glaring at them through cheap sunglasses, reminding them that on one particular evening their signal was strong, their frequency was clear, and their politics were absolute garbage.
Email us! dick@dickbulger.com (main Antifa drop box for North Shore CB radio Antifa activities)
We’re also on Discord: https://discord.gg/N2BNyMUN
