With Christmas almost upon us, just a stroll down memory lane of tales of being in St. Louis area in the late 80s, early and mid 90s when Christmas hit.

Picture it, St. Louis, early 1990s...

This was a big WWIV area, and we had both WWIVnet boards and WWIVlink boards - and a huge "war" at times of which was going to be dominate! In addition, we had a good deal of other systems - including quite a few Wildcat and PCBBS. St. Louis was quite the BBS scene at the time, with hundreds of boards across the area.

Every Christmas we knew to get ready for the new "rush" of folks who would get their first modem and hit the boards. Usually activity across the boards and networks started to die down a few days before Christmas. People were leaving town, visiting family, etc. and back in those days you didn't just pack up your gear and take it with you! For most of us, we truly disconnected.

Usually by Christmas Eve the boards would be pretty dead. It was easy to get on even the most busy of systems. For anyone who didn't celebrate Christmas, or wanted to escape from family, it was perfect! Clear lines as far as Ma Bell could see!

Then on Christmas day you could feel the wave hitting... usually by around 10/11AM the presents were being unwrapped, and the modems were being installed. The new users were upon us! Usually there would be a wave that hit would run into the late afternoon, before dying off a bit (probably for Christmas dinner) and then it would slam full force. You could go days with nothing but busy signals. Usually the period between Christmas and New Years was just non-stop busy signals across all the boards. The latest generation of users had descended upon us.

As always, THE UPPERCASE MESSAGES WOULD SHOW UP, followed by the 3lit3 h@ck3r d00dz, and the usual onslaught of people posting in the wrong forums. Back in the grand era of BBSing, we were a lot more of a tight knit community - so a lot of lessons were learned fast. Tolerance was high, but nonsense was never put up with.

Things would continue to be a jumble until about the 2nd week of January when things would settle into the new normal for the year. More boards would come online, more users, more files and forums. It was fun to watch everything grow back then!

That was the ritual for quite a few Christmas seasons. I remember being a part of all that (and being a newbie myself back in 1988) and seeing all the waves of new users from '88 until about '96, almost 10 years. By then the internet was taking over and the next wave was one none of us wanted to see - the wave of people leaving :-(

-dmxrob (Mr. Microchip)
   
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (11:1/101.0)