Mystery Girl

One thing I have found out in the last few years is that if you can't find somone you are looking for on the internet then you can try the opposite approach. Make it so who you are looking for can find you. Write something on a web page and hope someday the search engines find it and then the person you are looking for gets curious one day :) After all, everybody googles their name at least once right?

But what happens when you don't know someone's name. Or in most cases with married women they change their name. This is one of those things. I have already written about one mystery girl named Laura Lee. But there was another that was a total mystery to dozens of people. The year was 1978. It was springtime. She came on the CB one night and had the sweetest sexiest voice we had ever heard. She went by the handle Qantas and would not give her name. There was a lot of speculation, mostly by the other girls on the radio that she was faking the voice and because she had all the guys wrapped around her little finger.

One night I convinced her to give me a call on the landline. Thats a phone in case you didn't know :) Her voice was even better on the phone. She told me her name was Arlen just like the senator. I had my suspicions it wasn't her real name. This phone call with Qantas started at like 10 at night and lasted until 5 in the morning. And to my surprise her voice did not change much when she got tired. She may have vamped it up a tiny bit on the CB Radio but after 7 hours on the phone I was convinced it was her real voice.

Now Arlen, or Qantas as we all called her remained a mystery. Based on signal strength we knew she was in the Penn Valley, Gladywyne, Narberth area. At the time almost all the regulars on channel 20 would get together and party like it was the 70's. And the talk among the guys turned to the mystery girl Qantas. Back then we used to play a game where one CBer would park his car somewhere and three people would go search for them. The target would broadcast a message every 30 seconds or so and the object was to find them as quickly as possible. We all had CB's in our cars as well as at home. The rules only stated that the target had to park on a public street. No hiding in a driveway or parking lot. The chasers would talk to each other and based on signal strength you could tell if you were getting closer or moving away from the parked target. A good CB had a little meter on it so three people coordinated in a triangle could find anybody in less than 20 minutes.

A month later after one of these parties we did something really stupid. We went looking for Qantas. A couple of us headed over the green lane bridge. One through the back way through Belmont Hills. One over Rock Hill Road. And one up Belmont Avenue, past the cemetary to the next street. We were on a different channel than Qantas was talking on. And we started west. Within 5 minutes we thought the signal was strongest in the middle. But someone had told her on the radio that we were looking for her. She got extremly upset and told us all off and then wasn't heard from for a couple weeks. And then only popped on 2 or three more times and was never heard from again.

How incredibly stupid we were. Of all the stupid things I did as a teenager that really ranks up there. We couldn't leave well enough alone. There were very few other mystery people.

Well now with the modern miracle of the internet and search engines like Yahoo and Google I may get the chance to do something that I couldn't do all those years ago. Apologize. Sorry for being a jerk. Wondering is Qantas will ever google her name and CB radio and Manayunk all in the same search. Normally the best way to set up a search like this is to mention their name a couple times. But thats hard not knowing her real name. I still doubt it was Arlen.

One final note. And possibly a side search here to find another missing friend In 1980 I was out with a friend of Patsi who was my girlfriend at the time. I can not remember this girls name but her family owned the Dog school or pound down at the bottom of Leverington St. We went to the movies and saw Airplane. And after that I went with her to deliver some dogs over to Teddy Pendergrass' house in Penn Valley. She had a CB in the car and we got to talking about Qantas and she told me she thought she new her. What a shock! She told me the voice thing sounded familiar and that she used to be on the CB. I can NOT remember what she told me her last name was. Or her first name anymore. But I do remember her telling me she had just left for college.

So why are you looking at this page? Do you know the mystery girl that called herself Qantas and said her name was Arlen back in 1978 on the CB Radio Channel 20 while talking to people from Manayunk, Roxborough, East Falls, and Belmont Hills? Do you know some woman with an incredibly smooth voice born about 1962 or so that lived in Bala Cynwyd or Penn Valley or Narberth? Were you one of those rich girls from the other side of the river that liked the Manayunk guys because we were the Bad Boys your parents warned you about? I did finally figured out the identity of another one of those girls Laura Lee. But since we had actually met it wasn't such a mystery. So Qantas if you are out there
Please email atebitz@yahoo.com me and tell me who you are and why you came here or if you are just curious.

Or if you would prefer sign the guestbook wall with a handle or nickname or alias. You can be anonymous that way. Please let me know you were here.

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