![]() ![]() Then they fired his ass, left him out on the street.Īnd their very first act was to be to shut down Now Lenny was never the strongest of men,Īnd who knows what they threatened to do?īut they wrung out of him every secret technique, Seems they found him one day after work in the labĪnd threatened to take him to court if he didn't Till the phone rang one night with a call from his wife Then he dropped out of sight for a couple of months. Leave them in the phone booth on 12th Street and Main, The entry code's secret, that much I knowįrom the trash bin, go get the printouts, They finished a field trial, did not see a glitch."īut the Captain said, "Oh, but they will!" They've run all the kinks through the mill. ![]() "No such luck!" replied Lenny, "They've got the bugs out. In the bowels of a system as complex as thisĪnd makes sure the damn thing never works?" "My God!" says Lenny, "What on Earth can we do?" They'll put ads on TV, shove it down all our throats You might as well take what's left of your privacy, You could never hang up, leave the phone off the hook,Įxcept that with old Ma Bell at the controls, How the hell could you turn the thing off? Said I, "I'd remove it to go on vacation!" The bandwidth's been squeezed and the lines megaplexedĪnd the unit's so small, it could fit in your ear ![]() He had access to codes and computer net links,Īnd he told us, "They've made a big breakthrough There were only the three of us on the exchange It was sometimes so crowded, you just couldn't think. There was Iggy from Fargo, and "Sparks" from Detroit,Īnd we'd jabber** for hours, swap jokes, or talk shop, 'Twas the permanent floating blueboxers' convention You could dial up a code any time, day or night Those who knew how could use the exchange Through a quirk in the system that Bell never planned, With a side effect that was most strange: Via satellite, cable, and microwave relayĭon't know what he looked like or where he called home,Īll I knew was his voice and his renegade soulĪnd I met him along with the rest of that crewĪ juncture of trunk lines from provinces north I remember the time that he pulled off a featįrom a pay phone in Grand Central Station, You might say that he'd found his true “calling”, Give the whistle a blast, dial the number he wanted, ![]() When he Found that the switching code locksĬould be broke with a tone from a whistle that came He learned the trade well, and soon made his name, They'd harassed him with bills for long distance calls,Īnd 'twas only after they shut off his service They'd close down a loophole, or put up a block,Īnd scrambled their data and tied up their trunk linesĪnd did all kinds of stuff* that just pissed 'em!īut 'twas more than a game for the Captain.Īn old clerical error by Ma Bell had left him "Blue-boxers", they called us, and "phone phreaks",Īpplying the knowledge we picked up in collegeĪnd make beepers and tooters to fool their computers Stop a coach and cry, "Stand and deliver!" It wasn't his style to go buckle his swash, He never went armed with a pistol or sword. Well, he robbed from the rich, the richest there was,Īnd were not for him, we'd be bent 'neath a burden To be reckoned with such greats as these. Now perhaps you might laugh at this curious name.Īnd well you may ask how it is that he came Is the man that they call.CAPTAIN CRUNCH. You sing of Doc Hoiliday and old Jesse Jamesīut alone, at the top of the list of those names The Lone Ranger and Tonto and Zorro and al In some respects, it shows remarkable prescience of things to come. But unlike my predecessors, I make no claims of veracity of the story) I wrote this shortly after the breakup of AT&T, and over a decade before the common usage of cell phones, email, chat rooms, listserves, social media, and even the Internet. I plead guilty to being a hack writer of the 21st century. (Sort of like the legends that were concocted about Jesse James and Wyatt Earp by hack writers of the 19th century. But the events of the story and the motivations of the character are figments of my warped imagination. The anecdote of how he got his "handle" is sort of true. "Captain Crunch," AKA John Draper, was a real phone hacker in the 70s. I've always included recitations like this in my performances. Recorded live in concert at Bound for Glory, Ithaca, NY on October 5, 2014. ![]()
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