# Question about Adam-12 and Emergency **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 19, 2013, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755 "2013-02-19T01:06:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/101 "2013-02-22T16:24:41Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > With the mustache, Donnelly did have a sort of Rob Reiner-esque hippy quality to him. The spouse and I still sometimes make jokes about “Chet’s mustache.” It’s just so…huge and bushy and in-your-face, it _invites_ jokes! ---
**Author:** ![Jormungandr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@Jormungandr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jormungandr)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/102 "2013-02-22T18:15:43Z")
I haven’t seen Adam-12 in years, caught an episode a few weeks on TV Land and have a question. In the episode, in which a man is harassing his neighbors whenever they got a call from dispatch, they wrote down in a log. Just above the log was a paper with several columns of numbers. What were they supposed to be, assuming LAPD did used them? ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/103 "2013-02-22T18:21:48Z")
> [@Jormungandr](#): > > I haven’t seen Adam-12 in years, caught an episode a few weeks on TV Land and have a question. In the episode, in which a man is harassing his neighbors whenever they got a call from dispatch, they wrote down in a log. Just above the log was a paper with several columns of numbers. What were they supposed to be, assuming LAPD did used them? Are you talking about the officers getting a call in the car? If so, then I think I remember those columns of numbers. Could they have been license plate numbers that they were supposed to be looking out for? I’m pretty sure they check the list when they are following/pulling over/chasing a car, to see if it’s stolen/has outstanding warrants/etc. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/104 "2013-02-22T19:27:26Z")
Yeah, that’s the hot sheet, a list of license plate numbers for stolen cars and such. Primitive database technology. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2013, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/105 "2013-02-22T19:33:20Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Same here. We always bought the school lunch so I had no need for lunchboxes but I had the board game. Speaking of games, I don’t recall how it worked but a few of us guys would get together for pretend “Emergecy!” during recess. The game had nothing at all to do with the show. Just wooden vehicles and dice, and you had to try to get around the board first. The only thing related to the show was the picture on the box lid. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/106 "2013-02-23T00:04:19Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > The game had nothing at all to do with the show. Just wooden vehicles and dice, and you had to try to get around the board first. The only thing related to the show was the picture on the box lid. I meant we ran around pretending we were members of Squad 51. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/107 "2013-02-23T19:00:50Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > I meant we ran around pretending we were members of Squad 51. 🙂 We did that, too, when we weren’t busy being Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/108 "2013-02-24T01:17:26Z")
As a professional cameraman, I’ve stood five to ten feet away from all sorts of famous and infamous. I used to work a lot on an ABC soap opera called " the city " ( yes, in lower case… ) The first day I worked, I KNEW- knew- I’d be shooting Randy Mantooth. He was a star of that soap. Gotta admit, I had a serious case of the willies. I needed to NOT geek on him and talk about “Emergency”. Come first day, two unusual things happened. We had a raging blizzard in NY. I also came down with the flu the day before. Had sweats on and off and at about 3:30 am, got up for good, showered and got into the Quest. And took… 2 1/2 hours?.. for what shoulda been a 70 minute drive. I sat there, very quietly, sweating and feeling deeply sick, doing my Steadicam shots. late morning, a stagehand saved me by offering me my first taste of TheraFlu. It got me through that day and has been a staple in the equipment cases ever since. Randy was a regular guy with cast and crew alike. Completely professional, fun, easygoing with a great sense of humor. I never mentioned “Emergency” in the year I worked the show. But I WANTED TO !! 😃 ETA: It is fair to say that I was first interested in medicine and especially field EMS work watching that show. Amused me to no end to think that “Emergency” inspired me in part to become an E.M.T. ---
**Author:** ![Saltire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saltire/32/553_2.png) [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/109 "2013-02-27T00:03:12Z")
One of the interesting things about watching these shows nowadays is to observe how many things are just the same, and how many things are very different from the early '70s. Example: Rescue 51 was on its way back from a call when they got flagged down by some women in a shopping center parking lot. They were concerned about a baby in a locked car sitting in the sun. Gage and Desoto pull out a slim jim and break into the car. The baby is fine, and everyone is releived. Then the baby’s mother shows up. She was in the salon, getting her hair done. She yells at the firefighters for breaking into her car, and tells them to get their hands off her baby. Desoto apologizes to the woman, hands her the baby, and he and Gage beat a rapid retreat from the scene! ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/110 "2013-02-27T03:55:27Z")
[QUOTE=Hail Ants] Something I never understood all the years I watched it: That station was two-bays wide **and** it clearly had front & back garage-type doors (i.e. it was ‘drive-thru’). So why the hell did they \*always \*show the paramedics _backing back in?!_ [/QUOTE] Oddly enough they do that at the fire station next to my house. The ladder trucks pull through, but the EMS trucks back in. When the ladder truck is out on a call, its bay is completely empty. The EMS truck shares its bay with other equipment, so they can’t just pull through. I kinda feel sorry for them at another station near here - they have three single ended bays, so the ladder truck has to back in. They’ve got a huge swath of driveway so the truck can get off the road and not block traffic while maneuvering, but still, backing that thing has to be hair-raising the first several times you do it. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755/111 "2013-02-27T16:26:21Z")
Meh. You get used to the size of an ambulance. When I was a driver I backed in all the time. I never hit the building and I never hit a person. When I started I took driver training and practiced out of the parking lot with cones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-adam-12-and-emergency/650755.md?page=5)