working split (for the hams here)

All Greek to me

After my Elmer got sick things fell apart and I lost interest in the entire ham radio scene

Would like to figure it out but doing it alone just frustrates me

I can certainly understand that.
Lots of stations trying to contact a station at the same time is called a pileup. In this case, j38r was working from a sought after location.  To make it easier for everyone, he would transmit on one frequency and listen on another, usually 5 to 15 kilohertz away. He would transmit "j38r, up 5".  That would let you know where to transmit in order for you to be heard while keeping his transmit frequency more open. There are settings on modern transceivers that only go to your transmit frequency when you key the microphone, then switch back to the other frequency when you quit transmitting. Before my time you had two rigs, one only received and the other was a transmitter.