We would then add each stack of checks on an adding machine. We would do the same with the cards. In a perfect world, the total of the checks would be the exact total of the cards.
But this is an imperfect world, and that is what made working in the loan-payment department of the First National Bank of Atlanta a frustrating experience.
Dingbat customers, whom I came to hate, would have a payment of, say, $19.99 per month. And they would say to themselves, “I’ll make it easy for Lewis and Harvey down at the bank and make my check out for an even twenty.”
So I would add the stack of checks, and it would be one cent more than the total of the corresponding cards, and it would take me hours to go back through the stack and find the check and card that didn’t match.
After finally getting a balance of checks and cards, I then had to carry all the cards to a machine on another floor. The machine, which was the first computer I ever saw (and not much of one, I suppose, compared to those of today) would add the total of the cards again, serving as a backup for the total Harvey and I had got earlier on the adding machine.
Why we didn’t put the cards in the computer in the first place is something I never found out. I asked Mr. Killingsworth, a sour little man, about it one day, and he explained, “I don’t know.”
Anyway, now we come to do not fold, staple, or mutilate your loan-payment card. If a card had a staple in it, the card with the staple would upset the computer, which would begin eating all the cards. If the card was folded or otherwise mutilated, it would also upset the computer, which would begin eating all the cards. What I would be left with was a lot of loan-payment cards torn to shreds, which meant I had to go back upstairs and punch out new cards, which was a helluva lot of trouble.
I had a couple of other jobs before this one. I sacked groceries for one dollar an hour. I worked with one of those companies that put up shell homes—“a dollar and a deed is all you need.” I scraped paint off windows and helped two guys named Marcus and Willie dig up stumps in the yards. I got five dollars a day for that.
None of those jobs was very much fun, but I never came to hate them the way I came to hate my job at the First National Bank, dealing with dingbats and chewed-up loan-payment cards.
On top of everything I’ve mentioned so far, there was the matter of the organization chart, which was on the wall in the loan-payment department for everybody to see.
Mr. Killingsworth was on top of the chart. Next came his assistants, and so on. On the very bottom of the chart was my name alongside Harvey’s. It’s one thing to know you are scum and dirt and whale dung, but it is quite another to have to look at it and have others see it on a big chart—every single day.
What retained my sanity for me, of course, was the fact that come September, I was gone. I would tell Mr. Killingsworth what he could do with his checks and stapled payment cards and I would be out of there, leaving the others to torment and doom.
What else helped was that life outside the office was wonderful. Ronnie and I hadn’t been mugged in the neighborhood, Paula and I had graduated into another level of romance. And we had found a place to buy beer where they didn’t check your ID.
And I would soon be the recipient of an incredible break. From the bad start at the newspaper, from my three hours as a walking encyclopedia salesman, from dingbats who would round off their checks and staple them to their loan-payment cards. I would meet a man, and he would put in motion how I got from the summer of ’64 to the spring of ’77, where this adventure is ultimately headed.
“Balls,” cried the queen. “If I had ’em I’d be king.”
—An old expression regarding courage.
I HADN’T HAD the guts to try to see Furman Bisher again that summer. After the episode of viewing his office—the Throne Room—I decided it would not be wise to show up there with no education and no experience. He’d probably just say, “Come back to see me in four years” or, worse, “Get out of my office, kid.”
But I was sitting in the apartment one night watching the television Ronnie’s parents had given him for graduation. It had a screen the size of a pocket watch. If you strained your eyes, you occasionally could make out a human form.
The CBS affiliate six o’clock news came on. More on the civil-rights movement and Goldwater.
Following the news and the weather came sports, and the familiar face and voice of Ed Thelinius, the station sports director, who also broadcast the radio play-by-play of University of Georgia football games.
I didn’t really want a career in sports broadcasting, but it occurred to me as I watched Ed Thelinius that maybe I could sit down with him and tell him of my plans and he could give me some help. I was hoping his help would be: “Next time I run into Furman Bisher, I’ll mention your name,” or “Want to do my show tonight?”
With trembling hands, during my morning break the next day at the bank, I cold-called Ed Thelinius at his television station. It took some guts.
Ed Thelinius, or at least his voice, had become legendary in Georgia. He never got rattled like some football announcers and made the mistake of screaming into the microphone such phrases as “We score!” or “Would you look at that son of a bitch run!” which some announcer said once if I am to believe a radio blooper record I heard.
Thelinius was extremely low-key. He would have handled the explosion of the Hindenberg like this:
“Here comes the Hindenberg. There goes the Hindenberg.”
Thelinius did have his pet sayings, of course. Most sportscasters do. Red Barber said, when Bobby Thompson hit the home run to beat the Dodgers in the pennant play-offs in 1951, “Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule.”
I suppose I should explain that statement. Red Barber came from the South, and southerners are taken to referring to animals to explain the current state of our emotions. “I’ll be a suck-egg mule” was Red Barber’s southern way of saying, “Blow me down and call me Shorty,” or “I’m not believing this, sports fans.”
Southerners, attempting to explain great joy, might say, “I’m happy as a pig in slop.” They might express their exhaustion by saying, “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”
Come to think of it, southerners use animals to explain just about anything, such as the answer to “Where’s John Earl?” The answer there is, “He went to the woods to take a crap, and the bears ate him.”
I suppose I should also explain the term “suck-egg mule.” Certain animals are taken to performing the dastardly act of getting into the henhouse and partaking of the eggs. Dogs are particularly bad to do such a thing, thus the phrases “You dirty ol’ egg-sucking dog” and “Lassie sucked eggs,” which I saw written on a rest-room wall once in Tupelo, Mississippi.
I really didn’t know mules would also suck eggs, but if Red Barber referred to himself as he did in 1951, I figure he had personal knowledge of such a quirk in the personality of this particular animal. I have never witnessed a chicken play the piano, but a friend said he did at a county fair. You simply must take somebody’s word on occasion.
Ed Thelinius. When Georgia went into its huddle in those days, five players would line up abreast, and then five more would move into the same formation behind them. The quarterback would then face his teammates and call the play.
Whenever Georgia huddled, Thelinius would say to his audience, “Tarkenton talks to his two rows of five.”
What he was most noted for, however, was what he said before each opening kickoff. Very few college football games were