I cried when I got back into my car. I cried and I hollered out loud, and this is what they must have felt like in Times Square when the Japs surrendered.
I said a prayer, too. I thanked God for what had just happened and promised to cut down on my coveting and promised never to make a graven image.
I felt touched by some force that handed out winning lottery tickets.
I always drove down Piedmont Avenue on my way back to the apartment from work. Each afternoon, at the corner of Piedmont and Ponce de Leon, a retarded black man stood selling the street edition of the afternoon Journal, the one that included Furman Bisher’s column and West Coast baseball scores.
Most afternoons, I would stop and buy a paper from this man. Newspapers cost a dime back then. This day, I felt I needed to come up with a quick good deed to show my appreciation for what had just happened to me. I thought of the man with the newspapers.
I drove over to the corner of Piedmont and Ponce de Leon. There stood the man, as usual, with an armload of papers. I stopped, got out of my car, and said to the man, “I want to buy all of your newspapers.”
He didn’t understand me. He handed me one paper and held out his hand for a dime.
I said it again. “I want to buy all your papers.”
“All?” he asked back.
“All,” I said.
I bought ’em all. I’m not certain how many there were. I’ll guess thirty. That came to three dollars. I threw in another dollar for a tip. The man looked as if he were going to cry.
I drove back to the apartment and told Ronnie what had happened to me. Then I called Paula, and she came over. We drank a lot of beer that night.
What Ed Thelinius did for me was give me my Start. You’ve got to have a Start. Later in life, people would ask me, “How did you get your Start?”
I would answer, “Well, when I was a small boy ...” and if they were still listening an hour later, I would tell them about Ed Thelinius.
One of life’s great dilemmas is, you can’t get a job if you have no experience, and you can’t get experience without a job. God creates things like that, I think, to build our character and teach us frustration. He also uses such things as busy signals that last for hours, long lines at airport check-in counters, golf’s horrid shank, wet newspapers on your lawn in the morning, bicycles that you have to put together on Christmas Eve, holding penalties, Congress, lukewarm morning coffee from room service, dead car batteries, and staples in loan-payment cards.
I worked for two years on Ed Thelinius’s Georgia broadcasting crew. I was there the first time the Bulldogs’ soon-to-be-very-successful head coach Vince Dooley stood on a Georgia sideline.
Tuscaloosa, 1964. Alabama’s Joe Namath passed Georgia silly. But the very next season, Georgia would upset Alabama, which went on to another national championship, 18–17 in Athens.
When Georgia scored its winning touchdown, our broadcast booth went a little crazy. John Withers, who spotted Georgia, stood up, turned red in the face, and waved his arms around. I banged on the table and nearly fell out of my chair. Thelinius said, “Touchdown, Georgia,” clearly and without emotion. Then he looked at Withers and me and frowned. No cheering in the press box. That’s in the Bible someplace.
What Ed Thelinius also did for me was give me access to that hallowed place, the press box. To get into a press box, where they served free lunch, somebody had to give you a press pass. Holding a press pass is terrific for your ego. It means you’re not trash anymore. You are an official person with a purpose. It might be as small a purpose as handing out the free lunches, but at least you are there.
Press passes at sporting events usually are little pieces of cardboard with a string attached to them. It usually says on a press pass Display At All Times.
There are several ways to display a press pass at all times. One, which I favored, is to tie your press pass to one of your belt loops. Another method is to tie the string around one of the buttons of your shirt. I even saw a man put the string of his press pass around his neck. This man had a very small neck.
Like most everything else, however, there are some built-in press-box negatives. The first is losing your press pass, which is worse than fumbling on your own two-yard line. It is worse than losing your rental-car contract, your plane ticket, your dog, or your pen.
So you fumble on your own two. You can still get a big bonus when you sign with the pros. And so you lose your rental-car contract. Somebody’s got a copy of it somewhere. You can buy another plane ticket, your dog will usually find his way home, and there’s always somebody who has an extra pen you can borrow.
What makes losing your press pass so bad is, in order to get another one, you have to deal with press-box security guards, all of whom begin each day hoping for the opportunity to shoot somebody. Not many people know this, but each press-box security guard is put through rigorous training, conducted by former members of the Nazi SS. There are several rules press-box security guards learn. Among them are:
* Never be pleasant. If Hitler hadn’t been such a nice guy, he might not have lost the war.
* Be suspicious at all times. No matter what anybody says happened to his press pass, under no circumstances allow him into the press box to obtain another one.
* This goes for everybody, seventeen-year-old spotters to Howard Cosell.
* If you’re in this business long enough, you may one day have the opportunity to shoot somebody.
I can give you a personal example of what happens when you lose your press pass and have to deal with a press-box security guard.
It was maybe twelve years ago. I was in Jacksonville, Florida, for the annual Georgia-Florida football game in the Gator Bowl. The traffic, as usual, was awful, and I reached the elevator that goes to the press box a minute or two after kickoff.
A female security guard in a green outfit, and packing a large black pistol, stood between me and the press-box elevator. I looked into my briefcase for my press-box pass. It was gone. Breaking into a geyser of sweat, I dumped everything out of my briefcase on the ground. Still no press pass. The game is now five minutes old.
Here is my dilemma: I absolutely must get to the press box. That is because it’s my job. However, I am a veteran dealing with press-box security guards, so I know somebody—probably me—must die if I am to get to my working station.
I decided to attempt to deal with the female security guard from a position of logic.
I said, “I’m Lewis Grizzard of the Atlanta Constitution, and I seem to have misplaced my press pass. You must see, however, that here I stand with a briefcase and a typewriter and am not just some nut trying to get into the press box. If you would like, I can show you my press card, my driver’s license, and give you my mother’s home telephone number to prove I am who I say I am.
“What I propose is that you allow me to go upstairs and obtain another press pass. I will then come back down the elevator—even though the first quarter will be over by then—and allow you to punch my press pass so you will know you haven’t committed a breach of Gator Bowl security.”
First she unbuckled the top of her holster. She rested her right hand lightly on the butt of her gun. Then she said, “I don’t care who you are. You ain’t getting on that elevator without no pass.”
I tried to keep a clear head, and assessed my options.
One was, I could just get back into my car, go back to the hotel, and watch the game on television. When it was over, I could write a story based on what I had seen on TV and make up some quotes for various coaches and players. Various coaches and players at college football games never say anything interesting anyway, and anybody could make up, “Well, we just got took to the woodshed today.”
That, of course, was the easiest and safest way out of my