There was one other consideration, of course. The gun.
If she had had the opportunity to shoot somebody before, perhaps she wouldn’t be so quick to shoot me. But what if she was new to the job? What if she’d been through all that rigorous training and still hadn’t had one single opportunity to shoot at a living person? What if her trigger finger had developed a powerful itch? What if she had arisen that morning and said to herself, “I’m going to be guarding the Gator Bowl press box today, and the first sumbitch that crosses me is going to get a lead sandwich”?
What I decided was I absolutely had to get inside the press box. Danger is my dateline. So here’s what I said to the security guard:
“Ma’am, after thinking all this over, I need to ask you a question that is very important to both of us. I have looked you over, and I do not believe you could physically keep me out of the elevator if I stormed it the next time it comes down. There is, however, the matter of your weapon, or perhaps you refer to it as your ‘heater’ [trying to get familiar here]. I must know whether or not, if I did decide to force my way onto the elevator, you would shoot me.”
She thought for a moment and then answered, “Well I wouldn’t try to kill you, but I’d wang you real bad.” (“wang,” as in “wing,” as in, “Shucks, Roy. All he did was wang me.”)
I must admit the fact the security guard had said she wouldn’t shoot to kill did convince me to stampede the elevator—but only for a second. Then I thought about all the places a person could be wanged, so I tossed out any ideas about storming past.
I finally did get in, however, about four minutes into the second quarter. I was standing by the elevator, and a photographer friend walked out on his way back to Atlanta with first-half photos.
He went back up the elevator, told officials of my problem, and brought me back a press pass.
As I walked past the security guard toward the elevator, my press pass tied to one of my belt loops, I think I caught a glimpse of a twitch in her trigger finger. “Have a nice day, Marshal Earp,” I said a second before the elevator door closed and I was out of range.
There is yet another disaster that can arise in regard to a press pass. It begins when you call the sports information office at, say, the University of Tennessee, and ask for a press pass for Saturday’s game against Auburn. Often, one makes such a request too late in the week for the press pass to be mailed.
This is when you hear the words, “You can pick up your press pass at the press gate.”
That sounds simple enough, but it’s not. I have no statistics to back this up, but I would be willing to wager a large sum of money that at least 50 percent of the time somebody goes to a press gate to pick up his or her press pass, it’s going to be a large hassle.
People who sit in the booths at press dates are a lot like security guards, except they don’t wear guns. I believe they usually are packing a knife or hand grenade, however.
Here’s a typical conversation between somebody—say, me—trying to pick up his press pass at the press gate thirty minutes before kickoff.
“Hello. Do you have a pass for Lewis Grizzard of the Atlanta Journal?”
“What was ’at name?”
“Grizzard.”
“Spell it.”
“G-r-i-z-z-a-r-d.”
“And where did you say you’re from?”
“Atlanta. I am from the Atlanta Journal.“
This is followed by a long silence while the press-gate person goes through about a thousand envelopes, looking for one with your name on it.
I have often thought that press-gate persons know fully well where your press-box pass is, but they pretend they can’t find it because they enjoy doing such things as putting live cats in Laundromat dryers.
“Ain’t got no pass for nobody named ‘Grizzono.’ “
“It’s not ‘Grizzono.’ It’s ‘Grizzard.’ “
“Don’t have ’at, either.”
“I’m sure it’s there somewhere. The sports-information office told me Thursday there would be a pass left here in my name.”
“Ain’t here.”
“Well, could you phone up to the press box and ask for somebody in the sports-information department? They could tell you it’s okay to let me in.”
“Ain’t got no phone.”
It is at this point you wish you had gone to law school or opened a liquor store.
Despair. Anger. Frustration. Then, “What did you say your name was again?”
“Grizzard.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Here’s your pass.”
Press-gate people not only put cats in Laundromat dryers, they also probably have sex with pigs and made motorboat sounds in their soup as children.
One final interesting note about press passes. Until the more enlightened times came, you could always find the following statement written on a press-box pass: No women allowed in the press box.
I didn’t think much about that the first time I saw it written on a press-box pass. It made sense to me, I suppose. You get a bunch of women in the press box and how are you going to get any work done with them saying, “I’m cold. When is this going to be over?”
Later, of course, women certainly would gain access to press boxes, even to locker rooms. Thinking turnabout is fair play, I once tried to get into the women’s locker room at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, at the U.S. Open, to see if I could get a glimpse of Chris Evert naked. The security guard threatened to shoot me if I took another step.
My Start. I traveled with Thelinius and his crew to famed football arenas around the country, even to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Georgia upset the Wolverines in 1965. Withers went crazy. I turned over coffee on my spotter board. Thelinius said, “... And Georgia wins.”
I actually met Furman Bisher one night at Dudley Field on the campus of Vanderbilt in Nashville. He was nice to me and said, “Come see me when you graduate.”
I could tell he was thinking, What a bright, promising young man. I wish he had come to see me last summer, I had an opening for somebody to take notes and keep me in typing paper and fresh ribbons.
I also met Wade Saye, sports editor of the Athens Banner-Herald, in Georgia’s Sanford Stadium before the 1964 game against Clemson. Wade Saye would give me my first paying newspaper job.
Many interesting and bizarre things would happen to me in the coming years, like the time I got blitzed with Bear Bryant in the Eastern Airlines Ionosphere Room at the Atlanta Airport. I was also ringside when Muhammad Ali returned to boxing after losing his license because he didn’t want to go to Vietnam. His comeback began at the old Atlanta City Auditorium, and Ali went three rounds with Jerry Quarry. Five feet above me, in the second round, Ali landed a jab, and Quarry’s blood splattered down on my typewriter.
But it all goes back to Thelinius. I never did get around to asking why on earth he spoke with me for fifteen minutes and invited me on his crew. I don’t guess I ever got around to thanking him, either. Not in person at least. I did write a column about him when he died.
When the National Football League expanded into Atlanta in 1966, Ed left Georgia and went to work with CBS, doing Falcon telecasts. A couple of years later, however, CBS decided to cut back on its announcing staff, and the Turk, in the parlance of pro football, came to visit Thelinius and gave him his walking papers.
He also lost