column:
Hello, world, for the first time, subjectively,
I thought it was low-key, yet obviously written by a man who had stored up a lot of things he wanted to say.
I don’t remember the first line of the first professional column I ever wrote—which would appear years later on the sports page of the Daily News in Athens, Georgia, but I know it wasn’t what I had practiced on my Uncle Frank’s typewriter during high school. Still, I did get around to using the line—right here—which is why my advice to young people who want to be writers is:
1. First learn to type
2. Practice writing
3. Never turn your back on your cousin in a horse stable.
BEFORE MY NEWSPAPER CAREER actually began (like all other careers, a writing career actually begins when you begin getting paid), I spent one morning as a salesman and three months working at a bank. These vocations didn’t last longer because I couldn’t sell anything and because the only way I could have found working at a bank interesting would have been if they allowed me to handle some of the money. Unfortunately, I never saw even one roll of pennies.
How all this came about is how a lot of things come about. I was in love. King Edward renounced his throne because he was in love. I suppose that was Steve Garvey’s excuse, too. So why not me?
I was in love with Paula. I fell for her madly in the eighth grade, dated her exclusively throughout high school, and would eventually marry her.
Love in the sixties was quite different from love in the nineties.
We didn’t have such things in the sixties as recreational pregnancies or Kim Basinger and Prince. All we did was drive around the Dairy Queen or go to the drive-in and grind our lips together while Rock Hudson was wooing Doris Day. We know all about Rock now, but did you hear the rumor about Doris Day once making it with Wilt Chamberlain?
My friend Ronnie Jenkins said he read about it in one of those newspapers they sell at the grocery checkout counter. Ronnie was in the grocery store buying wienies. We still had wienie roasts in those days. (There’s a Rock Hudson line in there somewhere, but tempt me not, evil Muse.)
Paula. She was lovely, tall, and blond, and she wanted to be a model. She decided college would be a complete waste of her time, so upon graduation she took a job in Atlanta at a bank and enrolled in one of those modeling schools where they teach you to walk that way.
I had been accepted at the University of Georgia, where I would study journalism, beginning in the fall. What to do with the three summer months after my high school graduation, that was the key question.
After giving it about eleven seconds of thought, I decided to go to Atlanta myself and seek summer employment, thus allowing me to be near my beloved Paula, who, for the first time in her life, would not be near her mother. This had possibilities I had heretofore never dreamed of. Remember, this was 1964. I still had the unused condom I had bought at Steve Smith’s truck stop in 1959.
My friend Ronnie Jenkins also had found work in an Atlanta bank. The idea was for me to find a job, for Ronnie and me to get an apartment near the apartment Paula and her friend had taken, and for the rest to be the great summer of ’64, especially if we could find somebody of age to buy beer for us.
Ronnie found a one-bedroom apartment in a duplex on Atlanta’s Sixth Street, which was just showing the signs of becoming a slum. Paula’s place was not far away, perhaps the distance a mugger could make in ten minutes if he was the subject of hot pursuit.
I began an ardent search for the job. My first stop, obviously, was at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. After college, it was my intention to go to work for one of the papers.
I realized I wasn’t going to be hired to cover baseball for the summer, but I reasoned that when I told whoever I’d have to talk to of my future intentions, that person would realize it might be wise to go ahead and hire me for the summer so a lot of orientation wouldn’t be necessary when I returned four years later with my journalism degree and the knowledge that would include, such as knowing who invented movable type, Johannes Gutenberg.
The paper was located at 10 Forsyth Street, next door to Union Station, which served the L & N Railroad. A few passenger trains still stopped and departed there, the most notable, the Georgian, ran from Atlanta to St. Louis. We are talking the fourth quarter of preAmtrak passenger trains, and Union Station had that forgotten-but-not-gone look to it.
I asked the security guard at the paper to direct me to the personnel department. I caught an elevator to the third floor. There was a lady at a desk.
I said, “Hello. My name is Lewis Grizzard, and I’ll be majoring in journalism at Georgia this fall. I’d like to see about a summer job here, since I’m going to be pursuing a newspaper career upon my graduation.”
The woman at the desk looked at me as if perhaps I had a booger peering out of one of my nostrils. Finally, she spoke. “We don’t have any summer jobs,” she said.
And that’s all she said. I wished she had said more, because I was already nervous enough, and now, with one small statement, uttered in somewhat of a you’ve-got-to-be-nuts tone of voice, I really had no place to go with the conversation.
“So,” I finally stammered, “let me see if I have this straight. You don’t have any summer jobs. Am I correct?”
“That’s what I said,” said the woman.
I looked down at the floor, which is a great place to look when you’re dead, you know you’re dead, and all you want at that point is to think of a way to exit gracefully.
I must admit I was rather shocked at the coldness the woman had shown me. You spend your entire childhood dreaming of a newspaper career, and then you can’t get past a personnel secretary when you apply for your first job.
I recall vividly what I said to the woman as I left. I said, “Well, thank you for your time,” which wasn’t exactly a graceful way to leave. As a matter of fact, it was a rather puny way to leave.
Later, I wished I had said, “Okay, you win round one, but I’ll be back in four years and we’ll see who wins round two.”
Why is it you never think of clever things like that to say until it’s too late? I don’t have an answer, but the question reminds me of a story that has nothing to do with me or the newspaper business, but does have to do with wishing.
Two guys from Detroit are driving through rural South Carolina at the precise speed limit in a new Cadillac. A deputy sheriff, parked in the bushes, spots the car, sees the Michigan license plate on the Cadillac, and figures, “They got to be doing something wrong.”
He pulls the car over, and walks over to the driver’s side.
The window is still up, so the deputy sheriff takes out his nightstick and taps three times on the glass. The driver, quite smugly, pushes the power window button.
Zuuuuuu. The window comes down.
The sheriff immediately begins to beat the driver upon his head and shoulders with his nightstick.
