I mentioned before that my kids were very sporadic collectors. Well, occasionally something would kick in. I went through a period when they were in the sixth, seventh grade when I was trying to teach them what really good writing was, as distinguished from pretense. My example of good writing was the quotation at the beginning of one of my favorite books, John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra. It was a quotation from the play, Sheppey, by William Somerset Maugham, that begins, “Death Speaks,” and goes on to mention the servant trying to flee, when in reality he and death have an appointment in Samara.
I got to like that quote so much that I became curious about what the play itself was like, so I started looking for it, and naturally it had to be in first edition. A hard title to find, but not impossible. Well, Michael and Sarah and I were in England one summer after I had laid my Death Speaks oration on them. They were about 13 and 14 at the time. We took a drive up to Oxford. We looked at things for while, then I gave them an allotment of cash and a couple of hours free time to do what they wanted, buy what they could afford. Meet you back right here. And off they went. And off I went to check out the bookstores.
The first one I went to had a basement level. Down I went, with no clear idea of what I was looking for. And then I heard a girl’s voice from upstairs, “Do you have Sheppey by Somerset Maugham?” Damn! Why hadn’t I asked for that right away? It would be just my luck that it would turn up, and that young woman would get it. Up the stairs I went. And what did I see but my 13-year old, my Mikey, with his squeaky little voice, trying to buy the book as a surprise for daddy. Oh my good heavens!
Well, I found the book, first edition, dust jacket, nice condition, a few years later in the catalogue of Nigel Williams in London, one of my favorite dealers. Not very expensive, either. I sent a note to Michael, who was away at school, reminding him of the time he tried to get it for me in Oxford, and how extra special it now had become. Yes, they take on a life of their own, these books complete with their own stories and memories. And that’s something people who have not fallen prey to the collecting fever never will understand.
13. Authority
I guess you could say that I’m the kind of person who never hit it off with the officiating branch of sports. I never could figure out why someone would want to be in a position to control the destinies of other people. When we used to see those training films in the army, in basic, you know, Venereal Disease and You or The Evils of Going AWOL, I immediately was locked onto the side of the poor miscreant (usually played by Jack Lemmon, who got his earliest start in movies by acting in training films for the armed services). I could always feel the heavy hand on my shoulder. “We’re on to you, m’lad.”
Once I was fixed up on a blind date with a young Cuban woman who happened to be a psychiatrist. She was a rare breed in this profession. She actually offered opinions, rather than the standard, “How do YOU feel about it?” or “What do YOU think it means?” Her opinions of me were not good. Among them, after we had spent about two tedious hours in each other’s company, was, “You know you have a real problem with authority?”
Of course I knew it. Authority on both ends. I didn’t like others to boss me around and I didn’t like having to do the same, although the occasions in which I was in a position of authority were very infrequent in my life. But she took a bit of time to make sure I understood every unpleasant nuance of this pronouncement, and actually, if I remember right, and it was a long time ago, this served as a prelude to my closing out the evening. How does one close out an evening? By treating every topic of conversation in the most outlandish fashion I could think of.
She asked me about my family, and I created this fiction involving eight sisters and brothers, among which I was the youngest, and what it was like trying to survive in a situation such as this, and so forth. She looked bored.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“You’ve got only child written all over you,” she said, only slightly covering her yawn. Yep, that cruel jet of truth closed out the evening all right.
I’m getting far off the subject, as usual.
Growing up as a New York kid, occasionally dealing with the authority figures known as the police, you learn two things. Run like hell and never give your right name. My neighborhood in Washington Heights, which is upper Manhattan, bordered on Fort Tryon Park, accessible by something we called The Big Lot, which actually were woods, eventually leading to the Medieval monastery, The Cloisters. Along the way, you’d pass a terraced overlook of the Henry Hudson Parkway we called The Fort. It afforded a spectacular sight line of the uptown lane of traffic, and in winter we’d make a supply of snowballs and bomb the cars as they headed north. Never did it occur to us that this activity could well lead to all manner of accidents. Thank God it never did.
Well, one day that word must have reached the police in the area because one of their cars stopped right underneath us, on the shoulder, and one of the officers stepped out of his vehicle and we could see him talking. And it was at this point that Clipper Goodman decided to bomb him with an ice ball, which hit him on the foot, and off we went in full flight.
Being idiots, we naturally headed for the area’s main exit, and that’s exactly where the law was waiting for us. First they told us what harm we could cause, then there was the roundup, with all names being taken, followed by the promises that this incident would be reported at school, and our parents would be summoned, and all hell would break loose. We were all crying … and all giving fake names. Mine was Elliott Davidson. I remember one officer’s final words to me, as he pointed a finger at my chest.
“Elliott, you’re in trouble!”
In the army my natural aversion to authority presented its set of problems, although not as many as you’d think, once I’d gotten through basic training. The ability to make a deal, to broker the mutually advantageous tradeoff, generally could cover the initial problem. But I always did find it embarrassing when I found myself in the unusual position of actually having to exert some authority.
Not that I had any rank. I came out almost as clean as I went in, Private E-3, having been awarded a stripe on two occasions and being busted, losing it, in other words, both times. But on one occasion, late in basic, I found myself working a night KP, my assignment being to load the used food trays into a giant, wheeled, rack-holding contraption and then wheeling this monster over to the area where the washing took place. The hardest part was getting the thing moving after it had been loaded. Inertia was a formidable enemy. But I looked at the exercise as similar to driving a gigantic blocking sled, building leg muscles of steel.
Of course another problem was the heat generated by all the hot water. We worked in a perpetual cover of steam. Sweat obliterated my glasses, essentially rendering me sightless, so I was pushing that thing blind, aiming in a general direction at the start and then re-starting and re-directing it every time I hit a wall or a mess table. And that’s what I was doing, straining, heaving, getting it rolling, then bonk! Into the wall. Then getting it going again, the sweat pouring off me. All of a sudden I heard, “Hey,” which had the unmistakable sound of an officer, and sure enough, it was me he was signaling.
So I stopped and squinted in the direction of a young lieutenant who had been watching me.
“You’re a pretty good worker,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” I answered, figuring this was noncommittal enough. He explained that the mess hall was turning into a consolidated mess, taking in one whole other area, which happened to be in a rather primitive state at the time, and he would like me to “take charge of a detail” and get the place swept up and cleaned and generally prepared for the evening meal. It was a chilling announcement. Take charge of a detail? Who, me? A Private E-2?
“You’ll find your detail in there,” he said, pointing to the cavernous room next door and a pile of brooms nearby.
My detail consisted of seven short-ti
mers, guys who had served their time and were waiting to rotate out in a few days and weren’t at all happy about getting stuck on a sucker’s gig like a night KP so close to their discharge date. Seven rough looking guys. How’d they feel about a nebbish such as myself actually trying to execute a command or two in their direction? Looking back on my own outlook on life when I became a short-timer myself, I’m sure they felt nothing more than annoyance, just another pain in the ass, courtesy of Uncle.
They were sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall, the usual position when you’re waiting for your detail to begin. A few were sleeping, which happened in the army when you were off your feet for any period longer than two or three minutes. Some were smoking. I announced that the lieutenant had ordered me to get them to clean up the big room. I pointed to the brooms. A couple stared at me without changing their expression. The others who were awake didn’t bother. There was only one course open to me, as I saw it, and I took it.
I grabbed a broom, turned and faced them and announced, “Look, I’m going to try to get as much of the cleaned up as I can. Anyone who wants to help me, fine. I’d appreciate it.” And I pitched into a vigorous sweeping operation.
Maybe it was a feeling of pity for my sweat-soaked figure, and that did it, maybe just a sense of boredom, but eventually three guys hauled themselves up and found brooms and joined into a desultory sweeping activity. The others continued to sleep, or smoke, or whatever they were doing. Frankly, I didn’t care. But the last thing on my mind was actually ordering any of them to do something. Not totally impossible, but very difficult for a person such as me. How did the episode end? Our shift ended at noon, and we stacked our brooms and reported back to our outfits. I never saw the lieutenant again.
The desire to regulate the activity of others, to enforce rules, to exert authority is a powerful incentive, I’m sure. Being a military history buff, of sorts, I could understand how a normal, even aesthetic, person could get caught up in the smell of battle and command a force. Just look at the Civil War general, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Bowdoin theology professor who led the famous bayonet charge at Little Round Top and earned a Congressional Medal of Honor. I could understand the idealism and even thirst for danger that would lead a young person into becoming a police officer. My wife, Linda’s daughter, Heather, for instance, was a member of the Phoenix PD, and her husband, Steve, an FBI operative. I’ve talked to my share of cops, while on assignment, and once they felt they could trust you, they turned out to be incredible storytellers, great yarn-spinners, the best.
Actually I had two minor police work experiences. Once, in Germany, I pulled duty as a stockade guard. My job was to escort a prisoner to a dental appointment. “No talking to the prisoners,” I was told. “And they all want to stop at the PX and give you money so you can buy stuff for them, and that’s absolutely forbidden.” There was no truth to it.
In the day room of the stockade, listening to the inmates and waiting to pick up my charge, I found myself liking these guys more than I liked the ones in my own outfit. The fellow I escorted turned out to be a young redheaded kid who’d been guilty of extended AWOL, which officially became “desertion,” the No. 1 offense in the compound. Usually it involved seeing a girl. Yeah, we talked a bit on the way over, but every time he asked me something, he prefaced it with, “Guard,” which I guess they were instructed to do, but it set my teeth on edge. I still hate it when I think about it. When we approached the PX, he handed me a few coins and said, “Guard, would you get some toothpaste for me?” so I left him outside, shlepped my carbine into the store with me and bought him his toothpaste, no big deal. And that was my prison guard experience.
And then, on the troopship home, they took the dozen or so biggest guys, myself among them, and made us MPs. My assignment was the deck area outside the cabins for the officer’s dependents heading home, basically to stop the kids from running along the slippery surface. Now this was just a wonderful gig because 1) the worst facet of troopship life was boredom. There was absolutely nothing to do, which normally would have dictated five days of serious reading, except that the constant noise level was so great … screaming, shrieking, singing, shouting … that you simply couldn’t concentrate, and 2) there was no place to get by yourself. Even staking out a piece of a hatch to sit on was difficult. You were always crowded. Your bunk, which actually was a hammock, was no good because down below you were always confronted by the heat and the lingering smell of vomit. My assignment provided me with space, with freedom to read at undisturbed moments, with conversation with the kids, their moms, anyone else who came along. A terrific deal.
Sometimes, in the buttoned up world of corporate sports, my built-in loony streak has backfired. When I reported to the office of Donald Trump for a previously set-up interview concerning Trump’s team in the USFL, the Jersey Generals, I first had to face Trump’s PR man.
He told me, “Mr. Trump wants to know the tenor of your questioning.”
“I said, ‘Tell Mr. Trump it’s not a tenor, it’s a baritone.’” I waited for the laugh that never came.
He said, “Just a minute, please,” and disappeared. Two minutes later he’s back out.
“Mr. Trump says he can’t do the interview at this time.”
As far as the other form of authority, that of a referee or umpire, uh uh. Definitely not for me, and I couldn’t understand its attraction for others. There was an occasion once when both officials failed to make it to one of my son, Mike’s, Pee Wee games for the Denville (N.J.) Blue Angels. As luck would have it, the contest involved two unbeaten teams, the Angels and a very rough bunch of kids from Morristown. The coach of the Morristown Colonials, the home team, called for volunteers. Anybody ever do any officiating? One parent stepped forward. Anyone else? No. Anyone with any football background at all? No response. Were we really going to have to cancel a game of that magnitude? I raised my hand and found myself in a strange world that was familiar in form but not execution.
What was the toughest thing? Amazingly enough, it was something I never would have thought of. Spotting the ball. Making sure it was lined up absolutely correctly. After that was done, I found myself actually enjoying the experience … well, not really enjoying it, more like surviving it. Until the end of the game. Then a bad thing happened. We had taken a lead, basically on reverses by Andy Bartek, the star, the fastest kid on the team. Trick plays, dick’em football that the Morristown boys did not appreciate at all. The Colonials stormed back, on power and good solid football. They were the better team. They scored and were down by a point. They lined up to run in the conversion. Kids didn’t kick points at that level. I was to the left of the line of scrimmage, peering down the line, checking the offsides. A yellow helmet and shoulder pad came across, just barely. I blew my whistle and dropped the flag. Offsides, offense. The stands went crazy. Fans were trying to come out onto the field. The five yards pushed them back into very difficult range for running in the extra point. They tried anyway and were stopped just short. Game’s over.
Their coach was a really nice guy, a gentleman. “I want to thank you two for working the game,” he said, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t stick around here. Get your boy and get home.” Which we did.
I had fun with officials when I was a coach. How could I have been a coach, you ask, when I hated authority? Well, I was actually coaching my classmates, among others. This was in my senior year at Columbia. The Ivy League Presidents Committee nailed me on its five-year rule and declared me ineligible early in the season. The league, not the NCAA but the Ivies, had this ruling that said that a player’s career had to be wrapped up within five years, the army being the only exception allowed, and this was a year before my tour of duty began. I had started Stanford in 1949, been there for three seasons, left after the fall of ’51, dropped out, worked on a ship, did, uh, other things, finally re-enrolling, this time at Columbia with its legendary coach, Lou Little, for whom I should
have played in the first place. Ineligible as a transfer in ’53, I was counting on one solid 1954 senior season, but the five years had elapsed.
I found out from the director of athletics, Ralph Furey, who told me, with a wide smile … and that’s what I will never forget, that smiling face of his … “Hey, you’re ineligible.” I never knew about that five-year thing. I cursed myself, dumb, stupid, idiot moron. Had I known, I just would have lied about my original Stanford date, but where’s the sign that says that when you’re young you have to be smart, too?
Coach Little called me in. “You want to keep your training table, don’t you?” Yes, I most certainly did. “You’ll coach the lightweight team, the 150-pounders, with John Wagner. You coach the line, he’ll coach the backs.”
Coach? Coach? Wow! Well, we went 2-3 that year. Most successful season in the history of the Columbia lightweights. You could look it up. I enjoyed putting in the line drills. Most of all I enjoyed tackling practice when I would volunteer as the ball carrier, and they’d have to tackle me. I felt like Bronko Nagurski, running through those 150-pounders. I might not have been a great coach, but I was a terrific recruiter. My most fertile territory was drinking buddies who had been bounced out of Columbia a year or two before and were just kind of hanging around. One guy, Carson Scheidemann, had been out of Columbia at least two, maybe three years. He was working in a warehouse.
Top allowable weight was 155, which presented no problem because we were on the honor system. It was our duty to weigh our own lightweights. What we had were the type of guys who once were known, if you went back to old boxing circles, as “Philadelphia Lightweights,” in other words, overweights. We had guys 170 and 180 pounds. I’ll bet Carson was pushing 190.
I remember, when we played Rutgers in our final game, we were lining up for the kickoff, and all of a sudden, the assistant director of athletics, Les Thompson, appeared alongside me. A nasty, skinny redhead with a pervasive squint, he was squinting at our kick team, especially at L2, a wedge-busting position, manned by Carson Scheidemann.
Dr. Z Page 33
