If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground

by Lewis Grizzard

  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.

  “What are you doing?” screams the driver. “I wasn’t speeding.”

  The deputy, having administered what he considered an appropriate amount of blows, replies:

  “Let me tell you something. The next time you are driving through South Carolina and a law-enforcement officer pulls you over, you have your window down and your driver’s license in your hand ready to be inspected. Do you understand?”

  “I certainly do, Officer, sir,” said the driver, as his head continued to swell.

  The deputy then walked around to the passenger’s side. The window there was still closed.

  Tap, tap, tap, went the deputy’s nightstick, on the window.

  Zuuuuu went the window as it came down.

  As soon as there was a big enough opening, the deputy began to beat the passenger with his nightstick.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” asked the passenger, knots beginning to appear on him as well.

  “I’m just making your wish come true,” said the deputy.

  “What wish?”

  “Let me tell you something,” said the deputy, “I know and you know that when y’all get about three miles down the road, you’re going to turn to your friend then and say, ‘I wish that son-of-a-bitch had hit me with that stick!”

  As I stepped back on the elevator and pushed the button to take me back to the streets—defeated in my first attempt to begin my real newspaper career—it occurred to me that what I should do is find out where the Journal sports department was located, go there, find Furman Bisher Himself, and share my career intentions with him. On the way down in the elevator, I played Fantasy Interview:

  “Mr. Bisher?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Bisher, sir, my name is Lewis Grizzard. I’m going to attend the University of Georgia in the fall, and I intend to major in journalism, learn everything there is to know about it, and then return here after graduation to work for you.

  “I admit that at the present time I have no earthly idea who invented movable type, but you can bet your butt I’ll know in four years.

  “But what I was wondering, sir, is that since I am obviously a bright and promising young man, is there any way you could give me a summer job?”

  “You’ve been to see personnel?” Mr. Bisher would reply.

  “Yes, sir, but I couldn’t get past the secretary.”

  “I know her, the old bat. She wouldn’t know a bright and promising young man from a Shetland pony. My boy, you have come to the right place. I happen to need—just for the summer—somebody to travel all over the world with me to take notes, make certain I have enough typing paper and fresh ribbons for my typewriter.

  “There will, of course, be a great deal of travel involved. We’ll be going to the U.S. Open golf tournament, Wimbledon, to the All-Star baseball game and other such places. When can you come aboard?”

  Just then, the elevator door opened onto the ground floor. I walked out, found a security guard, and asked him where the Journal sports department was located.

  “Go to the fourth floor,” he said, “take a right off the elevator. First door on your right.”

  I got back on the elevator and pushed 4. I got off the elevator, took a right, and walked into the first door on my right.

  The room was small. There were maybe ten desks crammed together. All the desks had manual typewriters sitting on top of them. All of them also had immense amounts of such items as unopened mail, brown typing paper, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, an occasional empty doughnut box, black telephones, empty coffee cups, and on one desk I spotted a box of Mueller’s spaghetti sticks. I made a mental note to ask one of my future journalism professors the significance of such a find.

  There was also a horseshoe-shaped desk in the room, with chairs on the two outside rims. Inside the horseshoe sat another chair. On the desk was a glass pot filled with what appeared to be glue. The desk seemed to be the central focus of the room. Something important went on at that desk, I concluded.

  Behind the horseshoe desk sat a teletype machine that spit out words at an astounding rate. I walked over to the machine. It was typing the current major-league baseball standings. I had no idea as to where the source of this machine was located, but the sound of it gave out both a sense of urgency and energy. This, I reasoned, was the background music for the practice of big-time sports journalism. Against that sound, it seemed to me, a man could put zest in the words he typed. That sound likely was what set Furman Bisher into his mood to crank out his poetry.

  To my left, I saw a glass-enclosed office. The door to it was closed. On the door it said, FURMAN BISHER, SPORTS EDITOR.

  This was Furman Bisher’s office! I looked through the glass. There was a desk, just as cluttered as the ones outside. An obviously elderly manual typewriter sat on a table near the desk. The Oval Office in the White House could not have impressed me any more.

  This was it. This was where Furman Bisher wrote. All those columns of his I’d read since childhood came out of this hallowed place. Bisher on riding the train to Little Rock with the Atlanta Crackers. Bisher on Bobby Dodd, the legendary Georgia Tech football coach. Bisher from the World Series. Bisher from the Kentucky Derby. Bisher from the Masters.

  I was looking at where Michelangelo mixed his paints, where Edison conceived the light bulb, where Alexander the Great plotted his battles, where Irving Berlin beat out the first notes of “White Christmas.”

  I knew I would work in this place one day. Sometimes you just know, the way you know you won’t like liver even if you’ve never tried it. It wasn’t going to be this summer. The idea of talking to a man of Furman Bisher’s stature and having him be so awed by my only credentials—the fact I was Lewis Grizzard, the future journalism student—that he would give me a summer job as his caddie, suddenly seemed a bit ridiculous.

  But at least I had been to this room. I had heard the sound of the teletype and seen my first glue pot. And I had noticed a certain order to all the mess. This is what I thought a sports department at a large newspaper would look and feel and sound like, and one day I would be in the middle of it. I had seen my dream, I had stood in it, listened to it, and, by God, it would come true.

  I swore to devote myself to that end. It didn’t matter what it would take. I would do it.

  Just before I left the room, I said something to it. Out loud. “I’ll be back,” I said. Profound, no. But filled with determination.

  I returned to the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor again. I hadn’t accomplished what I had wanted to accomplish, a summer job, but being in that place had stoked the fire in my belly.

  I had to walk back past Union Station to get to my car. There was a newspaper box in front of the station. “Aha, the classified ads,” I said to myself.

  I put a dime in the box, took out a copy of the Journal, fresh from next door. I walked into the station. It was a death wish inside, dark and lifeless. A wino was asleep on one of the benches in the waiting room. He, like everything else in the place, was covered with grime. But at least it was quiet, save the wino’s occasional snore. And I had spotted a pay phone. So I pulled away the front section of the paper, put it down on one of the filthy benches, and sat on it.

  I went directly to the classifieds and began to read under the “Help Wanted” section. Amid all the small type was a d
isplay ad that stopped me.

  “Do you like people?” asked the ad. “Would you like to make as much as $125 per week in the exciting field of sales?”

  How did they know this was just what I was looking for? I loved people. I could hang out with people the rest of my life and never get tired of it. And $125 a week? I looked back at the ad to make certain it hadn’t said “month” instead of “week.” It did say “week.”

  Classes at Georgia didn’t start until the middle of September. I counted up the weeks and figured I could make nearly eighteen hundred dollars in that period, getting rich in the exciting field of sales just by liking people.

  I called the number given in the ad. A woman answered. I introduced myself and explained I was the man the ad was looking for.

  “First,” said the woman, “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Go ahead,” I shot back, my confidence at eye level.

  “Do you like people?”

  “Do I like people? I love people. People to me are, well, what it’s all about. I mean, you give me some people, and I’ll like them right away. I don’t even care what kind of people they are. As long as I know they’re people, you can bet I’m going to like them. What’s the next question?”

  “Could you come by this afternoon?”

  I had the job. No question. Eighteen hundred big ones. The first thing I would do would be to buy Paula one of those Evening in Paris perfume sets, the one that also came with the powder.

  The woman gave me the address of the office. I said I could be there in half an hour.

  Driving to my interview, a question came to mind. Ever notice that when everything is really going great for you, annoying questions come to mind?

  There you are, having just finished a term paper, and you think, This is a great term paper. Then a question pops into your mind. “I wonder if the teacher is going to count off for spelling?”

  You have a date with a great-looking girl. You’re standing outside her door, awaiting her arrival, and a question pops into your mind. “Do I have a booger?”

  The plane is about to take off for Cancun. You feel great. Then, a question pops into your mind. “Are Eastern’s mechanics still unhappy?”

  The question as I drove to the interview was, “What will they want me to sell in the exciting field of sales?”

  That hadn’t occurred to me before. They could want me to sell any number of things. My mind raced. Vacuum cleaners? Boats? Shoes?

  I had an older cousin who worked in a shoe store once. He said you got to look up a lot of woman’s dresses, but it was tough on your back.

  What if they wanted me to sell jewelry or soap or flower seeds or salt? This salt salesman came into the store back in Moreland once and convinced Miles Perkins, the owner, to buy six hundred boxes of salt.

  Loot Starkins walked into the store next day, saw all that salt, and said to Miles, “You must sell an awful lot of salt.”

  “Naw,” said Miles, “but there was a fellow come by here yesterday could flat sell the hell out of it.”

  What if I couldn’t sell whatever it was they wanted me to sell? I could like people and want to make as much as $125 a week in the exciting field of sales, but what if I couldn’t convince anybody to buy whatever it was I was selling?

  Would they still pay you in that case?

  “Well, Lewis,” the boss would say, “how many boxes of salt did you sell today?”

  “Actually, sir,” I would say, “not a one.”

  “But did you like the people you met?”

  “Loved ’em.”

  “Fine, then, here’s your week’s check for as much as a hundred twenty-five dollars.”

  But that didn’t sound realistic to me, and I noticed I was beginning to perspire. With my confidence level having sunk all the way to my thighs, I drove into the parking lot of a six-story building, got out of my car, and went inside.

  I entered the elevator, went to the fourth floor, as the woman on the phone had instructed me to do (I made a mental note to point out how I had followed instructions well), and looked for an office marked 452.

  I found 452. The name of the company wasn’t on the door. Just 452.

  Do you knock first? How did I know? I’d never interviewed for a job before. Did you knock or did you simply open the door, walk in, and state your business? Why hadn’t they covered some of this in high school? What the hell was I supposed to do with two years of algebra and general science at this particular moment?

  I decided simply to open the door, walk in, and state my business. The door was locked.

  I knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked harder. Still nothing. My underarms were a rice paddy. So I banged on the window with my fist.

  Suddenly, the door swung open, and there stood a man. He had a thin mustache and was wearing a black suit that was very shiny. He looked like a cross between Zorro and a salt salesman.

  “Don’t let it be salt,” I said to myself. I couldn’t even sell a box to Miles Perkins back home. He still had three hundred boxes left.

  “Come in, kid,” said Zorro. I noticed his shoes weren’t shined, and one of the collars on his white shirt was frayed. When he began talking to me, he talked out of the side of his mouth because on the other side there dangled an unfiltered cigarette, the ashes of which defied all laws of gravity. The cigarette, I could see, was a Chesterfield.

  Then it hit me. Used cars! I’d seen used-car salesmen before. They wore shiny suits, their collars were frayed, they talked out of one side of their mouth, and they smoked Chesterfields out of the other.

  I knew about used-car salesmen. They’d sell a clunker to their own mother and didn’t love the Lord. What if I spent the summer selling used cars and showed up on the campus of the University of Georgia with no morals and unshined shoes?

  I looked around the office. I didn’t see the woman I had talked to on the phone. As a matter of fact, all that was in the office was the desk, one chair, one phone, and a lot of cigarette ashes on the floor.

  “I spoke with the lady on the phone earlier,” I began. I noticed my voice went up on the “earlier,” and I had made my statement in nearly the form of a question.

  I had noticed that about myself and about others before. Whenever one isn’t sure about one’s self, one tends to raise the level of one’s voice when one comes to the last word of one’s statements in the form of near-questions. But I don’t know why.

  “What’s your name, kid?” asked Zorro.

  “One,” I replied, “No, no, it’s not. I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else. My name is Lewis. Lewis Grizzard, and I like people and I would also like to make as much as a hundred twenty-five dollars a week in the exciting field of sales. But I wouldn’t cheat my mother.”

  The man looked puzzled.

  “I mean,” I quickly added, “My mother already has a car and it runs well, so I don’t think she’ll be looking for another one anytime soon.”

  “You okay, kid?”

  I could tell I was blowing it. What if I didn’t get this job and had to go back home to Moreland and not live with Ronnie in his apartment that was near Paula? What if I and my already-aging condom had to go back home together? The summer of ’64. The summer from hell.

  “Look, kid,” said the man, as the ashes finally fell off his cigarette and onto his shoes, “I got a warehouse full of encyclopedias I need to move. I’m hiring four guys to help me. I got three. You meet me here at seven each morning. We drive out in a van and I drop each of you off in a neighborhood with a sales kit. You work the neighborhood. I pick you back up at five. You move the books, I pay you a commission. No sales, no money. You want the job or not?”

  “This ad said I could make as much as a hundred twenty-five dollars a week,” I said. “Is this true?”

  “Could be. More books you move, the more money you make. I ain’t no fortune-teller. I don’t know how much money you can make. It all depends on you. Now, I’m busy. Be here at seven in the mo
rning.”

  “You don’t want me to fill out an application or something?” I asked. “I have a high school diploma, and I was active in sports and clubs.”

  “Kid,” the man said, and I could see he was becoming annoyed, “I don’t care if you didn’t make it through kindergarten. Either you’ll sell the books, or you won’t. You sell ’em, fine. You don’t, that’s fine, too. I’ll find somebody who can. Be here at seven.”

  I walked out of the office. My first thought was, What happened to the woman with whom I had talked on the phone? She seemed pleasant enough.

  And why hadn’t Zorro asked me anything about how much I liked people? It wouldn’t have been in the ad if it hadn’t been important.

  He hadn’t asked anything about my references, either. I was going to put down my high school principal, my senior English teacher, and my basketball coach.

  And what about all those times teachers had warned us, “Foul this up and it could go on your permanent record”?

  I hadn’t fouled up one thing in high school. As far as I know, I had a completely unblemished permanent record. But this guy hadn’t asked me, “Is there anything on your permanent record I should know about before we sign a contract?”

  I never even chewed gum in high school. I didn’t want it on my permanent record. I never smoked in the boys’ bathroom like Ronnie Jenkins did. What was going on here? Disillusionment had replaced all my confidence.

  Just then, a woman walked out of the elevator and came toward me. “Excuse me,” I said. I introduced myself and continued, “Were you the one I talked to on the phone a little while ago? I was the one who liked people. Remember?”

  The woman looked at me for a second. It was not a nice look.

  “I’m Margie,” she said. “I answer the phone for Dipstick in there and go out for beer. He couldn’t make a living selling used cars because he was too big a creep even for that, so now it’s encyclopedias. What else would you like to know?”

  “Can I really expect to make as much as a hundred twenty-five dollars a week in the exciting field of encyclopedia sales?” I asked.