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

by Lewis Grizzard

  And I would soon be the recipient of an incredible break. From the bad start at the newspaper, from my three hours as a walking encyclopedia salesman, from dingbats who would round off their checks and staple them to their loan-payment cards. I would meet a man, and he would put in motion how I got from the summer of ’64 to the spring of ’77, where this adventure is ultimately headed.

  “Balls,” cried the queen. “If I had ’em I’d be king.”

  —An old expression regarding courage.

  Chapter 4

  I HADN’T HAD the guts to try to see Furman Bisher again that summer. After the episode of viewing his office—the Throne Room—I decided it would not be wise to show up there with no education and no experience. He’d probably just say, “Come back to see me in four years” or, worse, “Get out of my office, kid.”

  But I was sitting in the apartment one night watching the television Ronnie’s parents had given him for graduation. It had a screen the size of a pocket watch. If you strained your eyes, you occasionally could make out a human form.

  The CBS affiliate six o’clock news came on. More on the civil-rights movement and Goldwater.

  Following the news and the weather came sports, and the familiar face and voice of Ed Thelinius, the station sports director, who also broadcast the radio play-by-play of University of Georgia football games.

  I didn’t really want a career in sports broadcasting, but it occurred to me as I watched Ed Thelinius that maybe I could sit down with him and tell him of my plans and he could give me some help. I was hoping his help would be: “Next time I run into Furman Bisher, I’ll mention your name,” or “Want to do my show tonight?”

  With trembling hands, during my morning break the next day at the bank, I cold-called Ed Thelinius at his television station. It took some guts.

  Ed Thelinius, or at least his voice, had become legendary in Georgia. He never got rattled like some football announcers and made the mistake of screaming into the microphone such phrases as “We score!” or “Would you look at that son of a bitch run!” which some announcer said once if I am to believe a radio blooper record I heard.

  Thelinius was extremely low-key. He would have handled the explosion of the Hindenberg like this:

  “Here comes the Hindenberg. There goes the Hindenberg.”

  Thelinius did have his pet sayings, of course. Most sportscasters do. Red Barber said, when Bobby Thompson hit the home run to beat the Dodgers in the pennant play-offs in 1951, “Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule.”

  I suppose I should explain that statement. Red Barber came from the South, and southerners are taken to referring to animals to explain the current state of our emotions. “I’ll be a suck-egg mule” was Red Barber’s southern way of saying, “Blow me down and call me Shorty,” or “I’m not believing this, sports fans.”

  Southerners, attempting to explain great joy, might say, “I’m happy as a pig in slop.” They might express their exhaustion by saying, “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”

  Come to think of it, southerners use animals to explain just about anything, such as the answer to “Where’s John Earl?” The answer there is, “He went to the woods to take a crap, and the bears ate him.”

  I suppose I should also explain the term “suck-egg mule.” Certain animals are taken to performing the dastardly act of getting into the henhouse and partaking of the eggs. Dogs are particularly bad to do such a thing, thus the phrases “You dirty ol’ egg-sucking dog” and “Lassie sucked eggs,” which I saw written on a rest-room wall once in Tupelo, Mississippi.

  I really didn’t know mules would also suck eggs, but if Red Barber referred to himself as he did in 1951, I figure he had personal knowledge of such a quirk in the personality of this particular animal. I have never witnessed a chicken play the piano, but a friend said he did at a county fair. You simply must take somebody’s word on occasion.

  Ed Thelinius. When Georgia went into its huddle in those days, five players would line up abreast, and then five more would move into the same formation behind them. The quarterback would then face his teammates and call the play.

  Whenever Georgia huddled, Thelinius would say to his audience, “Tarkenton talks to his two rows of five.”

  What he was most noted for, however, was what he said before each opening kickoff. Very few college football games were televised in those days, so Thelinius attempted to give the listener some sort of orientation as to which team was defending which goal.

  He would do that by saying, “Imagine your radio as the field in front of me. Georgia will be moving up on the dial, while Auburn will be moving down.”

  Clever. Of course, that led to a lot of takeoffs, such as one that went, “Imagine your radio as the field as I see it. The red marks will be Georgia and the black will be Auburn. The dial will be the football.”

  This was before the digital radio. In fact, this was before a lot of things, such as instant replay, the Copper Bowl, SAT requirements, and the ACLU filing a lawsuit because somebody said a prayer before the game.

  Getting Ed Thelinius on the phone that day was surprisingly easy. The station operator answered, I asked for “Mr. Thelinius,” she rang his line, and he picked up.

  “Thelinius,” he said.

  That’s one thing you learn in journalism school. The proper way for a journalist of any kind to answer the phone is by saying his or her last name. It sounds official. Big-time official, like a guy carrying a clipboard with a pencil tied to it.

  “Mr. Thelinius,” I began, noticing once more my greeting was offered with my voice getting higher on the “inius” and a question mark on the end of it. I’m seventeen years old, and I’m talking to a legend. What would you expect?

  After the “Mr. Thelinius,” I said, “My name is Lewis Grizzard, and I work in the loan-payment department of the First National Bank, but I’m not going to be here much longer, although please don’t mention that to anybody who works here because I neglected to mention I’d be leaving after the summer to attend the University of Georgia. . . .”

  With that out of my dry mouth, I suddenly thought, Why am I telling Ed Thelinius I’m a liar? I want to gain this man’s trust, and in the first thirty seconds I’ve told him I lie like a dog? (Again, the animal reference.)

  But I pressed on, hoping he would forget about my opening statement. “I intend to major in journalism, sir, and I eventually would like to have a career in sportswriting. I realize you are not a sportswriter but a sports caster, but I still feel any advice and help you could give me would be quite worthwhile. I was wondering if there might be some time for me to come over to the station and speak with you. It shouldn’t take long. I’m merely interested in learning how to become as great as Furman Bisher.”

  To my utter amazement, Ed Thelinius responded to me by saying, “Why don’t you come over right now?”

  Right now? You mean at this instant? You mean, I have asked the Homecoming Queen for sex and she has responded, “Okay, how about right now?”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said.

  I hung up the phone, went to Mr. Killingsworth’s office, and told him I felt like I had been rode hard and put up wet and wanted the rest of the afternoon off.

  He said, “I’ll have to dock your pay.”

  “Go ahead, banker breath, I’m going to talk to Ed Thelinius,” is what I wanted to say. What actually came out of my mouth was a somewhat defiant, “Okay.”

  I drove to the studios of WAGA-TV, I told the receptionist I had an appointment with Ed Thelinius. She offered no argument, which was refreshing, phoned Thelinius, and said to him, “There’s someone here to see you.”

  There were a couple of heartbeats there when another one of those questions-that-always-come-up-when-things-are-going-great came up, as in, “What if he has forgotten about me since we talked?”

  It could happen, couldn’t it? Ed Thelinius was a busy, important man. The fact he had made an appointment with a seventeen-year
old kid could have slipped his mind. Or, he simply could have changed his mind, as in, “What’s a busy, important man like me doing making an appointment with a kid from a bank?”

  I could almost hear the receptionist’s next words: “I’m sorry, but Mr. Thelinius has decided you are too insignificant for him to waste his time on.”

  But no. The receptionist’s next words were, “Go through the door on the left. Mr. Thelinius’s office is the third one on the right.”

  I would learn later that radio and television people often have two voices. They have one for when the red light is on and another for when it’s off. Drive-time disc jockeys and local television sportscasters come to mind first. When they’re speaking into a microphone, their voices drop a couple of octaves, and what comes out is something between Edward R. Murrow and Pat Summerall. In normal conversations, however, they often sound like a cross between Gomer Pyle and Phil Rizzuto talking about the Money Store.

  But Ed Thelinius wasn’t like that. When he said to me, “It’s very nice to meet you,” he could have been saying, “Tarkenton talks to his two rows of five.” The same resonance was there. Ed Thelinius, I would come to realize, could say, “Pass the salt,” and make it sound like Georgia has just beaten Auburn to win the Southeastern Conference football championship.

  We sat there having our little chat. I was nervous, and it occurred to me I’d been nervous a lot that summer. If this was what graduating from high school and leaving home was all about, I would be a nervous wreck and given to episodes of drooling by the time I was thirty.

  I told Ed Thelinius of my plans for the future, and he mentioned something about the fact newspapers didn’t pay their employees very much, and I said I didn’t really care as long as I could get into the ball games for free.

  And then, with no warning whatsoever, Ed Thelinius suddenly said to me, “How would you like to work on my Georgia football crew this fall?”

  Two miracles in one day. First he had said, “Why don’t you come over right now,” which would have done me for years in the miracle department. An hour later he’s saying to me, “How would you like to work for my Georgia football crew this fall?” If I had known about Red Barber saying, “I’ll be a suck-egg mule” at the time, that might have been my reply.

  Instead, I handled the situation with my usual aplomb. I jumped in Ed Thelinius’s lap, put my arms around him, kissed him square on the mouth and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, can I go outside and wash your car?”

  Not really. As a matter of fact, a quarter-century and some change later, I don’t remember my exact reply. I know I was stunned. Beyond belief. Casey Stengel had just asked me how I’d like to play for the Yankees. Elvis wanted to know if I’d sing backup for him at Vegas.

  I probably muttered something like, “I certainly would, Mr. Thelinius, sir.” Doesn’t matter. Here was the deal:

  Play-by-play sportscasters use “spotters,” one for each team. The spotters sit on either side of the announcer with a board in front of them. The board, to keep this simple, has the names of each of the players, and, in Thelinius’s case, their measurements, their class, and their hometowns.

  The spotter’s job is to point at the name of the ball carrier, to point at the name of the tackler, to point at the name of someone who has delivered a good block, and to keep the announcer abreast of injuries and substitutions, so the announcer can say something like, “Zawicki is out with a broken neck, and Wojohowitz, the six-one, two-hundred-twenty pound sophomore from Goat City, is in to replace him.”

  Ed Thelinius had a regular to spot Georgia. What he needed was someone to spot the opposition, and that, by God, was going to be me.

  There was even money involved. That hadn’t even occurred to me.

  “I’ll pay you ten dollars a game and pick up all your expenses on the road,” Mr. Thelinius, sir, said.

  We would work out the details later, he explained, such as where and when to meet him when we left for Tuscaloosa on September 8, for Georgia’s opening game against Alabama.

  Now, get this picture: I’m seventeen years old. Since nearly the time I learned to dress myself until now, I’ve wanted a job in sports. I haven’t been out of high school two months and already I have one. So it only paid ten dollars a game and travel expenses. It was not only an actual, honest-to-God paying job in sports, but a job with the legendary Ed Thelinius broadcasting big-time college football.

  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 ha
nding 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.