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

by Lewis Grizzard

  —Wilt Browning, the baseball writer, looked a lot like a teacher I had in high school. He had false teeth. He logged a million miles or so traveling around the country with the Atlanta Braves. How he kept his sanity, I’m not certain. He was the consummate professional. He could compose a three-page Braves story at a manual typewriter and never make a typing error. He wrote one of the greatest headlines I’ve ever seen.

  At six-thirty on a Monday morning, Wilt was in the office doing his story on the previous Sunday’s Braves game, which they had lost, even then a redundancy.

  Wilt’s angle to the game was that Mike McCormick, who had pitched for the winning San Francisco Giants, might have an outside chance of winning the Cy Young Award as the National League’s outstanding pitcher of the year. McCormick, getting up there in baseball years, had told Wilt, however, that he believed he was too old to hold up during the hot months of August and September.

  I was in the slot. I couldn’t get a headline I really liked. Finally, Wilt, who didn’t have to sit at the desk during baseball season since he was working twelve-hour days anyway, sat down at the rim and said, “Let me try.”

  He came up with, “Not Young, Cy’s Mike.” Brilliant.

  —Bill Robinson, the outdoor editor and auto-racing writer, had nine children. He never came into the office on time. Seven o’clock, no Robinson. But he always had a great excuse.

  Once, he rolled a flat tire into the elevator and then into the sports department to show proof of his latest reason for being late. Legend had it he always kept a flat in his trunk for just such an emergency.

  The story went that Greg Favre finally had enough of Robinson being late and told him, “Robinson, if you’re late one more time, you’re fired. I don’t care what your excuse is.”

  The next morning: Seven, no Robinson. Seven-thirty, no Robinson. Finally, he strolled in at eight, wearing a pair of jeans, a pajama top, and a Pure Oil racing cap.

  Favre was livid. He called Robinson to the slot.

  “You’re fired, Robinson,” he said, “but just for the record, what’s your excuse this time?”

  Robinson never hesitated.

  “You know I’ve been married nine years and I’ve got eight children,” he explained. “This morning was the first time in our marriage my wife had a period, and I had to fix breakfast for the kids because she was too sick to get out of bed.”

  Robinson didn’t get fired.

  Robinson was a handsome man, then in his late thirties, whose eyes always seemed to be half-closed. He was originally from Alabama, and held unbending allegiance to the university. Robinson lobbied during the autumn to be assigned to Alabama football games. He covered the Crimson Tide in a Sugar Bowl once and was so thrilled at an Alabama upset, he began writing about the “Crimson Cobras” and the “Alabama Red Snappers,” and he forgot to include a final score in his game story.

  With the exception of Bisher, Robinson was probably the best pure writer on the staff. I still remember one of his leads from a Daytona 500:

  “Nose-to-nose, hubcap-to-hubcap, Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty went into the final lap at Daytona International Speedway as the seconds ticked away, like so many staccato drumbeats.”

  The problem, however, was nobody was ever quite certain if Robinson had actually attended the event he was writing about. There was the time Minter got mad at Robinson for some sort of misdeed and assigned him to cover a high school football play-off game in the north Georgia mountains on a rainy, cold Friday night, a horrid fate for a veteran sportswriter.

  I was in the slot the following Saturday morning. Naturally, Robinson was late. When he finally arrived at the office, I said, “How was the game?”

  “One of the best I’ve ever seen,” he answered.

  I watched him as he sat down at his desk and opened the morning Constitution. I had the feeling then that Robinson hadn’t been to the game and was going to rewrite the Constitution account of the game.

  Unfortunately for him, something had happened to the Constitution’s coverage, and all it carried about Robinson’s game was a one-paragraph story.

  I had laid out a page with a sizable hole for Robinson’s article. I also needed a score-by-quarters, who made the touchdowns, and final game statistics. The Constitution didn’t have that, either.

  Robinson put paper in typewriter. The words began to flow.

  He wrote a remarkable story. There were phrases such as “... North Georgia’s hills were alive with the sound of sweet touchdown music” and “... the swivel-hipped halfback left tacklers grabbing nothing but the sopping-wet night air . . .”

  He also typed out a line score and statistics. Later, he admitted to me he had not been to the game and had made up the statistics. We never received a complaint.

  But that wasn’t always the case. Robinson wrote a twice-a-week outdoor column. One Sunday, he waxed poetic about a fishing trip with an old pal in South Georgia. According to Robinson’s column, the big bass were literally jumping into the boat, and Robinson quoted his buddy through the story.

  The following week, I picked up the phone and a man asked for Robinson. He wasn’t there.

  “Well,” said the man, “would you just mention to him he was fishing with a ghost. Ol’ [whatever Robinson’s pal was named] died two months ago.”

  —Teague Jackson, the golf writer. He was from the Midwest. His father had worked for the Chicago Tribune. Teague always referred to it as “the Trib,” as in, “That’s not the way they do it at the Trib,” which became a catchphrase in the department.

  “Hey, Frank, rewrite the National League roundup and put the Dodgers in the lead,” McCollister would say to Hyland.

  “Okay, but that’s not the way they do it at the Trib.”

  He was a large man, also in his late twenties, who seemed to be in a constant state of dishevelment. You could dress him in a Bill Blass tuxedo, and in three minutes his tie would be crooked and his shirt would be out in back.

  Atlanta’s newspapers had a history of great golf writers. O. B. Keeler had been the Boswell of Bobby Jones. Ed Miles, who retired shortly before I joined the Journal staff, had been there for golf’s explosion with Arnold Palmer and television.

  Teague was familiar with the tradition, and fancied himself as another link in the chain. But his naiveté kept getting in the way.

  Jack Nicklaus’s father had died. Teague spent the morning trying to get Nicklaus on the phone. Finally, he did.

  We were at very close quarters. Everybody could hear the conversation that ensued:

  “Jack?” he began. “Teague.”

  There was a pause, and then:

  “Teague Jackson . . .”

  Another pause.

  “Atlanta . . .”

  Pause.

  “Journal . . .”

  After Nicklaus apparently had nailed down the identity of the party with whom he was speaking, Teague said, “I’d like to offer you my condolences on your father. I know just how you feel.”

  There was one more pause and then:

  “No, he’s still alive.”

  The best thing about being a golf writer is they play a lot of golf tournaments at nice resorts. Teague was on the phone one morning with a PR type with the women’s tour that was to stop at a course on Georgia’s coast.

  We always listened when Teague got on the phone.

  “Yes,” he was saying, “I think I should come and cover your tournament. Let me ask the boss if I can. I’m sure it will be okay.”

  Teague put down the phone and walked over to Minter’s desk. Minter was busy. You didn’t bother Minter when he was busy.

  “Jim,” he began, “would it be okay if I went to Sea Island next week to cover . . .?”

  Minter didn’t let him finish. “You can’t go,” he said.

  “But,” Teague argued, “I think the Journal ought to be represented. . . .”

  “You can’t go,” repeated Minter.

  Teague went back to the phone. “I’m
sorry,” he said, “but the bosses here at the Journal seem to think your tournament is not important enough for me to . . .”

  As he rambled on, Minter got out of his chair, walked over to Teague’s desk, took the phone out of his hand, spoke into it, and said, “Teague can’t go.”

  He hung up the phone. That was that.

  Frank didn’t like Teague. It all began when he was out of change and asked Teague for a dime so he could get a cup of coffee out of the machine in the hall. Teague gave him the dime, but as soon as Frank came into the office the next morning, Teague said to him, “Frank, do you have the dime I loaned you yesterday?”

  “Jesus Christ, Teague,” Frank answered, “it was just a dime.”

  “Well,” said Teague, “I need it back.”

  So Frank reached into his pocket and forked up the dime. Teague reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those little coin purses and put the dime safely back into it.

  Frank shook his head in digust.

  Then came the Hawk story.

  Teague went to Augusta to cover the Masters. A couple of days before the tournament began, there had been a testimonial dinner for Ben Hogan. Teague wrote a story about it. His lead boggled the mind:

  By TEAGUE JACKSON

  Atlanta Journal Staff Writer

  AUGUSTA—Somewhere in a murky, never-never land, a Hawk circles slowly, licking his wounds, pain gnawing at his vitals as he hurts where only a real man can hurt.

  They called Ben Hogan the Hawk, see, and he had been in a car wreck, and he was a bit of a recluse, and . . . And nobody on the desk had any idea what Teague was trying to say. We didn’t run the article.

  While we waited for the first edition to arrive back up in the office, Frank took Teague’s piece, sat down at his typewriter, and converted Teague’s story into a one-act play. He called it “The Hawk: An Original Feature Story by Teague Jackson, Adapted for the Stage by Frank Hyland.”

  I played the Hawk and pretended to circle slowly in a murky never-never land. Darrell Simmons made noises he thought sounded like something gnawing on a vital, Robinson played the “veteran pro” Teague had quoted in his story. Frank was the narrator.

  We put on the play for Minter, who thought it was a riot. Minter was still reeling, as a matter of fact, from a memo Teague had sent to him a few weeks earlier.

  Teague had asked for a day off to go to the dentist and then asked for a “sick day,” as he put it.

  “How in the hell,” Minter had asked, “does Teague know two weeks before that he’s going to be sick on a certain day?”

  —Bill Whitley, the high school writer. We called him “Doctor Whitley” because whenever he called a restaurant to make a reservation, that’s the way he referred to himself.

  “Yes,” he would begin, “I’d like a table for two at nine. Fine. Put it in the name of Whitley, Doctor Whitley.”

  “You always get better service if they think you are a doctor,” the doctor would say. He was short and round and balding and your basic southern gentlemen. When he laughed, he turned red in the face and lighted up a room.

  He was a native Atlantan and a graduate of Georgia. He was remembered on campus for getting into his MG after an afternoon of drinking beer in the legendary Old South tavern downtown and losing control of his car. It finally came to rest, with him in it, in the Athens bus station. It had gone through the doors to the waiting room, as a matter of fact, and when the dust and glass had settled, Doctor Whitley looked up, smiled and said, “One way to Savannah, please.”

  The doctor was a Civil War expert. He had seen Gone With the Wind about four hundred times and could do practically all the dialogue from the movie.

  He and his wife, Miss Margaret, of whom he said, “I brought her down from the hills of North Georgia and put silk underdrawers on her,” had a daughter. Her name? Miss Scarlett, of course.

  —Joe Litsch, who helped Whitley with the high schools. He was feisty, opinioned, and had a biting sense of humor.

  He walked into the office one morning and somebody said, “Did you hear Freddie Steinmark died?”

  Freddie Steinmark was a Texas football player who was stricken with cancer. Before he died, one of his legs had been amputated.

  When Litsch was told of his death, he replied, “Well, hell, he had one foot in the grave anyway.”

  —Darrell Simmons, the pro-football writer, looked like a young Burl Ives. He had come to the Journal from Jacksonville, Florida. He smoked Lucky Strikes, spoke so softly it was often difficult to hear what he was saying, but he did do one helluva job sounding like vitals being gnawed in his performance of Teague’s Ben Hogan article. I can’t spell the sound Darrell made, but I was impressed by his creativity.

  Darrell had the toughest beat on the staff because he had to deal with Falcons head coach Norman Van Brocklin, who hated sportswriters. Van Brocklin thought all sportswriters were communists, and his phobia was legendary.

  When a soccer-style foreign kicker beat the Falcons with a last-second field goal, Darrell asked Van Brocklin what he thought when he saw the kick was good. He answered, “I was thinking they ought to tighten the goddamn immigration laws in this country.”

  —Bill Clark. He was a tall, handsome man in his thirties. I forget what brand of cigarettes he smoked. I think perhaps menthol, though. Didn’t we all smoke in 1968?

  He had all the college contacts. He was smart and slick and sly. And he helped me. The first time I was ever on Bisher’s Football Review television program, he said to me, “Relax and don’t argue with Bisher.”

  But Bill Clark would turn the place upside down for a time. I mentioned there was no such thing as overtime at the Journal. Once a week, you filled out a time sheet. Under each of the five days you worked, you simply wrote an 8, and the total was always 40.

  Bill decided that was wrong. He began to ask other staff members privately if they thought they were being taken advantage of.

  “How many hours did you work last week?” he asked me one day.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Who’s counting?”

  “They’re cheating us out of money,” he said.

  Bill Clark figured there was the time he spent in the office, the time he spent driving to various events, the time he spent covering them, the time he spent eating and drinking with various sources, the time he spent on the phone at night tracking down news, and even, I suppose, the time he spent arguing with Frank about Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.

  Me, I was just proud to be there.

  Clark began to push for overtime pay. He wrote memos. He argued with Minter. He pushed too hard. Minter fired him.

  Clark filed suit.

  Each member of the staff was called in to testify at the ensuing trial. It was understood that nobody would take Clark’s side. Nobody did. We were loyal to the death, not to mention cross-examination.

  Clark’s attorney got right in my face.

  “Did you help cover the Atlanta Golf Classic on June so-and-so?” he asked me.

  “I think so.”

  “What time did you leave home?”

  “I don’t know. Nine in the morning.”

  “What time did you leave the golf course?”

  “Maybe six.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Went back to the office and wrote my story.”

  “What time did you leave there?”

  “Maybe nine.”

  “So you left your home at nine in the morning, and you were on duty until nine that night. That’s twelve hours. How many hours did you put down on your time sheet that you worked that day?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Don’t remember, Mr. Grizzard? What do you mean, you don’t remember?”

  We were nose-to-nose.

  I asked the judge, “Is he supposed to be this close to me?”

  “Get out of the witness’s face,” said the judge.

  He finally got me to admit I always put down eight hours, no matter h
ow many I worked.

  “If I had wanted to punch a time clock,” I managed to get in before the attorney could stop me, “I’d have tried to find a job on the assembly line at the Ford plant.”

  I got to see ball games and golf tournaments for free and got my byline in the Atlanta Journal sports section, by God. Wasn’t that and $160 big ones a week enough?

  They gave Bill Clark some back pay, and he went off to Florida someplace.

  I naturally expected to succeed him as the head college-editor guy. But I had made another mistake, which would send my career in a decidedly different direction. It also changed my life drastically.

  I had learned all about graphics and layout and how to get a sports section in on time in Athens. Guys who wanted to cover ball games and write about them were easy to find. Not so, fools who would take on the task of putting the sports section together and then head to the composing room to make certain it got in on time and was relatively mistake-free.

  McCollister, the assistant sports editor and slot man, got one day a week off because he worked Saturday night putting out the Sunday edition.

  That meant he had to have a replacement that one weekday he had off. Several other members of the staff filled in for him on that day. Minter thought everybody should have at least some idea of how the paper got put together every day.

  I had been at the paper about a month when he said to me, “You’ve had some layout experience, haven’t you?”

  I was anxious to please him. I said that I had.

  A week later, I sat in the slot for the first time. I had copied the Journal’s layout style in Athens. I liked pages where photos and type were displayed horizontally, I didn’t think type that ran up-and-down, willy-nilly was very attractive.

  When the first edition of my first Journal section arrived at Minter’s desk, he took a long look at it and then said to me, “You know how we want to look.”

  I beamed.

  Soon after Clark left, McCollister took a job as public-relations director for the Hawks. Minter took me across the street to the Eagle Cafe one morning for coffee. I thought he was going to promote me to Clark’s job.