By Jeremiah Horrigan
Gullibility Has Its Consolations, Especially for Young Writers
In the autumn of 1969, I was a 19-year-old college freshman who felt unduly burdened by my father’s insistence that I get a job as well as attend the occasional class at Fordham University in the Bronx. Dad did more than insist I work—he got me a job. Every couple of days, I’d take the D Train down to 50 Rockefeller Center, where I played statistician in the smoke-filled offices of the sports department of the Associated Press.
"Bring the Troops Home Now" by Nancy Coner (c. 1966-1986) © Cliff
Sports was Dad’s game. It wasn’t mine. Nor, for that matter, were statistics. To extend the comparison even farther, work wasn’t my game either. If hippiedom hadn’t ever been invented, I’d have still found a way to while away endless hours and days doing nothing more demanding than speculating about what the “true” lyrics to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” were. And what they meant.
It was too early in my career as a layabout-without-portfolio to be much noticed by the hard-bitten working men and women of the AP. I looked and acted pretty much like a typical college kid of the day. My hair had not yet reached girlie-boy length. I was polite. I addressed my elders as “sir” or “ma’am.” I was, after all, a product of the Catholic South—South Buffalo, New York, that is, where disrespect of elders was a crime punishable by three years in Purgatory or a week of jug in the Jesuit high school I’d recently left.
My job was the care and feeding of a double bank of about twelve clattering teletype machines—wired-up black metal typewriters out of whose shuddering maws unscrolled an unending stream of the day’s sporting news. I’d rip these paper feeds into digestible sheets, transcribe incoming final scores onto a template containing the various league’s standings, then send this out again by means of the same contraption in time for the next day’s editions.
Like the copy I produced, I went largely unnoticed in the bustling office, which was fine by me. When I got noticed at all, it might be by some fatherly old hand who would marvel approvingly that, while I was no All Star at the teletype-paper-replacement game, at least I wasn’t a long-haired peacenik destroying the country.
One such guy, an editor nicknamed “Spike,” had a long, ruddy face topped with a shock of bright white hair clipped in such a way that it stood straight up, as if each hair was at attention. When he praised me for not being a hippie, he said it as both compliment and warning. I invariably met his praise with an uneasy smile and shake of the head.
In truth, I was a peacenik in the making. I’d become more and more fascinated with and concerned about the non-sports news of the day: Vietnam. I knew Fordham was the only thing standing between me and three years of unwilling “service” to my country. Though I took full advantage of my college deferment, the trade-off didn’t sit well with me. I’d begun to Think About the War. And out of that muddled process, I resolved to Take Steps. Something Needed Doing. And I Needed—gulp—To Do It.
Which was where the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam came in. The war’s growing number of opponents were set to gather in D.C. in mid-October. If you couldn’t attend, couldn’t leave your job, the idea was to show your opposition in your daily life.
Boldly, I decided To Act. To Take a Stand. I would…wear an armband. A black armband, in solidarity with war protesters whose ranks I couldn’t imagine joining.
Though I would have been content to wear my armband around campus, I reluctantly concluded that the only place it could have some impact was at work. I steeled myself to risk the wrath of Spike. I’ d stand revealed as a closet peacenik.
The next day, a Thursday, I stepped out of the subway’s squealing murk and into the bright sunshine of a gorgeous late-autumn afternoon. The sun charged me up, filling me full of righteous resolve. I would be…impolite in the name of peace, and let the devil take the hindmost.
Anti-Vietnam Demonstration by Albert R. Simpson; National Archives
Lost in thought, swollen with dreams of glory and not five steps out of the subway exit, the city exploded around me. People streamed out of buildings. Laughing, they gripped hands and skipped and danced their way along the sidewalk and into the street, where traffic had stopped.
Drivers jumped half-out of their seats, laughing and leaning on their horns. Office windows flew open. Confetti fell on the heads of the celebrants below.
My heart, already inflated like a dirigible by visions of my own imminent bravery, swelled to bursting. Confused but joyous, hardly daring to breathe, my mind seized on the only possible explanation for such craziness:
The war in Vietnam was over.
Then I caught sight of a guy waving an orange-and-blue pennant. Then I saw another. The New York Mets had just beaten the Baltimore Orioles, winning the 1969 World Series.
The Hindenburg took less time to deflate than my heart did. Immune to the surrounding jubilation, I trudged through the crowd to an office full of awestruck, frantic sportswriters. Polite to the last, I smiled and tried to look excited.
One of the writers noticed my black armband and grinned.
“Whatsa matter, kid? You an Orioles fan?”
I shrugged. “Not really.”
He persisted. “Someone die or something?”
“Not really.”
There was no explaining how foolish I felt. I slipped into the men’s room and threw the armband in the trash.
My big brave day of self-revelation played out only in the courtroom of my wounded ego. I stood accused of being the only sports statistician on the planet who could mistake a sports miracle for a real one.
It wasn’t until later—much later—that I started telling this story for the amusement of friends and family, many of whom had firsthand experience of a bottomless gullibility that only I thought was a secret.
But gullibility has its consolations. For a few unforgettable seconds on that sunny city day, thousands of strangers and a bunch of underdog athletes allowed me to experience a glorious day that never was—but should have been.
Jeremiah Horrigan
Jeremiah Horrigan is a contributing writer at Talking Writing.
This piece first appeared, in a slightly different form, as “Teletyping the Anti-War Blues” on Open Salon.
Jeremiah,
Great piece! Especially loved the ironic cadence of “… a product of the Catholic South—South Buffalo, New York” and the grittiness of the AP life evoked through those clattering teletype machines and their “shuddering maws.” And speaking of what might be dubbed cultural myopia (or in my case, multiple myopia), after our hippie-love child, Cael, was born during the summer of ’69, I completely missed Woodstock and the Mets stumbling toward the championship. (And if not for the Sylvania tv in the labor room at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, I would have overlooked the moon landing as well.)
Steve: Woodstock, man. Our generation’s Occupy Wall Street. Those were the very definition of halcyon days, weren’t they? At least in blessed retrospect. Sometimes I try to tell my own 30-something love children that it wasn’t all as grand and glorious as some would have it. But damn, some of it was. Some of it was. Just don’t get me started on the moon landing. I couldn’t dig it.
Thanks for stopping by.
What’s the World Series??? The way I see it, some people bark about places in the world where there is too much religious fanaticism, but perhaps the U.S. could benefit from abandoning some of its sports fanaticism. How are the two all that different? Both involve a level of Group Think that breeds the kind of blindness of the sports writer you described here who couldn’t appreciate the meaning of your armband. Thank you for your essay, your bravery, and your service to something higher than your country. Peace.
Jeremiah, you’ve brought back a lot of memories for me.
On October 15, 1969, I was on Boston Common for the local mobilization to end the war. The following month, I traveled to D.C. for the nationwide mobilization, wearing my black armband and a secondhand army jacket with a large white peace sign sewn on the back. In early May 1970, I was in some kind of secret student media room at Brown University as teletype messages came in from colleges and universities nationwide who were pledging to join the student strike. We believed we could make a difference, and I think we did. Yes, those were the days…
Rebecca Jane: I once felt the same way you do about professional sports, though in a less astute way; when I was 16, I was drafted (at $50 a week) to be a waterboy for my hometown Buffalo Bills. It was another job my Dad got for me, without my asking. I could neither pass nor catch, though in later life (thank God for later life) I was able to see it for what it was, write about it and get myself a good clip from Sports Illustrated in the bargain (a clip from 1980 I shamelessly trot out at every occasion, as you can see.),
So, I can’t join you in your criticism of the World Series or of professional sports in general. I’m a fan. A Bills fan, at least. And as kind as you are to have suggested I was somehow brave, I can’t join you there, either. But I’ll go this far with you: in both those instances where my Dad got me jobs intended to introduce me to the world of (working) men, I discovered (to his initial chagrin) my own way of demonstrating (sic) my burgeoning manhood, by taking such baby steps as those I’ve written about above. And — long story short — those steps got more serious as I got older, until I was looking at a long prison sentence. It was there that he & I overcame some seemingly vast differences and were able to make our peace, a step that required my Dad to show me what bravery meant. And, fortunately, I didn’t have to wait for a later life to see that bravery in action.
Whew. I said more than I expected to. If you’ve come this far with me, thanks. I hope I wasn’t too mysterious or confusing.
Ekizabeth: . . . we thought they’d never end . . .
Heady days, weren’t they? By ’71, I was on my way out of Fordham and into Cornell, of all places, where I ran a bookstore that was a front for the people who ripped off draft boards, FBI outposts, corporate HQs and the like. Thee only people paid much attention to us were thr FBI. The next year, I went from supporting cast to actor, and wound up being busted in my underwear (long story) inside my hometown draft board. By that time, I’d turned my back on mass action, not recognizing that it was the launching pad for smaller, more practical actions against the war. I’m hoping the same for the OWS crowd, while trying to keep my opinions and (anti-)war stories from those bygone days out of their way.
I definitely recommend you read: http://gizmodo.com/5851062/generation-x-is-sick-of-your-bullshit – Now Gen X is in their 40′s, they are sick of having to grow up hearing stories of hippies only to have their kids go out and join them. The world is full of ironies, don’t you think?
Jeremiah,
Thanks for your detailed reply. The wisdom you’ve gained from your experiences helps me think through my understanding of what kinds of changes we humans can and should make with these lives we inhabit, and how (I love hippies, old and young, and their tales). What troubles me most in your story was the utter disregard of your armband and its intended message. You were not listened to. I call you brave because NOW you were able to express that disregard in an artful way. I’m reading a book now called THE ART OF SUBTEXT by Charles Baxter. Baxter says that a good writer, these days, has to pay attention to the ways people don’t pay attention. That is what I applaud you for here. My original, knee-jerk response didn’t convey this, but your reply encouraged me to rethink and rewrite back to you. So much noise around us. I hear genuine unrest. I want to listen, truly listen, deeply listen, absorb, internalize, and struggle along. Then change myself. From within. Who knows if that will do?
Noelle: It sure is. I found the link kind of sad. I actually agree with Gen X critics that we boomers have dominated American life for far too long. A lot of boomers’ supposed “accomplishments” have bypassed history ane been replaced by legend. But the sadness I felt in reading the link had to do with the near-desperate tone of the rant. And, when I thinl fo Gen Xers’ rainsing hippie-kids, I remember how many Gen X kids themselves grew up to be stock brokers, etc., thereby consciously or unconsciously driving their crunchy parents round the bend.
Rebecca Jane: Again, thanks for your kind remarks. Though I’ve not read the Baxter book, I’m intrigued by what you say about it: the necessity for writers to pay attention to the ways people fail to pay attention. Since I’ve come to believe, in light of some evidence gleaned over the years, that attention is love, it sounds to me like Baxter is talking about the world not recognizing the need for and importance of love — quite a hippie-ish idea.
I also took the liberty of visiting your website where I was delighted to find your homage to Gil Scott Heron. The technology may have changed but the need for a perceptive sentiment such as yours certainly hasn’t. Well Done!
I think the reason Gen X wanted to persue business and wealth is because they remember having to live in trailers and teepees. I have a friend who was raised until well into the 80′s in a Tee Pee, living recycled in the 80′s. She joined the Navy and swore to never do such a thing to her own children. I have a friend whose parents moved from state to state in a trailer. She did almost the exact same thing (only she joined the Air Force). I think you have to be careful not to be a zealot. No one likes a zealot, not even your own kids.
Noelle: ESPECIALLY not your own kids. I used to worry that my kids (who are now thirty-something adults) would react to our family lifestyle in some unforseeable but totally expectable way, but we got lucky. I think I knew things would be Ok when both the kids would play my own LPs and CDs as often as they played their own. We still share musical tastes and it’s still wonderful.