January 2011

Part of my job in the early sixties, when I was working for United Airlines in the old terminal at O’Hare Airport, was to meet and greet any VIPs who might be traveling through Chicago.

One day I met up with Stuart Symington, the powerful Democratic senator from Missouri whom quite a few were thinking of as a future presidential candidate. He had some time on his hands between connecting flights, so I suggested we go up to the bar, run by Marshall Field’s and now long gone.

He accepted my offer, and while we were on the way, I saw coming toward us down the nearly empty corridor a tallish man with a splayed-foot walk, wearing a fedora. It was Richard Nixon. Symington and Nixon of course knew each other well and they stopped to chat. It turned out that Nixon also had a while before his flight, so Symington invited him to accompany us to the bar.

For reasons that are well known—he reached his prime in an era when baseball was still segregated —LeRoy (Satchel) Paige did not appear in a major-league game until he was 42 years old, well past the age of retirement for most professional players. In 1965, at 59, and 12 years after he had left the St. Louis Browns, he came back to pitch three scoreless innings for the Kansas City Athletics. I met the legendary player during a hiatus in his major-league career.

In the early spring of 1950, Paige was barnstorming with the famous Negro League team the Kansas City Monarchs, who came to play an exhibition game at the aging and quirky Borchert Field on Milwaukee’s North Side. I was studying journalism at Marquette University, and I had been lucky enough to get hired as sportswriter for the Milwaukee Journal . R. G. Lynch, the paper’s sports editor, assigned me to cover the game.

In July of 1969, at the age of 16, I divided my time between two very different worlds. The first was that of my generation, the colorful hippie Zeitgeist that I happily embraced. But I was also caught up in a black-and-white time gone by. In those days Seattle, where I live, offered silent movies at a handful of repertory cinemas or sometimes in private screenings through film clubs. A dedicated film buff, I saw as many silents as I could, and my favorites were always the comedies.

Seattle was host that summer to the 1969 Shrine convention, normally something the hippie side of me would have disdained. But then I read in the paper that the man being honored as Shriner of the Year was Harold Lloyd, of Beverly Hills, California.

On July 14, 1958, I was startled awake at 5:00 A.M. in my room in Baghdad by the sound of gunfire. I became a little uneasy. as the noise was too close for normal army maneuvers.

Red Sky at Morning The Freshman as Senior Bagging the Satchel VIP-to-Be

LOADED WORD REST AND PROCREATION WARM MEMORY MORE WALL WHAT MAKES A PUNDIT? ALEUTIAN DUTY ALEUTIAN DUTY FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK WINNERS

It was quite a sales pitch. At the time of the Model T’s introduction, on October 1, 1908, the Lord’s pastoral delights remained almost exclusively the domain of those wealthy enough to get to them. Ford, however, a populist businessman whose rural roots informed all his life’s work, was selling not just a car, but the dream of a better future to those least likely to benefit from the new century’s most significant technological innovation. “Brigham Young originated mass-production,” said Will Rogers, “but Ford was the guy who improved upon it. He changed the habits of more people than Caesar, Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Xerxes, Amos ’n’ Andy, and Bernard Shaw.”

BRYAN’S PINK PIG BAR-B-Q

Highway SC-170 A, Levy, SC 29927 (843-784-3635). Known for excellent ribs, not to mention the pink pigs hanging from the ceiling. The sides include coleslaw, hush puppies, and Brunswick stew. A mustard-based sauce, traditional for South Carolina, is on the table, but many regulars prefer the “low-country fire” sauce.

COOPER’S OLD TIME PIT BAR-B-QUE

604 West Young Street, Llano, TX 78643 (915-247-5713; www.coopersbbq.com ). Specializes in Texas brisket and the “Big Chop”—barbequed pork chops. Here the barbecue is cooked directly over mesquite coals. To quote one review, the brisket “fairly explodes with the robust flavor of meat and smoke.” It’s one of President Bush’s favorite places.

COZY CORNER

“So, a Ford dealer comes up with a great idea.…” Actually, I’m not at all sure this is how Americans started off a joke in the first two decades of the 20th century, but it’s how I remember my father’s answering my question about whether his father had ever gotten mad at him. The “great idea” was a promotional one: The first person to find dimes bearing the mint marks F, O, R, and D could come in and trade them for any Model T in the store. In time, a customer appears, asks to see the manager, and triumphantly opens his hand to reveal the four dimes. The manager examines them, and sure enough, the mint marks are all there. He congratulates the customer and tells him to look around the showroom and take his pick of the cars.

The customer approaches him again after 20 minutes and asks, “Can I get my 40 cents back?”