After that I did two book signings, at which a total of four people showed and only two bought the book, and then went off to WCVB, Channel 5, the local ABC affiliate, for a brief talk there. That might get cut down to 60 seconds and slipped in if it was a slow news day. Again, the topic was the Big Dig.
From there I went to the hotel, packed my crap up and went to the airport. I didn’t know or care if it made it to the news. My only thoughts were about how in the world anybody actually put up with the horseshit of a book tour! This was Day One, and we had nine more to go, not including the intervening weekend.
Monday night I flew to New York, and I had two nights there. Tuesday I did some radio stations and a book signing, and nothing was scheduled for the afternoon. Melissa had taken the train up, so that we could talk to some people on Wall Street. I took a nap in the afternoon, and then we had dinner with some people from Prudential and Bain. Wednesday morning I did a local talk show on WNBC after the Today Show was over, and then went to a book signing. The big doings were later that day, fifteen minutes on the Late Night With David Letterman. That was a pretty big deal!
One of the things Harry and I had been told before we went off on our tours (and I was already wishing I had the short and local tour) was to try and find a way to ‘connect’ with the local host or audience. In Boston this meant talking about the Big Dig. In New York, I focused on something else. If you can do it humorously, all the better. This is part of ‘humanizing the news.’ Slap a smile on your face as you announce the bridge collapsed and killed two dozen nuns and schoolchildren.
Letterman: So you say that it’s a good idea to block traffic at all times of the day to fix potholes.
Me: What I say is that if you don’t fix the potholes, sooner or later the road collapses, and traffic is blocked anyway.
Letterman: But shouldn’t these things last longer?
Me: They do, but you still have to keep fixing them. This is nothing new; we’ve been doing it a long time. For instance, well, I’m not very familiar with New York, but I’ve been told there’s a small town somewhere to the east of here. I’ve never been there myself, but I think the name is… Brooklyn? Maybe you’ve heard of it?
(Audience laughter!)
Letterman: Yes, I’ve heard of the place.
Me: Anyway, this town — again, I don’t know much about it — it has this bridge, and I’m told it’s pretty nice.
(More audience laughter!)
Me: Seriously, though. The Brooklyn Bridge is a prime example of infrastructure that is maintained properly and can last forever. It’s over a hundred years old, and is a landmark to the entire world. It’s something the citizens of this city [and here I waved my arm towards the studio audience] can be justifiably proud. It would cost billions of dollars to replace, so a few million every year in maintenance is cheap insurance!
From New York I went to Cleveland, and from Cleveland I was going to Chicago, but that got changed. Instead I went to St. Louis, and Chicago would be the end of the tour. I spent the weekend in Redmond with Bill Gates, generally just goofing off. He couldn’t believe the amount of time I was wasting doing this book tour. Sunday night I flew down to San Francisco. Tuesday I went to Los Angeles, where I spent two days, and on Wednesday did The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.
That was interesting! Talk about meeting a living legend! He did Carnac the Magnificent that night, and that was just amazing. I sat there in the Green Room and watched in utter disbelief — I was about to meet an American god! As I had been told, Carson didn’t schmooze with the guests, either before or after they came on, and he ran the operation tightly. I asked if I could get a photo standing next to him, and was refused, but they did have a photographer who could take shots when we were on the set together, and that was plenty good enough for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about, and it probably wasn’t my best appearance, but I didn’t get the bum’s rush, which he was known to do on occasion.
It didn’t matter. I met Johnny Carson!
Thursday was Houston, and then I flew to Chicago to finish the book tour. If I never did this again, it would still be too soon. Still, Chicago looked to be interesting. Simon and Schuster was happy with the reaction and sales (even if nobody showed up at the signings — what a waste of time!) and I was booked as a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. This was the only time I was booked for a nationally syndicated daytime talk show.
In November of 1987 she was still doing her show from the studios of WLS in Chicago. Right now it was done there, but I knew that within a few years, she would build a much bigger Harpo (Oprah spelled backwards) complex elsewhere. That day, though, I ended up down in the Loop at WLS.
Oprah wasn’t yet the big deal name she was going to become. She was only a year older than I was, and had only been on the air nationwide for about a year. The nightly shows I had been on had a different format. They were basically a standup comic doing some material and running through whoever was lined up, bing, bang, boom! They taped in the late afternoon or early evening and aired later that night. Oprah was more likely to tape a week or two ahead of time, her studio audience was mostly women, and her viewers were mostly women, also. The woman herself was an American success story. Born dirt poor in rural Mississippi into an abusive family, she clawed her way into school and college and eventually made it big beyond belief.
As an interviewer, her skills were at heart an immense empathy, which was why she played well with women and often did well with the ‘crisis of the week’ which she would highlight. She was not considered a tough interviewer, but nobody much cared. She was also immensely well read, and was the only interviewer who had actually read our book! Every other interviewer received highlights and suggestions from Simon and Schuster, and it was doubtful that anybody had even read those. Oprah had read our book, and she blocked out an entire half hour to talk to me!
I had never much cottoned to her show back on my first go, simply because it was a daytime woman’s show. Too many tears, too much tabloid nonsense, too many ‘crisis of the week’ style shows. On the other hand, I knew Marilyn and Alison liked her, and you can’t say she didn’t make it to the big time. She was already a ‘big deal’, and was getting bigger!
In person she was quite personable and smart. The first half of the show had been some celebrity chef and how to cook something with vegetables. After he got done, they cleared the smoke out of the studio and wheeled the kitchen set away, and it was just the two of us in chairs in front of the audience. Oprah introduced me, saying, “And now I’d like to bring out the author of a new book called Eat Your Peas! America’s Crumbling Infrastructure And The Need To Rebuild It. This book is a fascinating look at what is happening with our roads and bridges and dams. Please help me welcome Doctor Carl Buckman!” The applause started and an assistant signaled me to go, so I walked around the curtain. Unfortunately for me, my knee had been acting up for a few days, and I needed the cane, even as early in the day as it was, and I was limping.