“One more thing, Bob. I don’t want you just to follow him around and take notes on what he says and does. Stay behind at some of these stops and get the reactions of the people. Let’s get some names and good quotes… and for God’s sake, some pictures.”
So it was that Whine and I saddled up the company’s wheezy Pinto Sunday night and set out for the city, where we were to attach ourselves to the Honorable A. Pinckney Schmid for the next five days. It turned out to be a real trip.
CHAPTER 5
Ah, the city by the lake, the Big Town. I always liked the place because it made no bones about its mission in life—rake in the money and spend it on things you enjoy—like lots of beer and heaping portions of heavy food. To hell with being skinny; eat, drink, and belch happily.
Two examples that tell a lot about the place: The first is what happened to the best relief pitcher in baseball the year the city got a major league team. This fellow had the misfortune to be of the same ethnic persuasion as the majority of the city’s population, and by the time they got through stuffing him with sausage chased with beer at testimonial dinners and booster club picnics, he had put on forty pounds and couldn’t strike out the batboy, let alone bend over to tie his shoelaces.
Without an effective short reliever that first year, the team finished the same number of games back of first place as its gluttonous pitching ace had gained pounds. Naturally, the front office fired the manager.
It wasn’t until the next spring that the team sent the pitcher down to Oshkosh, where he was told to lose what by now had become sixty-five pounds more than his playing weight. Opposing teams had taken to bunting directly at him, and his belly stuck out so far that he lost sight of the ball after it had rolled halfway to the pitcher’s mound.
He gave a halfhearted try at dieting, surrendered after a month, and came back to the city where he opened a bar near the stadium. He did so well he now owns a sky box overlooking first base, where he serves miles of wurst and rivers of beer to his friends, who come to listen to him spin oldtimer yarns and even watch a little baseball.
The second example illustrates the city’s old world thrift. In this town nothing is thrown away. Faced with a booming population that was generating more sewage than its facilities could handle, the town fathers found a method of transforming the output of the city’s toilets into garden fertilizer and marketed it all over the country. They say it’s great for tomatoes. The revenues don’t exactly finance the school system, but they go a long way toward paying the Sanitation Department’s overhead.
Rip Tandee and I got to the city Sunday night, checked into an elegantly faded old hotel that was in its prime when Warren Harding was in his, and headed out for one of those bounteous European dinners that sit in your belly like a rockslide for two or three days after they are eaten. A couple of them and it is easy to see why this is the town that sells most of the size fifty belts in the country.
Bloat notwithstanding, Tandee and I were at the Kleinschiller Golden Age Club at 8:30 the next morning, waiting for the Honorable Schmid.
The old folks, tickled that they were getting so much attention, pressed strudel, bundt cake, and assorted other high-calorie goodies on hs, and set up a great buzz about who was going to see his other picture in the paper tomorrow. They lost some interest when they realized that we were from the paper in the capital, not the city, but Whine, for once, was happy as he snapped away at the old folks.
“Character studies,” he chortled as he clicked away. “Contest judges love these old buzzards.”
The governor arrived nearly on time and waded into the crowd of oldsters like a rabbit in a cabbage patch. Whine and I tried to get close to hear what was being said and to take pictures, but the old parties were mobbing His Excellency with such fervor that anyone not equipped with a cane or a walker was likely to fetch some mean bruises. Whine complained that one of the old ladies had elbowed him in the stomach: “Jeez, she looked like my grandma but she checked me like a hockey player.”
The governor was distinctly not happy to see us, and he grinned like a banshee when the geriatric set surrounded him so thoroughly that we couldn’t do anything but back off and stand along a wall while he worked the crowd.
Goldberg wasn’t with him. Instead, he had a bulky sergeant from the state troopers running interference for him, and it was touching to watch him try to open a path for Schmid without crushing any elderly voters. Finally he got the governor to a raised platform, where Schmid stepped behind a table and raised his hand.
“I am so happy to be here,” he said. “If I had known I would get this kind of reception, I’d have come every time the darn old legislature did something I didn’t want. This is a perfectly marvelous boost for an old politician’s ego.
“But I’m here for more than shaking hands—I mention that for the benefit of those two press fellows back there, but also because I want to see how this center is serving you, and even more importantly, I want to visit with some of you privately. So if you folks will let us, I’d like to tour the fine facility here and then borrow the center director’s office for some powwows with a few of you. I believe our fine director selected five or six people and asked if you would give your governor a little time. Did you get those invitations?”
About half a dozen old folks raised their hands, and the governor acknowledged them with a wave. Then, with the center director leading, he did a quick walk-through, kitchen to card room, and vanished into the director’s office.
The six selected oldsters were seated outside, but the big cop, who was known around the Capitol as “Moose” Morse, told us there would be no interviews, before or after, because the governor wanted no pressure on the old folks. So Whine shot some pictures, and we went back into the main room of the center to talk to the others.
We hung around for about an hour, but the governor didn’t reappear and the old folks he talked to apparently were whisked out the back door and taken home because we didn’t see them either. Figuring we could corral Schmid for comment on his talks at the next stop, which was after lunch, Whine and I returned to the hotel to have our midday meal—ah, that wurst and draft beer—and replenish his film supply. Whine, of course, complained that he didn’t have the right cameras for the job, and how come I didn’t tell him we’d be working close up in crowds.
The second stop, at a suburban church, went much the same as the first, except the people obviously were a cut richer than the folks at the inner city center and considerably less effusive in their greetings to the governor.
This time, we could follow him as he walked along among the lunch tables, shaking hands, but once again we were shut out when he closeted himself one on one with the oldsters. Before he went into the office, however, he stopped for a second to tell me, “Really, Bob, there’s no story here. I’m just talking to these people in private because I think they will be a little more open with me than in some kind of open forum.
“Besides,” he said with a wicked grin, “there’s no dog doing dirt in any of these places. All of the people so far have had nothing but good to saf about the centers.”
So we went back to the hotel with more pictures—a lot of quotes from people who didn’t talk to the governor—and appetites for another of those Deutschland Uber Arteries dinners.
That evening we went by Timmie’s, the local newspaper bar. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but Whine ran into a photographer acquaintance, and we sat down to trade some lies. Whine bragged that he had taken some potentially prize-winning pictures at the old folks’ centers we visited and the local shooter, Jim Raus, got considerably upset at the thought of a small-town visitor coming onto his turf to make hay.