With our barn full of hay and our trench silo filled, we had enough feed to increase the herd to our planned thirty cows. Unfortunately, we did not have the money to buy the eight or nine first-rate cows we needed, but I had been toying around in the back of my mind with a rather odd scheme through which I suspected that I had a fair chance of getting hold of the money.
During the course of the summer, whenever I came into the house for lunch, I found my eldest daughter watching a certain daytime quiz program on TV. Since she was just four at the time, I had no idea why this program fascinated her so much, and I would frequently watch with her for a few minutes, as much interested in her reactions as I was in what was happening on the screen. However, two things occurred to me as I watched the program: the first was simply that successful contestants on the program were walking away with anywhere from one to ten thousand dollars. The other thing that intrigued me had to do with a growing suspicion that I could take the program. It was a simple enough game in which one played against an opponent whose mistakes were equally as valuable as one’s own successes. About all that was required to win, it seemed to me, was the requisite gall to get up there in the first place, a reasonably cool head, and precisely the sort of useless load of extraneous information with which I am burdened.
I mentioned idly to Dorothy that I felt I might possibly be able to tap the program. She agreed but we talked about it very little more because the difficulties in such a project were clearly insuperable at the time. It would require a trip of a week or two to New York which would mean that I would have to get someone to take care of the cows for that period. Such a jaunt would also entail expenses, and there being no guarantee of success, it would very probably turn out to be money down the drain. Finally, it was wholly out of the question in any case until the crops were in in the fall. So I put the scheme away but I did not entirely forget it. Whenever I stopped again to look at the program for a moment, the suspicion struck me with growing strength that this just might be my pigeon. It goes without saying that, in 1957, the quiz programs were unsullied by the breath of scandal; the breathtakingly cynical crookery would not come to light for a year or so more.
In time, of course, it had long been my intention to hire some kind of hand for the farm. Although not a pressing problem immediately, it would be an absolute necessity I knew, within the year. I had instituted no active search for such a fellow however. And so when Luther the livestock dealer informed me that fall that a feasible-seeming man had applied to him for employment, I was not at first too receptive to the idea. Luther had no job to offer the man nor did he have a house available for him to live in, a matter of crucial importance since the man had a fairly large family for whom housing was as important as employment. Our first farmhouse on the Kegley side of the farm was standing empty. Luther told me he had given this man my address and that he probably would be around to see me within a day or so.
In due course he turned up. Ned, as I shall call him, was of a distinctly unprepossessing appearance but there was a quality of gentleness about him which was appealing. He was from over the border in West Virginia and most of his life had been spent as a coal miner. He made no bones about the fact that he had hated and feared the life as a miner. He was, in fact, in some measure grateful to the economic conditions which had thrown him and many others permanently out of work. During one period of his life he had worked as a herdsman on a dairy farm so he was not without experience in handling milk cattle. As a worker his potentialities were distinctly limited. I understood him immediately in that he had accepted his lot in life and was without resentment towards it or desire to kick against the pricks. He was somewhere between forty and forty-five, unskilled, unlettered, and by virtue of such deprivations, sentenced immutably to a life of laboring for other men. I could see immediately and did not mind one bit that his basic defense against this intolerable situation was to gear down the pace of any task he undertook to the barest tolerable momentum. Having no inherent belief myself in the virtues of hard work for hard work’s sake, his psychological position struck me as being the only operative one available to him. I sensed also that he liked cows and would be good at dealing with them. Knowing my hillbillies very well by then, I quizzed him at length about his personal habits; the last thing in the world I wanted about the place was someone who would take five drinks of white whiskey and turn into a tear-ass monster. He assured me that he was not subject to temptations of the flesh and this turned out to be absolutely true. His sin was sloth and, as he was clearly not responsible for it, I accepted and forgave him his sloth from the beginning. He was, in a nutshell, a man totally and definitively broken on the wheel of life; he wanted nothing more than work he did not actively fear or hate and a dwelling for his family. Those shamefully minimal gifts were within my power to bestow and we struck a bargain. It was one which I never regretted; he was, throughout the time he worked for me, loyal, dependable and slow, which was more than anyone had the right to expect paying the prevailing wages of the time and the region.
Within a week, Ned and his family were installed in the Kegley house. It bothered me somewhat that their tenancy there would almost certainly return the house in time to its former hillbilly drear. But houses are better lived in badly than not at all. Within a short time, Ned’s two sons had found employment in the region and with their combined wages and the produce of the farm, they seemed happily solvent.
With Ned installed on the job and proving both dependable and responsible in dealing with the milking herd, my mind began to tinker more actively with the possibility of pulling off a successful raid on the TV quiz program. Strangely enough, what finally decided me to take the plunge was a suit of clothes.
One day that fall, I drove with my young friend, Clyde, to Roanoke on some errand or another. While walking through the business district of Roanoke, I chanced upon a tailoring shop which had the unmistakeable aura of quality and craftsmanship. As I stood looking in the window of this establishment, some long-denied aspect of dandyism gave birth to an immediate and irresistible longing for a suit. Years before, when Dorothy and I had embarked for Europe, I had been sartorially well-equipped. Time and attrition had reduced me to a sartorial nadir; a battered tweed jacket and aging grey flannel trousers were the best I could muster for festive occasions. For the rest, my habitual garments were the blue denim jacket and jeans then favored by Mr. H. Rap Brown.
Now, thus clad and unshaven, Clyde and I entered the tailor shop where we were regarded with suspicion by an aging Jewish tailor with a thick German accent. Upon being asked to show us samples of his work, he complied rather nervously. My nose had not misinformed me; he was indeed a craftsman. Without further ado, I ordered him to set to work upon a double-breasted suit of fine grey banker’s flannel shaped and cut in such a way and with certain modifications which would raise it from the level of the mundane. The cost of this magnificent garment was to be one hundred and fifty dollars. Even as I ordered the damned thing, I was aware and guilty of the fact that it was an entirely unjustified and whimsical purchase. Clyde was highly amused at the entire business and listened in with great enjoyment as I gave the tailor his instructions. Leaving a deposit, we quit the shop and Clyde immediately said, “John, what in the name of heaven, you gonna do with a hundred and fifty dollar suit?” On the dubious basis that the unjustifiable must be justified, I replied that I was going to wear it up to New York to win some money on a television quiz program. Clyde received this news with a gentlemanly reticence in regard to judgment and demanded when I would be going. I replied that I would be off as soon as I had my suit.
Due to certain difficulties with the tailor, this did not occur as I wished. Magnificent craftsman though he was, he was used to catering to the taste of Roanoke businessmen. The effect I was desirous of achieving was roughly that of an Englishman in the Tattersalls enclosure at Ascot on the day of an unimportant race meeting. The tailor, however, seemed to want me to be turned out in the style of the late Sewell
Avery. After a month of wrangling, some sort of compromise was reached, the effect of which was not bad at all. In possession of my suit and with all bridges behind me, I prepared to leave for New York. Both Dorothy and Clyde saw me off with the worried looks of those watching a loved one bite off more than he can chew. I myself was extremely dubious about the entire venture. However, I assumed a look of confidence as I boarded the Greyhound bus, that mode of travel having been chosen to assuage my conscience in regard to unjustified sartorial expenditure. With true Celtic schizophrenia, I was prepared to take it out of my hide in order to put it on my back.
Twelve bone-shaking hours later, I arrived in New York where I sought out one of those dingy hostelries in the West Forties in which the very air in the lobby smelled nefarious. In the safety of my six-dollar-a-day room, I hung my suit up carefully and gave thought to my plan of campaign. Now that I was here, just how the hell was I going to go about getting on the quiz program? Abandoning as too simple the obvious approach of going directly to the proprietors of the program to seek status as a contestant, I spent the day fruitlessly trying to enlist aid in my quest by calling my literary agent and various old friends and acquaintances in the advertising business. Such aid was not forthcoming and after an evening spent crawling the Third Avenue pubs, I awoke knowing that I would have to take the bull by the horns.
It turned out to be surprisingly easy. I presented myself at the office of the show’s owners and producers where a full waiting room made it plain that many others were seeking the same bonanza as I. A bored receptionist gave me a form to fill out and a short, multiple-choice quiz to fill in. I did these tasks rapidly and returned the papers to the receptionist. Seemingly, the information garnered from this form and test provided clear clues as to the desirability of a given candidate because within an astonishingly short time I was shown into a palatial office and there scrutinzed by a young man with exceedingly larcenous eyes. We chatted for half an hour or so about this and that, after which he laconically informed me that I was to hold myself in readiness for a call summoning me to the wars. This, he said, would take place anywhere from four days to a week depending upon the rate of attrition among the contestants presently before the camera.
It was, in fact, actually a bit less than a week before the call came instructing me to present myself the following morning at the studio, a former theater in the Times Square area. I was there on the dot of ten clad in my suit which, by now, I had imbued with the full supernatural powers of a talisman. At the studio, I was briefed by the same young man who had interviewed me previously. He could not have been more friendly but his eyes were no less larcenous than before. After warning me that I would probably not get to do my turn that day, he spoke to me very seriously about a point which he stressed as having the utmost importance. Should one be fortunate enough to remain at bat for several days, at the close of each day’s show, one would of course reply when the M.C., a great flatulent mass of glossy hair and shining teeth, demanded if it were one’s intention to proceed. What the producer (which was the young man’s role) now stressed with Biblical sincerity was that I must inform him of my intention to proceed or not to proceed before each day’s show, and that my answer to the MC would be a meaningless charade. I agreed but with certain private reservations; how would such a thing, after all, benefit me? All powdered and painted like a whore, I passed two rather strained hours that morning in a waiting room off stage with two other aspirants to easy money; all three of us were nervous to a point of hysteria. But I did not get on that day. I had warned Dorothy that I probably would be on that day and, when released after the show, I telephoned her to tell her what she already knew: that I had not been on the show. There was more than a touch of hysteria on her end of the line: “Where were you?” she demanded in a voice a full octave higher than usual. “Tomorrow,” I replied tersely, “I’ll be on tomorrow and I’ll call you after the show.” She rang off, clearly under considerable strain.
I made my debut the next day about halfway through the show. Repainted and powdered, I made my entrance into the area which was white hot with lights. I had one small task to perform which I could not put off because I did not know whether I would be up there five minutes or five days. I was determined to honor my promise of a wink made to Fred Cline a couple of years earlier and the first thing I did was locate the camera with the red light lit and wink at it as hard as I could. The monstrous MC raised an eyebrow at this but went on with his mawkish introduction of me as I stood there with an idiotic grin on my face, muttering silent prayers to my suit. After that we had a brief and horrid moment of show biz hi-jinks during which I had to play straight man to the MC while he made a terrible joke upon which I had been briefed earlier. Then the game began. I shot down the defending champ and one other postulant and quit the day six hundred bucks richer. Greed now running rampant in my soul, I replied with an enthusiastic affirmative when the M.C. demanded if I would return on the morrow.
However, the truly interesting thing happened after the show. The young producer approached, his usual bland, laconic air replaced by something like genuine excitement. By a strange alchemy, and measured by a peculiar standard that I did not understand, it appeared that I had been some sort of success. Some odd note of approval which the producer watched for carefully had been granted me by the audience. He asked me to lunch and I accepted, saying that I had to call my wife first. Dorothy was very nearly incoherent with nervousness; she told me that she and Clyde and the children had watched together, interrupted by many querulous cries of “What’s Daddy doing on the TV?” from Linda. With the nonchalance suitable to a new TV personality, I assured her that all would be well.
I rang off and went to lunch with the producer. To this day, I wonder how I would have reacted if I had known at what an extreme point of moral danger I stood. A year later, it would come out that this very show and its more flamboyant evening prime time big brother were the original source and worst offenders in the TV Quiz Program scandal. And I am equally certain that, from the day of that luncheon with the producer, I was being evaluated as a potential player of a rigged hand on the big time evening show owned by his firm. Nothing was ever said to me but I also never saw that producer have more than two words with another contestant, let alone take one to lunch. Then, too, his attitude underwent a subtle change; he showed me that same peculiar deference employed by a pederast out to corrupt a boy. Whether I have my suit (now, alas a victim of moths) to thank or what, I believe to this day that it was a miracle that I did not get involved in some very murky waters. And I am not all that sure of my character to say with exactitude that I would not have taken the plunge if invited. I kept my purity through chance; not the slightest odor of hanky-panky made itself felt to me until the entire sordid mess came out a year or so later.
As I recall, my tenure upon the program from start to finish lasted about a week. And I am not entirely sure that the questions were not being rigged a bit in my favor. I have no doubt whatsoever from the way I was treated that the management wanted me to keep on winning. I made some horrendous errors. One that still rankles involved the demand for the female star of “Born Yesterday.” With aplomb and without hesitation, I replied, Billie Holiday. Another infirm area of mine was American history and I very nearly came unstuck playing eeny meeny miney moe with a question the answer to which was either Jackson or Johnson. But on the whole I remained alive and prospered mightily. Each day after the show, I spoke with Dorothy on the telephone. Both she and Clyde, she reported, were in an advanced state of nervous collapse and everybody along our road was staying home from work to watch the show. The deep dichotomy she entertained towards the whole project was perfectly posed during one day’s telephone call when she said, “You’re doing fine but you make so many mistakes.”
All told, I was on the program about five days. At the close of the fourth day, I was roughly $2,800.00 to the good. The amount I needed for the purchase of new cattle was three thousand dollars, give or
take a hundred. Now the hand of fate prepared to deal me one of those buffets that, in the end, turn out to be a kiss. That year was one in which the nation and New York in particular underwent a dreadful epidemic or something called Asiatic Flu. As I awoke that morning of my fifth day as a contestant, I knew immediately that I was a very ill fellow indeed. I had the works: chills, burning fever, and a general overall feeling of not caring whether school kept or not. Nevertheless, greed is a strong goad and I arose, stumbled into my suit and took a taxi to the studio. The preceptors of this charade with which I had involved myself took one look at the reeling apparition I represented and shipped me over to the infirmary of the network presenting the show. There, my temperature was taken and found to be 103. I was crammed full of drugs which made me even groggier, and transported back to the studio where I sat in a dream-like haze as my cosmetics were applied. The hour’s wait until the show went on the air at noon was sheer torture. Yet oddly enough, once on stage, I came to life like the proverbial fire horse. According to the producer’s instructions, I had informed him before the show that it was my intention to remain on the show. In fact it had not seriously occurred to me to quit until I was shot down. About halfway through the program that day, however, I began to ask myself what real point there was in remaining on the show longer? If I triumphed on that program, I could quit about thirty-five hundred dollars to the good, which meant that I had enough money to buy my cattle and that I had had a damned good time and made my expenses to boot. If, on the other hand, I remained, I could theoretically in one losing game both be eliminated and lose a portion of my winnings. And even though I kept on winning that day, I could not kid myself that I was at my sharpest; a temperature of 103 is not exactly the happiest of circumstances in the situation I was in. So, as the last game of the show began, I decided that, win, lose or draw, I was going to resign. At the end of each show, there was a painful little ritual designed to inculcate an air of spurious excitement. As one won the game, the organist would play a few euphoric trills and the MC would flash his giant, white teeth at the audience and shout, “The winner and still champion is our farmer-novelist from Virginia, Mr. John Sherry.” Then, pausing to milk the maximum effect from the moment, he would give me the full benefit of his charms and say, “And now let’s find out if our winner and champion elects to stay and risk his championship tomorrow.” Then, another pause and the question to which he already knew the answer: “Tell us, Mr. Sherry, do you stay and play or take your winnings of thirty-six hundred dollars and go?” Falling for some unknown reason into a British idiom, I replied, “I’ll have the money.” (What I was saying, of course, was that very American thing: I’ll take the money and run.) The combination of the unfamiliar idiom and having received an answer contrary to his expectancy, threw the M.C. into momentary confusion and he stuttered out an affronted, “W … what?” Correcting my speech, I said, “I’ll take the money and go, please.” The M.C.’s professional aplomb reasserted itself immediately and after a brief, dagger-like glance (he was one of the show’s owners), he bared the ivories at the audience again and said, “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, our champion elects to retire undefeated like a true wise man.” A few more euphoric trills from the organ and some fatuous waves to the audience and we were off the air. The M.C. turned and walked away without saying a word. The producer was standing in the wings as I came off the stage and he turned his back and pointedly ignored me. I was not having any of that; I wanted to find out where the pay-off window was. When I asked him about it, he turned and regarded me with a distinctly baleful eye before replying coldly, “I don’t know anything about that part of it; the network will get in touch with you.” He then turned and walked away. (In point of fact, I had to put a lawyer on the case before I finally collected a couple of months later; as anyone who has ever had dealings with the film world knows: show biz cash is very difficult to pry loose from the source.)
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