by Lillian Ross
The whole phenomenon is rather good-natured. The little girls don’t take it entirely seriously. Neither does Cassidy.
There were a lot of little girls hanging around the motel that Cassidy checked into before his appearance at the Nassau County Coliseum. We talked to a number of them. One group banged on his door and woke him up. They then called him on the phone to apologize and woke him up again. Another group denounced the behavior of the first group as “teenile.” A third group waylaid us and made us write down their names in our notebook, so that we wouldn’t forget to convey their love to Cassidy. Our notebook says:
mary and heather and vanessa and janet and sherry and nancy and debby and cynthia love david
The concert was sold out. As soon as Cassidy appeared onstage, the little girls in the audience began to scream and to take pictures. All the cameras were equipped with flash cubes, and all the flash cubes went off one after another, squirting tiny bursts of light in Cassidy’s direction. Flash cubes are a new form of visual applause. We admired the girls’ ability to do two things at once. During one of Cassidy’s songs, some of the girls rushed the stage. Most of them were headed off by several college-football players hired to augment the Coliseum’s security staff, but one of them managed to grab Cassidy around his neck and grapple with him for fully thirty seconds.
We interviewed Cassidy after the concert. He was sitting on a bed in another motel, wrapped in a towel. His clothes hadn’t caught up with him yet. He is a small man—short, and narrow in the shoulders. He sits with his shoulders hunched. He had a bruise on his back, and he said that the girls who had rushed the stage had frightened him. He said that he liked most rock music but that the years 1963, 1964, and 1965 had been the most important ones in forming his musical tastes. He said that he admired the Rolling Stones but found their recent albums disappointing. He said that Paul McCartney was his favorite songwriter and that in his opinion McCartney outranked Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hammerstein. He said that after he’d played the Garden he and his staff had sat around trying to figure out how much G.E. and Sylvania had made on flash cubes during his concert. The figure they came up with was nine thousand dollars.
1972
ALMANAC — Garrison Keillor
IN a world that is constantly changing and sometimes chaotic, the World Almanac and Book of Facts is a small buoy indeed but one that, whenever we stop to read it, ties us up for several hours. No matter how many trees went into the current edition, we think it was worth it. We cannot always get out into the woods when we need to, but we can read the Almanac: a thousand and forty pages, and each one contains something of interest, including pages 624 (“New Zealanders Eat Most Meat Per Capita”), 385 (“The Dynasties of China”), 215 (“Midnight to Dawn Best Time to See Meteors”), and 400 (“Widely Known Americans of the Present”).
We examined the list (two hundred and ninety names) of widely known present Americans, and were sixty-three per cent pleased to discover that we know—or have heard of—every single one of them, from Ralph Abernathy to Ronald Ziegler, including the slightly more narrowly known, such as Derek Bok, Ray C. Bliss, and Lewis F. Powell. We were less than fully pleased only because we had just looked through “Entertainment Personalities of the Past” and drawn so many blanks.
We enjoy reading a list of towns and cities of twenty-five hundred or more population as much as the next person, and the names of Eutaw, Paragould, West Mystic, Frostproof, Palos Verdes Estates, Toast, Sweet Home, Midlothian, Ho Ho Kus, Moosic, Snohomish, and Aiea are, as always, a pleasure. Our greatest pleasure, however, is the collation and comparison of information. It took us less than forty-five minutes, for example, to figure out that the United States military has 292,491 commissioned officers on active duty in the Almanac; that there are more such officers than miles of railroad tracks in the entire country, members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, or square miles of Texas; that, assuming each officer to be ten feet tall, the entire officer corps put end to end would reach for 2,924,910 feet; and that at a rate of five hundred and fifty foot-pounds per second it would require a 5,318-pound horse to raise them a dollar with a pair (against which the odds are four to three) on the second hand. With a little more time, one could also calculate the number of famous religious leaders per mountain higher than fourteen thousand feet (including Colorado’s Mount Conundrum), the estimated length of all home runs hit by major-league batters in 1972 in comparison to total yards gained passing and the distance between New York and Pittsburgh, and how much water has passed over Niagara Falls since last we met in terms of the number of persons that this water would supply if they were willing to drink it.
We do not recommend that you purchase a 1973 World Almanac; we do not recommend that you not purchase one. While it is good, of course, to have “Some Major Events and Trends of 1972” (page 35) at your fingertips, your old Almanac may be just as useful. After all, some things simply don’t change. North America continues to lead all other continents in the number of telephones; the last winner of the Triple Crown is still Citation; the easternmost point in the United States is still West Quoddy Head, Maine; the major export product of Scotland is still whiskey; the Pope is still a Catholic; and Armenia still owes us money from the First World War. On the other hand, the amount of that debt keeps rising, and one needs a new almanac each year to get the latest figures. As of June 30, 1972, the Armenian war debt was $43,536,945.30, of which $31,577,045.30 was interest. According to the Treasury Department, only seventeen dollars and forty-nine cents has been paid back to us. The capital of Armenia is Erevan. The First World War lasted from 1914 to 1918. No matter how you look at it, seventeen dollars and forty-nine cents is not a lot of money, especially if you’re paying that kind of interest.
1973
MAYS AT ST. BERNARD’S — Lillian Ross
A YOUNG friend of ours in the fifth grade at St. Bernard’s School, on East Ninety-eighth Street, called us up the other day to tell us that Willie Mays was coming there that afternoon to talk to the students about baseball. Our friend offered to cover the story for us and to write it after he came home from the dentist. His report arrived, as promised, and here it is:
Willie Mays spoke to the boys in the gym, where about a hundred and twenty-five of us sat around on the floor. Willie Mays stood up, looking very individual. He has great posture. He wore a beautiful suit of blue-and-white checks and a bright-blue shirt with a tie of many colors. Our headmaster, who usually wears a tweed jacket, was standing on the sidelines, and he kept smiling at Willie Mays happily. One of our older teachers stood at the entrance to the gym, peeking in, and she looked puzzled but terribly interested. Willie Mays said he loved to talk about baseball and the best way of talking about it now would be for him to answer questions. Everybody in the place, almost, raised his hand to ask a question, so Willie Mays started with a guy on one side, and then seemed to work his way over to the other side. The first question was “How come you don’t use an aluminum bat?” Willie Mays said he liked wood better. He has a surprisingly light-sounding voice. He talked so fast, and the guys asked so many questions so fast, I caught about one question in five. I’ll give you the questions I caught, with the answers Willie Mays gave:
Q: “What’s the greatest play you ever made?”
A: “The greatest play I ever made was in high school or kindergarten. It was my first hit.”
Q: “Do you think you could beat Babe Ruth’s record?”
A: “I don’t think I could beat anybody’s record with my shoulders and legs in the shape they’re in now.”
Q: “Did you ever make a triple play?”
A: “Not yet.”
Q: “When did you first know you were good?”
A: “Every time the ball went up in the air, I felt I could catch it.”
Q: “What was your longest home run?”
A: “Well, I always felt this way—I never worry as long as the ball goes over the fence.”
Q: “Did you want to
get traded?”
A: “I don’t have anything to say about it. My gosh, man! Do you want to get homework? You don’t have anything to say about it—right, man?”
Q: “Who is your favorite pitcher?”
A: “It never made any difference to me as long as I could hit the balls.”
Q: “Who’d you hit your six-hundredth home run off of?”
A: “Mike Corkins, of San Diego. Now, you didn’t think I’d remember that, did you?”
Q: “What made you become a baseball player?”
A: “I just liked baseball.”
Q: “How many kids do you have?”
A: “One. He’s thirteen.”
Q: “How many good seasons have you had?”
A: “Eight.”
Q: “Which do you like better—grass or that composition stuff they play on?”
A: “I like grass better. I know my legs and what they do according to the way the ball bounces. But on this new stuff you find the ball bounces all kinds of ways. It’s not reliable. On grass, you know.”
Q: “Do you feel sorry about anything you ever did in baseball?”
A: “The way I feel about anything I’ve ever done, I feel you can’t look back. Always look forward.”
Q: “How do you keep yourself in such good condition?” (Our gym teacher asked this one.)
A: “I sleep a lot. I don’t eat too much. I eat a big breakfast—three eggs, sausage, coffee, juice. All that kind of stuff. But I eat only two meals a day. Most guys eat three. Some eat four. I play golf. I walk a lot. But eating and sleeping, those are the main things. I sleep during the day. I don’t mean you have to sleep. Just lie down. Rest. Relax yourself. Do you guys realize how old I am?”
“Forty-two!” (This was yelled by almost everybody in the gym.)
Q: “What do you do when you’re sitting on the bench?”
A: “We talk a lot.”
Q: “How long did it take before you got famous?”
A: “I never think about things like that. When you’re playing a sport, you don’t worry about being famous. You think about catching the ball, doing the best you can at that particular moment.”
Q: “Do you think baseball is a rough sport?”
A: “It is a rough sport, man! That ball is coming at you at ninety miles per hour. Man, that’s rough.”
Willie Mays wrote a lot of autographs after he stopped answering questions. Then he drove away in his car, which is a pink limousine with a white roof.
1973
ELSEWHERE — Lola Finkelstein and Lillian Ross
CHRISTMAS shopping is almost a science with our friend Lola Finkel-stein, who has been educating us in this and that recently.
“The most exciting way to shop, and the most fun way, is elsewhere,” Lola told us the other day. “The whole point is to get what other people don’t and where they don’t. For example, where do I get a Christmas present for my kitchen?”
“What Christmas present for your kitchen, Lola?” we asked.
“Wallpaper. I don’t want a wallpaper you see in all the trendy, newly done homes. So I get wallpaper at Zuber Rieder, in Paris, on the Boulevard Beaumarchais. There’s no question but that American wallpapers are superior in all the practical ways. But for my kitchen I got a classic Portuguese tile, in light blue and white, on heavy glazed paper. I packed it in a suitcase and took it home with me. It weighed a lot. My children think I’m nutty, and the paperhanger said, ‘Not another of those terrible French papers that fall apart when you pick them up!’ But the whole point is that I like it when I look at it. Now, my friend Mimi, who lives in Switzerland, comes to New York to do a lot of her shopping. She wants Woodson wallpaper, because she wants an American wallpaper that doesn’t look like traditional European walls. She gave her daughter’s bedroom a present of Woodson wallpaper showing a stylized bouquet of spring flowers, with bedspread and curtains made to match. But my friend Angelica, who lives in Rome, goes to London for wallpaper. Colefax & Fowler. Angelica lives in a fourteenth-century palazzo, and it’s believed to be the only palazzo in Rome with English wallpaper. You know—those romantic, bucolic motifs, with lots of shepherdesses and animals. Mimi goes to South America for her doorknobs, but maybe that’s too special.”
“What about presents for people?” we asked.
“Well, take panty hose,” Lola said. “Mimi wears panty hose exclusively from Saks, but I get mine at Marks & Spencer in London. When I look at mine, I have the feeling that I’m wearing hose from an English institution known for the best quality at the lowest prices. Everybody in England calls it Marks & Sparks. And you can return anything there. Or take underwear. For our husbands. My husband used to wear Sulka cotton-mesh undershorts, which he bought in Paris, but after the dollar was devalued, Sulka stopped carrying this type of cotton undershorts. So Mimi sends my husband cotton undershorts from Zimmerli, made in Switzerland. I found cotton undershorts in Marks & Sparks, but my husband won’t wear any except Zimmerli’s. Mimi’s husband likes wool undershirts only. There’s only one place that makes them, and it’s in Rome. So Angelica gets them as a present to send to Mimi’s husband in Switzerland. Angelica’s husband won’t wear any underwear except underwear from Macy’s. So I go to Macy’s and get him that as a present and ship it to him in Rome. You get the idea?”
“Yes, Lola,” we said. “But isn’t that a very expensive way to shop?”
“Not when you get it all together,” Lola said. “Now, my husband likes Lanvin pajamas, made in Paris. They’re cut slimmer than American pajamas, and you don’t get all that flapping around. I went to buy some and was absolutely appalled at the price. So I sent one pair of the Lanvin pajamas to Ascot Chang, in Hong Kong—he’s a well-known shirtmaker—and he copies the Lanvin pajamas for my husband. It helps even things out. Or people in London go to Mothercare, where you get very inexpensive, high-quality things for babies, and send me underpants for my granddaughter, while I’m getting Carter’s baby stuff for Angelica in Rome. The general idea is that I like European things because using them reminds me every day of pleasant experiences. But Mimi feels there’s much more variety here, and she is bored by what enchants me. Mimi buys her kids jeans from Sears Roebuck and wash-and-no-iron stuff from Bloomingdale’s. Angelica gets her kids cotton knits at Bloomingdale’s. But I get kids’ clothes at—”
“Marks & Sparks?” we asked quickly.
“You’re catching on,” Lola said. “I go to Kids in Gear, on Carnaby Street, once in a while, too. And I get Scotch smoked salmon in London—at the Safe-way supermarket on the King’s Road. There’s a very nice girl named Maureen who is the fish girl, and she cuts and slices the salmon like an artist and places each slice on a separate piece of paper and wraps it up beautifully, so that it can travel in my suitcase. Mimi likes to eat stuff from California. I get her Fun in the Sun Marshmallow Candies from Palm Springs. Angelica likes Nabisco graham crackers and Ring-Dings—stuff like that. But I like to munch on McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, which a London friend sends me from Harrods. And Mimi sends me chocolates from Zurich, while I send her Mary Jane peanut-butter bars from here.”
“Anything else?” we asked.
“Notebooks,” Lola said immediately. “Mimi won’t write in anything except those spiral things I buy for her in Woolworth’s. And Angelica wants Brett notebooks. You know, those black-and-white sort of speckled composition books with the hard covers—the kind we had in school. But I use notebooks from Smythson, in London, or Prisunic, in Paris. Everyone who knows me knows I like notebooks with graph paper—even index cards of graph paper, which you get in France. People send me those every December.”
“Very nice,” we said.
“Very,” Lola said. “It’s important to keep up people’s morale. You’ve got to find things that make people feel cheered up by something. I’ve got a friend, a writer, who won’t write on anything except Blokk-Notes. From Norway. These Blokk-Notes just happen to make this writer feel cheered up. So why not?”
“Agreed,” we said.
“Every Christmas, Angelica sends me some tortellini and other pasta right out of Rome, and that really cheers me up,” Lola said. “I bought some Chinese tennis balls, made in Shanghai, and my problem now is to find someone who really prefers them.”
1973
“WONDER BAR” — Anthony Hiss
ROLLING home from the best Christmas party of the year (at Perez Printing, a small print shop in SoHo), we saw a gladsome sight: “Wonder Bar,” a hilarious old Jolson movie that practically never gets shown in theatres, was playing at the Bleecker Street Cinema. How could this be? We dashed inside and met Les Rubin, president and founder of Movie Musicals, Inc., at the Bleecker Street Cinema—a brand-new outfit dedicated to renting the B. St. C. on weekends for the purpose of showing superior old movies.
“I just had to do this,” said Les Rubin, whose background is: social director at a bungalow colony in the mountains; assistant manager of the first Jay Goldin campaign for comptroller, in 1969 (the time he ran as “the young dynamo”); public relations. “I have a little girl. I want to show her all the great movies. But ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ can only be seen at 3 A.M. on television. What should I do? Get her up? And have my wife holler, ‘It’s school tomorrow’? So here we are. This is our second weekend. And what has everybody said? ‘Les, how could you? The worst two weekends in the year. First the ice storm. Then Christmas.’ But, I’ll tell you, we took in three hundred dollars last Sunday. People came in, and their boots and shoes were all salt. Eight students from Adelphi came all the way from Garden City. Look, this place is not for cinema buffs. I am only running movies I think are good enough to be just plain entertainment.”