Excerpts from the book

Choose a subject:  Richard Nixon | Chicago Bears | Otto Kerner

Richard Nixon

My one-in-one experience with Nixon in 1966 came as a bit of an accident.

Nixon, having been beaten by an eyelash for the Presidency by John F. Kennedy in 1960, had returned to California to run for Governor in 1962. He was beaten, however, and presumably retired from politics with the declaration to the press that “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.”
 
By 1966, his “retirement” had ended. Nixon was crisscrossing the nation campaigning for Republican Congressional candidates and, he hoped, earning chits for the Presidential run he contemplated in 1968.

His advance staff, thinking a large entourage of media types would accompany Nixon for his swing around Illinois, had arranged for a DC-3 plane, which seats about 40 people.
 
I was the only member of the press to show up.

So for several hours, it was basically just Nixon and me (there might have been an aid or two with him).
 
Like Reagan, he was cordial. When Nixon learned I once had been a sportswriter, he lighted up. He was an avid fan, and much of our time was spent talking about sports.

In retrospect, I wish I had been more insightful at the time because I came to regard Nixon as one of the nation’s more brilliant Presidents.
   

The Chicago Bears

The Bears, always a contender, played then in Wrigley Field, just five blocks from my home.
 
If my memory is reasonably correct, I viewed all of their games from my time in sixth grade right through high school. And I saw them all for free…at least the second half. Indeed, attendance for the second half was a cinch!

Each Sunday the Bears were home, we kids would gather and plot how to sneak into the game.  Should we try to scale the wall? Or slide down the beer chute? Or…?

Once in a while, we made it in, but not often. BUT there always was the second half.

George Halas, the owner-coach of the Bears, had rightly concluded that hot dogs sold within Wrigley Field were less than good. So he permitted fans to leave the field at halftime to purchase hot dogs sold by vendors outside the park. Fans then would flash their ticket stubs and reenter the park.

We kids knew of this, so, once we had determined we could not gain entry for the first half, we would walk along the side of Wrigley Field to a place of high fan volume. That is a kind description for the men’s room.

“Can we have your stub?” we’d plead. Invariably, someone would give us one.

Once the first half ended, we’d buy a hot dog and, flashing our ticket stub, enter the park.

The ploy never failed.

Former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner

I considered Kerner a good friend and still think his imprisonment resulted not so much from Kerner’s indiscretions, as it did the aspirations of Jim Thompson to be Governor.
        
I think of two light hearted moments with Kerner.  

During one period, he had been under almost unrelenting criticism from the Chicago Tribune, then a highly conservative voice.  On this day, though, the Tribune had praised Kerner.

Laughingly, I asked Kerner about that.
        
“’Otto,’ I asked myself, ‘what have you done?’” was his response.

The other moment is more a story about me as a freeloader than it is about Kerner.  For years, using free tickets, I attended the Hambletonian, the Kentucky Derby of trotting races, while it was located in DuQuoin, IL.  Each year, my source, Elmer Polzin, the harness racing writer of the Chicago American, would come up with two tickets for me. They always were for great seats, right along the finish line.

I would invite a friend, the two of us would take the morning City of New Orleans train to DuQuoin, and return that evening.

In this year, my luck ran out…I thought. Elmer got the tickets, but they were far away from the sites to which I had become accustomed.  I asked another source for two additional tickets and received them. But they, too, were lacking.  Then the friend who was to accompany me encountered a scheduling difficulty…So I was off to DuQuoin, all by myself with four tickets in my pocket.

On the train, I was given yet another two tickets…not good…but, as I reached DuQuoin, I concluded that the best seats this year were not to be mine.

At the racetrack, as I prepared to go to my seat, Kerner and his entourage passed. Otto saw me and greeted me.

“Roy, why don’t you join me in my box?” he asked.

I did so, with six free tickets in my pocket.

(c) Excerpts copyright Roy Olson 2007