Free P.S. by Studs Terkel Page A

night so long, long ago—was it 1937?—when he, a face in the crowd, hopped onto the running board of FDR’s open car as it came off the Outer Drive, newly built and dedicated. Sure, the Secret Service men handled him roughly. At first. Then they came to know him. And who didn’t? As he wistfully recalled: “I thought it was time the president met Vincent De Paul Garrity.”
    Sure, he was batboy for the Cubs. But that wasn’t it. Sure, he was office boy to Big Ed Kelly, the Daley of the day. But that wasn’t it. God Almighty, he even knew Walter Winchell. But that wasn’t it, either.
    Every man is Parsifal, seeking the Holy Grail. For Vince, to be known was not quite the ultimate meaning of life, but it was close enough. He went along with Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a purpose under Heaven. To be known for its own sake was not quite what this pilgrim, traveling through this world of woe, had in mind. Any clod seen often enough on the tube or heard over the airwaves, day to day, can achieve that. Consider Zsa Zsa Gabor, Merv Griffin, Howard Miller, or any humpty-dumpty, Mr. or Mrs., you’d care to name. Any clod can achieve that through well-publicized scandal. Consider Clifford Irving. Any clod can make it truly big as a “world statesman” in this nutty society, fused to a sudden, crazy event thousands of miles away: the Sino-Soviet Era of Hard Feeling.
Consider Henry Kissinger, Peter Sellers’s most deadly deft mimic.
    No, what Vince had in mind was wholly something else. He was determined to be known to every cop, every ambulance chaser, every city hall coat holder, as well as those whose coats were held, every hood, no matter how large or small his enterprise, every judge (not Supreme Court member, no, no, none o’ that; just the hardworking pie card, whose hard work—bringing in the sheaves—landed him, by virtue of this virtue, on the municipal court bench instead of in the defendant’s dock) and the sundry other worthies who have helped make this Frank Sinatra’s kind of town. And he was so known.
    Unlike most red-blooded American boys, Vince did not want to grow up to be president. He didn’t even want to be mayor. All he wanted to be was another Paddy Nash, “the power behind the t’rone” in the days of Big Ed. Not in Washington, D.C. No, no, none o’ that. Just here, in the true Fat City, bearing a wild Potawatomi name. His devout wish was to be known for one glory purpose: to be the ultimate clout on his own turf. And in some wondrous cockeyed way, he succeeded. At least in one memorable instance.
    Much has been written of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. And the Big Dumpling’s lack of élan. Little has been written of the 1952 Republican Convention in Chicago. And the Little Dumpling’s exquisite display of élan. Vince De Paul Garrity admired Richard J. Daley, as Little invariably admires Big. Yet, the worshipped, in this instance, was much more hip to the religion of clout than his idol. By a country mile.
    Historians, political scientists, and distinguished journalists may have written about that convention. But what do they know of the way of the world? Did Teddy White chronicle
that one, too? Dusty, dull, and pedestrian, all of them. What do they know of the comic art of clout? What do they know of the fine and lively art of Vincent De Paul Garrity?
    To begin. Red Quinlan, the most original and imaginative of Chicago television executives, was, at the time, station manager of WBKB, an affiliate of ABC. Derring-do was Red’s most singular and endearing attribute. While TV executives, not just here but throughout our promised land, were ciphers, superfluous in swivel chairs, Red risked. He made errors, the kind a wide-ranging shortstop, say Marty Marion, was impelled to make. Hiring Vince for this one occasion was not one of them.
    To refresh the memories of those old enough—and to offer unrecorded history for the newer people, who assume the world began with