Out of My Mind (35 page)

The most omnivorous reader I ever knew was Harry Reasoner. When he anchored the
CBS Evening News
, substituting for Walter Cronkite, he would sit in the chair before the broadcast, and while everyone else around him was frantically tending to last-minute details, Harry would sit quietly reading a novel. When the producer yelled, “Thirty seconds!”, Harry would finish the paragraph, put down the book and look into the camera ready to read the news from the TelePrompTer in front of him.

I don't mean to sound proud of not reading novels, nor do I advocate not reading them. I have respect and admiration for people who read fiction. I think of them as culturally and intellectually superior to myself.

Last Saturday, I looked out my office window, where normally I see nothing but a dull stretch of New Jersey across the North River, and there was the magnificent new
Queen Mary
practically in my back yard. It looks like a fifty-story hotel laid on its side in the water. One thing that struck me was that there were no portholes, just rectangular windows in every stateroom.

I couldn't remember when Mary was queen of England. I lived in London for a year. I like London and the British people, but the idea of a grownup country having a king or a queen is ridiculous. Even in a college history course, I never mastered all their names.

My almanac lists two Marys who were queens of England. The first was known as “Bloody Mary” for good reason. She must not have been the queen the majestic
Queen Mary
sitting outside my window was named after. There was another Mary, undistinguished, who co-ruled with her husband, William, who came to the throne in 1689. It seemed unlikely the ship was named for a co-queen, either.

The naming of the original
Queen Mary
may have been a fluke. The story is that in 1934 Cunard officials wanted to name their new ship
Queen Victoria
after Britain's longest reigning monarch. They went to King George V and said, “Can we name our ship for Britain's greatest queen?”

George, whose wife's name was Mary, said, “Certainly. My wife would be delighted.” So they named the ship
Queen Mary
after a woman who was only a queen by marriage.

To me, the name written as
Queen Mary 2
has no class anyway. At the very least, they should have used Roman numerals and called it the
Queen Mary II
. One of the biggest liners before the Marys and Elizabeths was called The Leviathan after the legendary water giant from Greek mythology. A better name.

When I was five, my aunt and uncle lived across the river from where the big ships dock and they always took me to the cliff overlooking the
harbor when one of them came in. The ships always had three smokestacks.
The Queen Mary 2
doesn't seem to have any smokestacks.

In about 1965, I sailed on the original
Queen Mary
with the great, though almost forgotten, Garry Moore. Cruising on a big ship is a luxurious way to cross the ocean, but dull. You just look out at the water, sleep and wait for the next meal. Fortunately, we ran into a monster storm. The propellers were coming up out of the water as we rolled over waves the size of mountains and that made things exciting. The captain said it was “the worst storm he had encountered in thirty-seven years at sea,” but afterward, when I told someone about it, he said captains always say a storm is the worst they've encountered in thirty-seven years.

I had an unusual experience with the
Queen Mary
several years later after it had been retired and parked in Long Beach, Calif., as a tourist attraction. We were filming the United States from a helicopter for a documentary and thought the docked
Queen
would make a good picture. It was warm and the sun was hitting me sitting in the bubble next to the pilot.

As we banked over the
Queen
for the cameraman, I dozed. I had a still camera, binoculars and a tape recorder in my lap. As I slumped over, my arm hit the latch and the door flew open. I didn't go out, but my camera, binoculars and recorder dropped like rocks into the water next to the old ship. I had removed a jacket with my wallet carrying my credit cards, licenses and cash. That went out but it was light enough so it floated over land. As the pilot landed the helicopter, a truck roared up next to the
Queen
. The driver was laughing and waving my jacket.

“I got it,” he yelled. “It drifted out over the road!”

Looking out at the new
Queen Mary
from my office window, I had a lot of memories.

France is one of the best names to drop when you want to impress people with where you've been. I have just been to France. The reason for my trip was the sixtieth anniversary celebration of the D-Day landings in Normandy. My special interest in the event stemmed from my own arrival on the beach June 10, 1944.

I entered Paris for the first time in the early morning of Aug. 25, 1944, as U.S. and French armored and infantry divisions took back the city from the Germans who had occupied it for four years. It was one of the great moments of my life and going to Paris is still exciting for me. I know just enough French to make a fool of myself.

Like most Americans, I'm ambivalent about the French. They can be maddening one minute and lovable the next, but one thing is certain: they are more French all day long than Americans are American. They live better than we do because they work to live. They don't live to work. They direct their lives toward simple pleasures. It accounts for why their food is incomparably better than ours.

I was surprised and pleased by the French attitude toward American veterans. Walking down the street in Bayeux, less spryly than I used to, and obviously old enough to have been there sixty years ago, two young Frenchmen came up to me, held out their hands and said, “Thank you.” I was moved and I don't move easily.

There were a few scattered demonstrations. One small group held signs saying, “WE LIKE AMERICANS BUT WE DON'T LIKE GEORGE BUSH.”

Tom Brokaw, the NBC News anchor, was staying in Bayeux and graciously invited this lower level CBS employee to a small dinner at the famous Lion D'Or restaurant. At the table were two Medal of Honor winners, Tom's attractive wife, Meredith, Jimmy Buffett the singer, Tom Hanks, the actor, and Steven Spielberg, the producer. This is not a circle I travel in and I was greatly impressed with myself for being there. I was further impressed by how easy Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg
were to talk to. Jimmy Buffett's wife was on my right, but I talked more to Tom Hanks because I was afraid of revealing that I was not very familiar with Jimmy's work.

We ate late and at about I0:30 there was a flurry of activity as two NBC producers came in and whispered to Brokaw. Tom immediately stood, raised his wineglass and said, “President Reagan has died. To the President!”

We drank a toast and Tom left to go on the air.

The next day was the actual anniversary of D-Day and there were ceremonies and speeches everywhere, including one by President Bush. I did not attend. Instead, I went away from the crowds and visited places in my memory from the days when I had been a reporter for the
Stars and Stripes
. There could have been no speech so eloquent as to match the emotion I felt driving alone into the town of St Lo. I had done the same thing under fire with elements of the First Infantry Division sixty years before.

During my six days in France, I ate in a dozen small restaurants. Each time, as I savored the food, I thought that, just by luck, I had found the best restaurant in town. That 's the thing about little French restaurants in little French towns. They are all the best restaurant in town.

At one point, I could hear the far-away strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” floating my way. I hear it played at the beginning of New York Giants football games and am immune to any sensation but listening to it in a foreign country, I always tingle.

When “The Star Spangled Banner” ended, another band in the distance struck up “La Marseillaise.” I listened intently and had an un-American thought. Not only is French food better than ours, but so is their national anthem. But that's as far as I want to go being nice to the French.

There are some things I've been meaning to do. For one thing, I've been meaning to make a list of the things I mean to do:

Considering how much time we spend doing it, little has been written about lying in bed. If you're not sleeping, it changes your whole attitude toward being there. Lying in bed asleep is bliss; lying in bed trying to get to sleep is agony.

It seems like a waste of time to spend seven or eight of every twenty-four of our hours in bed, but that's what we need. I usually get six or less, but then I get sleepy after lunch and ruin my night's sleep with a nap. A five-minute nap seems to mean as much as an hour's sleep at night. I realize I'm luckier than most because I've been on the job for so long at CBS that I have a couch in my office. I'd rather have the couch than a raise or another week off in the summer. Naps are one of the best things in life. They have all the good feeling of a night's sleep without taking so much time.

It seems wrong that most of us cannot lie in bed in the position that should be most restful—flat on our back. If I lie on my back, my mouth drops open and I snore or gurgle. Even worse, I have bad dreams. I only have bad dreams on my back.

I am puzzled over how God thought we'd lie down to sleep when he designed our bodies. It's apparent to me that He didn't mean us to lie on our backs or He wouldn't have me snore or have nightmares when I do it.

He didn't intend us to lie on our side either because He put our shoulders and our arms right where we would be lying. They fall asleep before we do because we put them in such a position under the body that blood can't circulate very well.

There are people who can sleep on their stomach but I don't know any of them intimately enough to have them show me how, so I have no firsthand knowledge of how they do it without suffocating.

There are people who are proud of themselves for preferring a hard bed. They call it “firm.” It isn't firm; it's hard, and I dislike hard mattresses. One bed I use in our house in the country is mushy soft. Perfect. It's like sleeping in a hammock.

In the Army, I had to make my bed, and that's what turned me off bed making. You were supposed to have the top blanket pulled so tight that if you dropped a quarter on it from three feet above, it would bounce. I could never do it. Margie sent me an air mattress when I was at Fort Bragg and that worked for a while. Sgt. Fishuk couldn't figure out why, all of a sudden, I was able to make my bed so that a quarter bounced when he flipped it. On the third day, he became suspicious. He found that I was using an air mattress and made me throw it away. Is it any wonder I am psychologically incapable of making a bed?