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To. The number one story on the countdown and things I promised not to tell. Which is now our humorous relief from the day to day series of nightmares from which we cannot wake. I saw something I had literally not seen in years in New York the other day. And it brought back a flood of extraordinary memories that once weren't extraordinary at all. The Thing I saw was a telephone attached to some sort of piece of metal itself, attached to some sort of pole like support coming out of the ground. There was a little hole at the top of this above the. What was it called? Receiver. That's right above the thing you. The handset, the thing you put next to your ear and talked into and listened to. There was a thing above it, a hole in which you were supposed to put. I don't know, Taffy. Oh, no. Coins. That's what it was. Okay, I'll stop. The number of memories that came flooding back to me about this payphone started with an episode this time of year, late spring, early summer, 1988, 89, 90. Maybe as late as 1991, when I emerged from Grand Central Station on an late spring, early summer day, visiting from Los Angeles on my way to see my folks. Walked out of Grand Central Station at midday, around noon, onto 42nd Street. And for only the second time in my life, I saw the Pedestrian traffic of 42nd street stop and stare. And they were staring at me because something inside the bag I was carrying had made a noise. And I had reached in and picked it out and started talking. And literally everybody stopped. I think you can guess what it was. I think you need to hear the background first to understand why it had that impact on people. The payphone had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. I used to call home from school on a payphone at Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York, to see and ask my mother if the mail had come yet. And the baseball cards I had ordered, the 1910 baseball cards, were in the mail. So I had something to look forward to when I got home, something to get me through the rest of the day. In school as a reporter, I was part of near fist fights, and actually once saw a fist fight between a news reporter from the Westinghouse all news radio station in New York, wins, and the CBS all news radio station in New York, wcbs. I actually saw them come to shoving and throwing punches. Happily. They were radio people. They missed over a payphone at a news story that I was also covering. They had to get live on the air. And that's how you did it in 1979, 1980. Hell, in 1990, the number of times, the biggest task of the day from a story I was covering in New York, primarily in radio, but even later in television, was the sprint. First off, finding where the payphones were outside the luncheon where the thing was being announced, or outside the breaking news or on the street, where was the nearest payphone? And then where was the nearest payphone after that in case there were six reporters lined up for that payphone and the sprint to it afterwards? And could you leave the press conference before it was officially over so you could get to the phone first? That's the way it was. It wasn't just a convenience of calling in, as I did on my way to the radio network every Saturday and asking my fellow employees at the Ark RKO radio network in 1981 if they wanted something because I was stopping at Arby's and I would bring in no drinks, but I'd bring in all the burgers I could carry or whatever. This time it was McDonald's one week and Burger King the next. And the reason I did this was because there were no restaurants open in Times Square on the weekend, so they couldn't go anywhere nearer than a 20 minute walk to get food. No restaurants open in Times Square. We barely had electric light in 1981. Everything was in black and white. They hadn't invented color yet. Okay. It had been with me a long time. And it emerged later on in one of the great series of practical jokes, one of which I was a victim of in 1981, no, 1982, at the football strike. I was covering it for CNN. And I walked in once and sat down because I wasn't going to have a camera crew for quite a while and found Ed Garvey, the head of the union, sitting outside the press conference that was being conducted by Jack Donlin, the Boston born guy who talked like that. The negotiator for the National Football League was holding a news conference and I sat outside with Ed because I already knew what he was saying and you could hear him through the walls. Anyway, had one of those voices, one of those South Station PA Voices. Let's go bargain. So Ed and I are talking and out of nowhere a small woman with glasses appears and says, excuse me, excuse me, my name is Jane Miller. I'm with CBS News. Does. Does either of you know where Ed Garvey, the head of the football players union, is? I was told he was going to be here. I was sitting with Ed Garvey. We shot each other looks from behind our glasses and I said, I haven't seen him. And Garvey went, I don't know where that son of a bitch is. We went on with Jane for quite a while and led her quite a merry dance about how Garvey had left for Washington. Oh, no, I just came from Washington. I'LL get fired if I don't get an interview with him and Garvey. And I took turns calling Ed, calling Garvey a liar, a manipulator, a thief, a crook and a drunk. Ed added that part. He's a drunk too. Did you know that? Finally, something, and I don't remember what it was, caused me to burst into laughter. And Ed said, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm Ed Garvey. How can I help you? I'll give you an exclusive interview. So it worked out well for Jane, and she forgave Ed Garvey immediately. She did not, however, forgive me. Several weeks later, the talks in the football strike of 1982 had moved to Hunt Valley, Maryland. Cockeysville. If you wanted to go by what it said on the map, fitting a location for the football talks that went on and on and on and on and on. Cockeysville, Maryland. The Hunt Valley at Cockeysville. The number of potential mispronunciations and slips on the air that I avoided using. Cockeysville and Hunt Valley. I lost count after the first 2000. I was on the phone with CNN doing an Update for the 11:00 news, the 11:00 sportscast we used to do because I didn't have a camera crew, a running theme of my days at cnn. Again, we were out in the wilds of Maryland. It would be a waste of a camera crew to give me a camera crew all the time. They would just stop by when they were within an hour of the place and I would do a stand up and hope that my stand up report would somehow hold until it appeared at 11 o'clock. But that night something happened. We couldn't use the stand up. I had recorded eight hours previously. And so instead I was on the phone on a payphone and I'm talking to Fred Hickman and Nick Charles and I see Jane Miller of CBS News still burning, seething with resentment because of the joke I played on her. And I was only half of that. Garvey was talking about himself in the third person, pretending not to be him. I was just going along with it. I may have started it. Jane simply smiled at me, realized from the monitor behind the bar where we were all based at the Hunt Valley Inn in Cockeysville, Maryland. She realized that I was on the air live on that telephone, on that payphone because the monitor had a picture of me. And it said live on the phone from Cockeysville, Maryland, at the football talks. CNN Sports Keith Olbermann. So Jane Very sweetly smiled at me and reached over and I didn't know what she was going to do. She pressed the button on top of the phone and I was disconnected right in the middle of my live report on cnn. Payphones may have been important to you at some point if you were old enough and understand now you really need to be at least 45 to have used a payphone on a regular basis. Well, maybe, maybe less than that. But I think 45 is probably a good number and to have used it as an adult, to use a payphone as an adult. I don't know the last time I used one, maybe sometime around 1987 or 88. There's one other professional concern though, my point being that it's not just your use as a person to call in an emergency or just to call because you're not home and you don't have a phone with you. I mean, who's going to have a phone with them? Hell of a long cord professionally. It also is involved in one of the great blooper tapes of all time. When Pat Summerall, the famous broadcaster, football announcer and father of the chief of staff at the White House, that won't cost him any time in hell. Pat Summerall is on the phone live from Madison Square Garden, reporting on a basketball tournament in his role as the first sports director of the aforementioned CBS all news station in New York, wcbs. Pat is on the phone talking about the double header at Madison Square Garden, which they used to have all the time, college basketball being a big thing in those days in New York. Pat Summerall is talking and suddenly you hear a hiss and a pre recorded voice of the universal operator, the sweet voice of the woman going, pardon me for interrupting. Please deposit 10 cents for an additional two minutes. And then the thing would go off, the recording stopped, the anchorman burst into laughter, Pat Summerall burst into laughter. And he said, anyway, Columbia won the first game and I'll get back to you, Harvey, and, and I'll say, I'll get back to you as soon as I can get the operator off the phone. One of the great bloopers of all time. And I did not do it justice. But it's pretty funny if you remember what a payphone was. So now my own experience in making the payphone a thing of the past, and I don't know what my role was in this, I did not invent cellular communications. I did not invent invest in them when I had the opportunity to do so. But there was that story about me stopping traffic, literally on 42nd street in 88 or 89 or 90. And it started in Palm Springs, California, in 1986, my first year covering the California Angels spring training. I did that for my television station, which carried the Angels games, ktla. But I also did, by that point, the afternoon sportscasts on KNX Radio, the CBS all news radio station in Los Angeles. And to do these reports from Palm springs, I had two choices. I would cover the Angels game for KTLA and then go and do my three or four afternoon sportscasts at 4:45, 5:15, 5:45, whatever the times were. And I would either have to stay at the ballpark for a couple of additional hours and do the reports from an empty Angels stadium in Palm Spring with the leaf blowers going in the background as they cleaned up all the debris from everybody going to those games. So you can imagine how much fun that was and then finding my way back to the hotel at some point as it started to get dark in March of 1986. Or I could try to rush back to the hotel room and do the reports from there. And if I didn't make it, there wouldn't be a sportscast at 4:45pm on KNX. So by 1987, in anticipation of going and doing this again, I said to my friend, the assistant news director of knx, Roger Nadell, what about using one of these new mobile phones? And he went, what? What do you mean, mobile phones? Car phones. You don't drive. How are you going to use a car phone? I said, no, I saw something about them in the news. They'll rent you a phone and it comes in a bag and you carry it with you, and you can just use it. You just have to keep it charged. Well, sure enough, he looked into it, and for a nominal fee for that time, I don't know, $500, they loaned us a big hulking phone that looked like. Well, looked like a bowling ball in a bowling ball bag. And the warning that I got from Roger was, don't let it sit in the sun or it will start to smoke. Now we're in Palm Springs, California, in March. There's a lot of sun, so I had to be very careful about it. But it was a wonderful. For all of the overheating, all the need to recharge the thing for 16 hours a day, it eliminated all the problems. I could do the 445 sportscast from the ballpark in Palm Springs, then get in the car, go back to the hotel, or even walk back to the Hotel and do the 5:15 sportscast from the hotel. It was a wonder. So when I got back to Los Angeles In March of 1987 or early April of 1987, I began to consider the possibility of buying a mobile phone. Los Angeles was filled in those days. Every day there seemed to be a new one with car phone stores. Car phones, once the elite rich symbol of those who drove Bentleys but not mere Cadillacs. The car phone was becoming a regular thing, and store after store opened. And the key thing was they would not only sell you the phone, they would install it. Because, of course, a car phone needed a car. Who's gonna have a car phone without a car? I went in and said, could they work without a car? And after the guy, the salesman stopped laughing at me, he said, well, let me get the expert out. The guy who installs them. Let me find out. And Larry came out, and Larry said, yeah, yeah, they could. I mean, you have to keep it charged. But all. The only thing that. That we really do is put a bracket in there so you can keep the phone on the dashboard and have it permanently plugged into the cigarette lighter in your dashboard. Something else that doesn't exist anymore. You could. There's a jack that allows you to plug it into a wall socket. But why on earth would you want a car phone without a car? I said, to carry it around with me on stories. I'm a reporter. Well, that's a very specific use. Nobody will ever carry around one of these. They didn't see it either. Frankly, I saw it. For me and other reporters, I never thought it would be a commonplace thing. I mean, the phone without the car cost, I don't know, fifteen hundred dollars. I thought it was a great, great investment and a tax deduction to boot. And so I bought it, and soon I was going everywhere with it and talking to my friends and calling my girlfriend on it and calling into the office to say I might be late. And calling into the office to go on the radio or sometimes the television, to the marvel of other reporters who said, what are you doing with a car phone if you don't have a car? You don't even drive. I said, well, that's what made me think of getting one without a car, because I don't drive. Needless to say, by 1988, the car phone was as attached to me as it was to any car in Southern California. I was the guy with the phone. You can always reach Keith, wherever he is. He's walking outside the Arby's here in Hollywood, if you want him to stop by and get something for you, like, this was times square in 1981. He's probably passing Arby's right now. So the first time I came to New York with a car phone, a mobile phone, nobody apparently had done this in New York. And so I got off the train in Grand Central Station, walked through it, and as I pushed past through the doors onto the brilliant, humid sunrise of midday New York bustling with street traffic, hawkers of every possible item, like the streets of Marrakesh, the phone rang and I reached into my little shoulder bag and pulled it out and went, hello? At which point about 100 people on the street on 42nd street froze where they stood and their jaws simultaneously dropped. If my pants had disappeared, not been removed, but disappeared, vanished, and I was standing there in my underwear, suddenly, they could not have been more astonished. What is he doing? I heard someone say. Is it a walkie talkie? My God, what is it? Is it a bomb? It was, in fact, a wrong number. And I hung up and looked around and literally did one of those, what moments. It's a phone. So my trip, wherever I was going, was delayed by 15 minutes, as I explained to a series of passersby. And New Yorkers are never as friendly as when they want something from you. I say this as a New Yorker who's done it himself. I had to explain to them what it was. Oh, how did you buy a car phone without a car? That question dogged me until we began to see the widespread use of cell phones in the early 90s. I was the first, apparently. I was the first person in the history of New York to publicly answer a cell phone call. I should have written the date down. I don't have that record anywhere. It's too bad. It was as historic an event as the invention of the telephone or the installation of electric light in New York City. And it was my phone, and I'm sure within minutes I passed a payphone on 42nd street, and I did not hear that as I passed it with my cell phone in my hand. I did not hear the payphone that knew what it portended, the payphone that was silently weeping. I've done all the damage I can do here, including making up that last part, but it's a wow finish, wasn't it? Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Philip Chenale, the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mr. Chenale handled orchestration and keyboards. Mr. Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. And it was produced by TKO Brothers. Our pithy and satirical musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The sports music is the Olbermann Theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. The whole thing with the cell phone was so long ago that it was contemporaneous with ESPN making its second job offer to me. I only accepted the third one anyway. Other music arranged and performed by the group no Horns Allowed. And my announcer today was my friend John Dean. Everything else was, as ever, my fault. Phone for you. That's Countdown for today. Day 102 of America held hostage just 1,361 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless Musk removes him sooner or the actuarial tables due. The next scheduled countdown is Monday. As always, bulletins as the news warrants. Remember, impeach Trump. It won't work now. It will win the Democrats the midterms and the polling suggests they could win all the midterms. Also, I want polling on a presidential recall vote. Let's put pressure on these guys. Till next time, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
