Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [103]
He has a good-looking face with prominent bones. He gets to work about 7:30 a.m. and leaves, to avoid the traffic, about 4:00 p.m. In between, he shines as many as thirty pairs of shoes. Lonnie gives every customer the feeling it’s his privilege to be working for him.
A shine is apt to be interrupted half a dozen times by people passing the open door behind him who yell, “Hi, Lonnie.”
“Hey, there, Mr. Edwards,” Lonnie will yell back, often without looking up. He knows almost every voice in the building.
Yesterday Lonnie shined my shoes again.
“I’ll be packing it in in April,” he told me.
“Leaving here?” I asked, shocked at the thought of the place without him. “Why would you do that?” I asked.
“I’ll be seventy-five in April,” Lonnie said.
“But you’re strong and healthy,” I said. “Why would you quit work?”
“I want to do some things,” Lonnie said. “Fix up my house. Do some things.”
“Can’t you fix up your house and still work here?” I asked.
There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling me.
“Oh, I could,” Lonnie said, “but I want to go back to school.”
“That would be great,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to do that too.” I wondered what courses Lonnie was thinking of taking but decided not to ask.
“Yeah,” Lonnie said, “I been working for sixty-two years now. Want to go back to school. Never did get enough school. Never really learned how to read. I was a little lame boy, you know. Embarrassed to go to school. All the big kids. What I want to do is learn to read, good enough to satisfy myself.”
I’ve known Lonnie for thirty years and never knew how handicapped he was.
The Godfrey You Don’t Know
Arthur Godfrey has spoken more words to more people than any man since the beginning of time. Historians may someday search those words to find out what kind of man commanded so much attention. And if historians can decide exactly what kind of a man he was, they will have achieved something Godfrey’s contemporaries never could.
Between 1949 and 1955, I wrote for Godfrey. Since then, I have resisted the temptation to write about him because if I did, I thought, I’d want to catch the truth, and, as any writer discovers, truth is not solely a matter of intent. Many important things about Godfrey have never been said, and many untrue and unimportant things have been repeated for years. Now perhaps it’s time to fill in a few gaps.
One winter evening in 1955, Arthur taxied his DC3 down the runway at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, roared into the sky and turned the plane toward the Hudson for a look at New York, before heading south for Virginia. That night, I was standing between Arthur and his copilot, Frank La Vigna.
“Look,” Arthur said, gazing down entranced at the sight of New York from the air. “It makes me so damn mad,” he said thoughtfully. “Someday I’ll be dead, and all this will still be here but I won’t be able to see it.”
Godfrey’s zest for living takes precedence over everything else, even his career. His own programs have never been of paramount importance to him, except when they coincided with whatever else he was doing.
***
Godfrey has always known what many entertainers never find out. He knows people are lonely. He knows that they listen to and respond to the entertainer who reduces their loneliness, who appeals to their sense of fellow feeling. Godfrey, in his seemingly aimless talks, touches on basic elements of likeness in superficially unlike individuals, and every listener recognizes something of himself and feels he “belongs.” This makes people feel good, and most of all, that is what people want.
Godfrey’s