Overdrive by William F. Buckley Jr

Author:William F. Buckley, Jr. [Buckley, William F., Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

Five

FRIDAY

Leslie Sheridan rang that he was downstairs and ready to convey me to the airport. I had breakfasted, talked with Frances, and decided there would, after all, be time to telephone in the column from Louisville before the (12:30) deadline, so I left. In the car, we chatted and Leslie pronounced the previous evening a great success, which was nice to hear, though in fact the preceding evenings are always pronounced great successes, hosts being as nice as generally they are. At the field it was cold. I greeted the pilots and said I hoped the air wouldn't be as choppy as yesterday's, and got a reassuring reply. The flight was about two hours and I dug into the portfolio on the other television program, this one having to do with busing as an instrument designed to effect school desegregation, or integration. It had been a while since my mind dwelled on the subject, and there was much to catch up on.

We flew at about 7,500 feet and encountered little turbulence. There was snow as we came over Cincinnati, and I remembered that extraordinary fortnight fifteen years ago. I had been scheduled to speak one night in Louisville, but the pilot landed the plane in Cincinnati because of bad weather in Louisville, and I took a 110-mile taxi ride, arriving in Louisville forty-five minutes after my speech was supposed to begin. One week later (what are the odds against such a thing?) I was scheduled to speak in Cincinnati and the airplane landed in Louisville, requiring me to take a 110-mile taxi ride to Cincinnati, breaking into the banquet room after some of the guests had simply given up.

When I arrived in Louisville, the car from the local television station whisked me off to the Galt House, where the young, attentive manager reminded me I had been there a couple of years before. The hotel in question is sort of Diamond-Jim-Brady-Western, and in my huge suite, thirty-two Muscovites could have been housed.

Warren Steibel, who, when the program is taped outside New York, generally gets in a day ahead to supervise technical arrangements, rang me before I had even sat down, and I told him to come on up. Warren has produced all but the first dozen or so "Firing Lines"; we have been everywhere together, and I have long since developed a huge admiration for his professional competence and a special gratitude for his knowledge of my own (by no means eccentric) likes and dislikes (foremost among the latter, to be made to arrive at a studio much before the technicians are ready to roll). He gives me a rundown on the schedule. The first show will be with the two professors, on the busing question. The second show will be with the governor. A hundred-odd supporters of the station will compose the studio audience, and after the second show there is to be a reception, but that reception will last no more than forty-five minutes, guaranteed. After that, Warren had promised our hosts, I would read several commercials calling for local support to the station.

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