1. Despite its role as the cradle of liberty (See: Independence, Declaration of) Pennsylvania has produced but one President: James Buchanan, notable for being the only bachelor President, and of being in that seven-decades long string of mediocrity between Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt, a slump interrupted only by the sainted Lincoln (though Polk had his moments, as did Hayes).
2. The above fact was delivered by another native Pennsylvanian, John Updike, during a Q & A that followed a reading this past January at Houston's Alley Theatre.
3. The mountains known as the Southern Tier lie at the northen portion of Pennsylvania. Their virtual mirror image, the Northern Tier, combines with the Southern to form the Twin Tiers, whose east-west bisect is roughly the New York-Pennsylvania border. (I can remember one local Binghamton news broadcast, the CBS affiliate; at the start of its broadcast a legend representing the aerial view of the tiers would appear behind his head. The anchor (curly hair, triangular face) had a mannerism he would employ every weeknight: teasing us with two lesser stories and then saying, "But the BIG story this evening . . .")
4. It was on the above-mentioned station that ESPN stud Trey Wingo got his start. Two things stand out. First, he would sometimes run a trivia contest, but caution the viewers not to call until ten-thirty, because he needed time to get back to his office and answer the phone. He was, in other words, asking the contestants to call his office number. One night, I thought I had an answer: for what NFL team did Richard Nixon draw up a play in the Super Bowl? I called in at 10:31. Wingo answered.
"Miami," I said.
"No, Washington," he replied.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "He told Shula that Griese could hit Warfield with a down-and-in."
"Washington," he insisted. "He drew it up for George Allen."
"Fine," I said.
The following morning I went to the top of my closet and brought down The Red Smith Reader , a compilation of some of the greatest columns by the greatest sports newspaper columnist of all time. And there it was: Smith's account of the Dallas-Miami Super Bowl, with a description of Nixon's words (see above) to Miami coach Don Shula. All that day, I entertained thoughts of driving to the television station and confronting him (kind of like that ESPN phone guy does in the current commercials), but reasoned he would let himself off with a technicality. Okay, so Nixon didn't draw it up for Shula. Big whoop. And who knows what he did for Allen? Red Smith (at least as far as The Red Smith Readeris concerned) was silent on the question.
"Fine," I said to an imaginary Trey Wingo, as I drove to my summer job as a security guard at Binghamton General Hospital. "You win this time. But we'll meet again."
Over the next few months, I took whatever satisfaction I could by smirking at the televison ad that played in the afternoon, during commercials for "As the World Turns." The ad showed a baseball game featuring a succession of Trey Wingos: Trey pitching to Trey hitting to Trey fielding. The truly hysterical (to me) part was that, instead of standard baseball gear (something, I thought, a sports anchor should be able to acquire without undue difficulty), Wingo instead wore a baseball undershirt (white shirt, long colored sleeves) and sweatpants. No, wait, this was the hysterical part: on both the shirt and pants was stencilled, in big letters, "CORNELL." This was truly rich, one step up from saying, "My roommate at Harvard had a tie like that" to a new acquaintance.
So I smirked, albeit alone. Trey Wingo, I thought, I feel sorry for you.
Anyway, that's enough about Pennsylvania for today.
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