The year was 1987. Susan Orlean, then a writer for The New Yorker, was spending her weekends traveling far and wide across the U.S. to find out what people did with their Saturday nights.
She hung out with people cruising in cars along small-town streets in Indiana; with families celebrating their daughters’ quinceañera in Arizona; with a lounge band performing in Portland, Oregon; and with fraternity members at Georgia Tech, who trashed their own house after a football game.
The story that caught my eye the most — which she’d publish, along with all of these, in her 1990 book Saturday Night — took her to maybe the oddest place of all in America to spend a Saturday night: a nuclear missile silo in Wyoming.
You’d think, of course, that it took months of requesting and processing security clearances to get in — not to mention a believable explanation of why you’d even want to visit a missile silo. But as Orlean explains in her book Joyride, it was a lot easier than that:
“To give you an idea of how innocent the world was in 1987, let me tell you how I managed to get access to that silo: I wrote a letter to someone in the press office of the Pentagon, explaining that I was working on my first book and that I wanted to see what Saturday night was like in a nuclear silo. In short order, I received a letter giving me permission and providing me a date for the visit and directions to the silo in Wyoming. I don’t remember being subjected to any security clearances at all. I wasn’t searched when I got to the silo, and I was ushered in (and down) with as much (or as little, really) scrutiny as I would have received if I’d been attending a real estate open house…”
She goes on to describe the crew manning the silo — “so young they looked like they’d just gotten their first shaving kits” — but the next paragraph triggered a feeling in me I’d almost forgotten, when she wrote:
“So many aspects of my reporting on Saturday Night now seem like they took place in another world — a guileless, unguarded one. I was an unknown writer approaching people I didn’t know, and they all agreed to let me observe them in their private moments. The more official settings, like the silo, were governed by the most half-hearted rules. On occasion, it verged into lackadaisical…”
At first, that might sound (kinda) like a criticism. But to me, what I hear when I read these lines is more melancholy, a sigh of sadness. For an innocence that’s been lost, and for a world that feels far, far back in the rear view mirror.
I don’t have any experiences quite like the ones Orlean describes in her book; I’ve never spent the night in a missile silo, nor have I ever gone cruising up and down a small-town Indiana street. (I have had a few Saturday nights like the one she mentions at Georgia Tech, though — a long time ago!)
My one experience that leaps to mind when I think of this era came around the same time she was doing her reporting in Wyoming — it may have been a year or two earlier, but close in time.
It was March, and I’d traveled with a friend of mine and his family to Florida, to catch some major league baseball spring training games. I was 14, maybe 15.
We’d seen an early game that day between our beloved Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees (who beat up on the Braves pretty good, as I remember). We were staying at a hotel near the Braves’ home field; after dinner, we were stumped as to what to do, because the team wouldn’t play again until the next day.
We looked across the street at their field, which had completely emptied out. No one was in the stands, the field and the dugouts were clear. We looked at each other and said, hey, why not see if we can get in?
I know this sounds a little far-fetched — you’d never get onto the grounds of a major league sports facility today. But we were able to “break in” by simply… walking up, opening the gate, and walking right in.
We looked around the dugout and found real, honest-to-God major league Louisville Slugger bats and real, genuine Rawlings baseballs, made just for major league play. And we took them out on the field — me, my friend and his younger brother — and played ourselves a game not unlike the one you see Kevin Costner play in Field of Dreams.
We ran the bases; we took turns pitching and swinging the bat, knocking balls way into the outfield. We slid into second, slid again into third, and then took turns sliding into home.
All that time, a couple of the field lights were on, so we could see while we played. We must’ve played for at least an hour. And never, not a single time, did a security guard ever stop by and shoo us out of there. (I think we even took home a couple of the bats as “souvenirs” — don’t judge me!)
I can feel myself sigh a little as I write these words. And I don’t want to make you sad, or feel overly melancholy. But I do miss the carefree nature of that world, or it least the way it seemed carefree.
It makes me happy to think about it, even if that world isn’t with us anymore. As my son said once years ago, “sadness is kind of sweet, because sadness is about happiness.” And he’s right, you know?
Anyway, this is what was on my mind tonight — thanks for indulging me 😀
As always, keep in touch and keep me posted on your running/life and what’s new with you.
Your friend,
— Terrell
Our training miles for week 5
First, please forgive me for not including these last week — but here’s our training schedule for the week ahead, in minutes and miles, and I’ve added schedules for the 12-week, 16-week and 10-mile training plans: