The Hammer of God

Just then, the desk assistant who handed him the paper realized that Peter wasn’t who he thought he was and that Peter didn’t work there. Panic registered. “Where did you bring that paper?”

Peter answered to the man instead, “Glass doors, down the hall, bald-headed guy.”

The man barked, “Sit!”

So Peter sat, terrified that he did something awful. The commotion in the room started to wane in about five minutes. The last time Peter was this close to coming to tears was when he was eleven and his father got pissed off at him for blowing up the old Dumont TV. He was sure they were going to call his parents. Forget about whatever he just did wrong, he was also cutting class, so there was no way he wasn’t going to get in big trouble for this. His life passed before his eyes twice, because he as only 14! Then the man came back and sat down at the desk next to Peter.

“First off, I’m docking him a day’s pay,” he said, pointing to the kid who started all this.

“And I am paying you. Would you like to work here?”

“Me? I’m…”

“Look, you showed a good sense for news and you showed me you’re a pretty smart kid. Do you want to work here?”

“Sure. If it’s okay.”

“It’s okay; what’s your name, kid?”

“Peter, Peter Remo, sir.”

“Good. Welcome to the NBC News, Peter. I’m Kasiko Halman.”

“Hold it! Wait, Peter…” The Washington Monument appeared gray under a cloud’s shadow, while the reflecting pool and the mall were in brilliant sunlight, but that wasn’t the reason for Bill’s squint, “So far this is a nice story and all, …WWII, Hungarians, Science Fair and what have you, but honestly, you expect me to believe that NBC hired you at fourteen!” Hiccock said to his old friend from the Bronx (who he hadn’t seen in twenty-five years) as they sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “I couldn’t get a paper route with the New York Post until I was sixteen and had working papers.”

“Yeah well, kid, my folks didn’t believe me either. But you were only four then, and the world was a different place back in ’68. Nepotism was alive and well in those days. The entire cadre of desk assistants — in print they’d call ‘em copy boys — was a dumping ground for the kids of RCA and NBC Senior Executive VPs. From summer jobs to after school work, it was like day care or day camp.”

“Your pop was a truck driver. You weren’t ‘anybody’s’ kid.”

“And I got let go three times for not belonging to anybody. But I got hired back four times.”

“How?”

“I was good and I had a little secret I shared with the news managers.”

“Job security?”

“In our room was one of the first Xerox machines, a 3600. It was massive and had stuff we take for granted today: document feeder, 20-copy sorter, up to 999 copies. Had a Nixie tube readout.”

“Ahhh, Nixie tubes… please stick to the story.” Bill checked his watch.

“Anyway, do you know why it took so long to invent copy machines? Because they had to invent copier repairmen first. ‘Cause you couldn’t run one of those suckers for more than a few hours before they broke down. I only worked Saturday and Sunday nights cause of school, but I made seventy-five dollars for the weekend. I was paid through newsroom dinner vouchers. Every week I was somebody’s dinner.”

“Wow. Seventy-five a week back in ‘68. That must-a been good!”

“My dad broke his ass on the stone truck for one-seventy-five a week! So anyway, one Sunday night the news manager has a report to get out and the Xerox is down. He’s about to retype the whole fifteen pages on Rexograph masters when I say, ‘I think I can fix it.’

“‘You think you can fix the Xerox machine?’ he says.

“‘I might have to shut the lights in the newsroom for a while.’

“So then he says, ‘Peter, I’ll give everybody flashlights to work with if you can fix it.’

“I started by defeating all the cabinet door sensors with paper clips. The problem was the tray that you pulled out to free jammed paper came all the way off the runners and the ball bearings went everywhere. So I shimmed up the tray using shaved down pencils. I got that sucker right in line but had to run the machine wide open cause of all these sticks and tape and paper clips hanging out of it.”

“I bet NBC news was never the same after this,” Hiccock said.

“Billy, you had to see it. At one point this big arcing light was swooping across the entire newsroom with each page being copied. I had to shut the lights because it was an electro-photostatic process. The inside of the machine was like a dark room, so when it was open the room had to be dark, but I had it running and humming. At the last minute, the news manager came in and asked for the last page of the report back. I remember I used to have to print it on NBC stationary that had hundreds of little interlocking NBC logos on it. He gave me back the last page and I collated it into the thirty copies of the fifteen-page report. Then I went about my job distributing it to the inner-office list. I did that every Sunday as the last thing I did before I went home. This way the VPs had it on Monday first thing when they got in.”