Word: callers
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...sometimes sounds like a pontifex maximus, he generally talks neither down nor with false humility. On a typical evening last week, a caller asked Brad's views on states' rights. "A valid issue 10% of the time," he answered. "A smoke screen the rest of the time." Another caller said he was worried by the thought of Unidentified Flying Objects darting about in the atmosphere...
...These little people are up there watching us," the caller whined. "How do you know they're little?" said Crandall. He went on to tell the fellow not to worry, because the beings in the saucers had never shown hostility and were "probably still trying to figure out whether we're intelligent...
Naturally, a high percentage of Crandall's calls have to do with integration, pro and con. He never hesitates. "Madam, you are a bigot," he barked at one caller. Last week he took on several waves of Negroes who were all for the stall-in scheme at the New York World's Fair. He said that sort of demonstration was "going too far, hitting the wrong people at the wrong time." In argument with a Negro girl last week, he asked: "Do you want me to accept you as an individual...
...Crandall says. But he drives them back when they irritate him. When one man kept calling Harry Truman a traitor, Crandall finally roared, "Shut up!" He handles 50 to 60 calls a night, and the telephone exchange tots up another 10,000-15,000 "busy" signals, presumed to be callers that can't get through. Both his voice and his caller's are fed onto tape, with a built-in seven-second delay before the sound goes on the air. This gives Crandall time to hit the small blue panic button on his desk in time...
...offer her a subscription to a pulp magazine, and when she speaks the listener mocks her smallness yet nearly weeps that a Southern Lady should rejoice so at finally making the sale. There is another extraordinary scene later, when Amanda tries to entertain Jim O'Connor, the "gentleman-caller," and her empty Southern sweetness is revealed. Miss Field avoids a caricature and keeps just enough of the Old South in her reading to show Amanda's desperateness...