Word: press
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Press people are checking in to cover the arrival. Over at gate seven they're giving out United Air Lines boarding tickets for standing room on the press platform. At gate eight they're checking in the people who will travel with the papal party on the week-long trip. A small, balding and very nervous man has been handed the microphone--his voice is a mix of officious timidity. He's losing his audience. Content to find their own information, the crowd drifts away. The reporters gather around the monseigneur and the bureaucrat who are holding the seats...
...ticket to the airport ceremonies. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.) steps in with a big smile, Joan in tow. Gov. Edward J. King rounds the big green flatbed truck that the pool #1 photographers are fighting for space on. The truck and one of the nine press buses will join the motorcade. The rest of us will go right to the Common. A small army of state police and cars stands guard. It's raining harder. The photographers in the back look distraught...
Rosalyn steps to the mike and welcomes the Pope to America. It is not a very exciting moment. She talks a lot about "love" and the press pool snickers audibly. The Pope listens thoughtfully--perhaps he is just trying to understand her accent--and then steps forward. He reads his welcoming response. Now the photographers are angry--some idiot had lowered the microphones so they block the Holy Father's face. But at least he's worn his red cape--if he'd been in white the pictures would be horrible...
When he stops and sets off for the limousine, the photographers are up and away. The seats on the press bus are first come, first serve. More journalists have applied for press credentials than they did for John F. Kennedy's funeral. Everybody is clutching cameras and notebooks and pens and their partners. The archdiocese recruit hands out the text of the Pope's address. All that shorthand for nothing...
...trip takes only about a half-hour. Police cars and remnants of the crowd that saw the Pope still line the streets. At Beacon and Charles Streets, the Greyhound buses grind to a halt--and the pack is off again. In the Common garage is another press filing center--more typewriters, phones and telexes. And ladies serving food from U-Haul trailers. But there are more police checking the entry points. "Jesus Christ," says the one who looks at my lens, "there are more journalists than Catholics in Boston today...