I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (5 page)

After working for them it’s no wonder that I left law school after a year and a half without graduating. I hate the phrase “flunked out.” I failed to complete the assigned courses. I have my explanation for what happened, and the school has theirs.

Let’s get the school’s out of the way first. There was some sort of important test that had to be taken for me to advance, but I missed it. My explanation was that I was going to law school in the morning, working as a law clerk in the afternoon, and then at night I was performing with the Oak Park Players, a local theater group. Something had to give, and it was law school.

Law school did give me an appreciation for the precise word. Lawyers have to nail every phrase, or constantly be in danger of an adversary exposing a loophole. Nevertheless, I have noticed that they often throw many similar-meaning words together just to cover the gray area. To wit: “I hereby assign, convey, bequeath, and transfer now, forever, and in perpetuity …”

Had I taken that test and stuck out law school, I always figured that I would have pursued trial law because trial lawyers are actors. They stand in front of judges and juries and entertain them with borderline preposterous stories—not unlike those told by stand-ups, come to think of it.

Despite my law school experience, I seldom tell lawyer jokes. They’re too easy and too clichéd. Ah, what the heck. What’s the difference between a snake and a lawyer? If there’s an accident, there are no skid marks in front of the lawyer.

In 1952, I was drafted. At the time I entered the army, the Korean War was going on. When I reported to Fort Sheridan in Illinois, I met with the admitting officer about my posting. He informed me that I was going to be assigned to the infantry, probably as field wireman. Now, field wireman is the worst job you could receive. The field wireman is the guy who climbs the telephone poles on the battlefield and reconnects the power. The North Koreans sharpened their aim by taking out the field wiremen.

The admitting officer asked me if I had a degree. I told him that I did, in management. He then asked me whether it was in factory or personnel management. Thinking quickly and reasoning that the military didn’t have many factories—and therefore little use for factory managers—I told him it was in personnel management.

“You’re very lucky because it takes a direct order from the Secretary of the Army to send you overseas to Korea,” he explained. “You have what’s called an M.O.S., a military occupational specialty designation 1290.”

So instead of becoming a field wireman in training, I reported to basic training at Camp Roberts in California as a 1290. I went about acquainting myself with A.R.s (army regulations) and S.R.s (special regulations). While reading the A.R.s, to become proficient as a personnel management specialist, I came across the actual text of the order that dictated 1290s could only be sent overseas by a direct order from the Secretary of the Army.

Unfortunately, I found a small hitch. The regulation had been instated in 1946 because personnel managers were needed at home to help expedite soldiers leaving the service and ensure their files were in order. However, the regulation was rescinded in 1948, four years before I was drafted. My admitting officer apparently didn’t know this, and I sure wasn’t about to say anything.

Every month, the P.O.R. list—processing for reassignment—was posted, listing the guys who would be shipping out for Korea. Everyone would get up early on those days to check the list for shipping orders or relief. I never bothered to go down to check because I knew my name wouldn’t be on it.

I was also given an IQ test. The combination of my score and my college degree in personnel management made me eligible for officer school. I told them, no thanks. I was stuck in the service for two years, and I didn’t see any reason to stay another year just to become a second lieutenant.

After basic training, I was transferred to San Francisco and assigned to a personnel management team. Our group traveled up and down the West Coast auditing personnel records at military bases. The truth is that we were most concerned about making the system work for our comfort and entertainment.

In exciting places like Tacoma and Los Angeles, we always found trouble with the records. We’d be scheduled for three days, but upon arrival, we would send word to our warrant officer that things were a mess and we’d need at least a week to straighten them out. However, at Camp Irwin in the hot, desolate California desert, everything was always spotless, and we were out of there in a day.

When our team arrived at a new base, we explained to the officer in charge that we were carrying top secret material and therefore needed a lock on our door. So instead of sleeping in the barracks on cots, we were each given our own room in the non-commissioned officers’ quarters.

Before inspection each morning, we’d padlock our door and leave just enough space so they could inspect the room—but not enough to see that only the area visible through the crack was made up. Sure, it would have taken another four minutes to clean up the rest of the room, but that was beside the point. We did it to buck the system.

During the two years I was in the service, I saw the inefficiencies and the waste—to which I admittedly made my own very small contribution. This experience formed the basis of one of my first routines, “The Cruise of the U.S.S.
Codfish
” (“The Submarine Commander” for short). It was all about how someone totally unqualified can rise three levels above their competency because the organization is so big that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Though I was in the army, I set the routine in the navy. Somehow, a submarine commander was funnier than a platoon leader.

After a two-year journey, the U.S.S.
Codfish
submarine is about to surface, and the submarine commander addresses his men:

I know you are all anxious to be reunited with your loved ones—in some cases your wives—but we have a few moments before we surface and I’ve just jotted down some things I think are important. I wouldn’t take the time if I didn’t think so. First of all, I think we ought to give the cooks a standing ovation for the wonderful jobs they’ve done. So if you men want to stand right now. … Let’s really hear it for the cooks. I don’t think you men realize what a difficult problem it is. … Come on, let’s let bygones be bygones and hear it for the cooks. … Men, I’m not going to surface until we hear it for the cooks. … All right, that’s better.

Today, as we add another glorious page to the story of the
U.S.S.
Codfish,
I think it’s important that we reflect on some of the past glories of the U.S.S.
Codfish.
I don’t know if you men know this, but the
Codfish
holds the record for the most Japanese tonnage sunk, being comprised of five freighters and fifteen aircraft carriers—a truly enviable record. Unfortunately, they were sunk in 1954. However, it stands as the largest peacetime tonnage ever sunk.

Our voyage has received a lot of coverage in the newspapers, and I would like to present our side of it. … I think our firing on Miami Beach can best be termed “ill-timed.” It happened on what they call in the newspaper business a “slow news day,” and as a result, received a lot more space than I think it deserved, especially since it was the off-season down there.

Men, I think you’ll agree I’ve been pretty lax as far as discipline is concerned, and, golly, nobody enjoys a joke more than me, but I’d like the executive officer returned. … Now, we’ve looked in the torpedo tubes, we’ve looked in your bags. … It’s been more than two weeks, men. We’re just damn lucky it wasn’t the navigational officer or someone real important like that. …

Looking back on the mutiny, I think a lot of the trouble stemmed from the fact that you men weren’t coming to me with your problems. As I told you, the door to my office is always open. … I think you know why it’s always open. It was stolen. I’d like that returned. It looks like the work of the same man.

Since we started the cruise on such a low note, I think it’s important that we end it on a high note. To me, there is nothing more impressive in the navy than when a submarine breaks water to see a bunch of sailors in their dress blues as they come rushing up out of the, the, the … that hole there … and come to parade rest. … Oh, all right. I’ve just been notified that we will be surfacing in a moment, and you’ll be happy to know that you will be gazing on the familiar skyline of either New York City or Buenos Aires. Dismissed, men. That’s all.

My first real jobs in the workforce were back in Chicago in accounting. From 1956 to 1957, I worked as an accountant in the engineering department at U.S. Gypsum, a company that manufactured wallboard and drywall. They offered me a full-time position and asked me to relocate to Poland Spring, Maine. Had I moved there and lost my job at U.S. Gypsum, who knows, I might have ended up getting in on the ground floor of the bottled water business. But I couldn’t see myself living in Maine, at least not in Poland Spring.

After refusing the transfer, and leaving U.S. Gypsum, I accepted a job in the accounting department for the Glidden Company in downtown Chicago. As your basic nine-to-five bookkeeper, I had several responsibilities, including reconciling the records between the company’s different divisions.

Another of my daily tasks was monitoring petty cash. It was in this area that I developed and implemented my odd theory of accounting: If you got within a couple of bucks, it was okay. Although my theory never caught on, it really does work.

Each time a salesman would come in off the road and turn in a receipt for ten dollars for gas, I would give him the cash and put the receipt in the petty-cash drawer. Another guy might come in with a credit card receipt for thirty bucks for a hotel room and a meal, and I’d count out three ten-dollar bills and file the credit card receipt.

At the end of each day, I had to reconcile what was in the cash drawer with the receipts. It was always close, but it never balanced. At five o’clock sharp, everybody in the accounting department would leave the office. I would be the only one left, tearing my hair out over why petty cash was short by $1.48. Usually around eight o’clock, I’d find the discrepancy.

I followed this routine for a couple of weeks until I grew completely frustrated. Finally one day, as everybody was leaving at five and I was facing a couple more hours of work, I pulled the $1.67 that I was short out of my pocket, put it in the cash drawer, and called it a day.

A few days later, the petty cash drawer was over by $2.11, so I took $2.11 out of petty cash and pocketed it. I was hardly stealing. Inevitably, in the next couple of days I would be under, and back the money would go.

After several weeks, Mr. Hutchinson, who was head of the accounting department for the Glidden Company, discovered my shortcut to balancing petty cash.

“George,” he lectured me. “These are not sound accounting principles.”

Back then, I went by George, from my given name George Robert Newhart. When I was growing up, most people called me George. However, because my father’s name was also George, I was called Bob around the house, and my close friends picked up on this. But I wasn’t a junior; my dad was George David Newhart, and his father was George Michael Newhart. So all through high school and college, I was George. In the army, I was George. Basically, on any form that required block capital letters, I was
GEORGE
.

“You know, Mr. Hutchinson, I don’t think I’m cut out for accounting, because this makes absolutely perfect sense to me,” I explained. “Why would you pay me six dollars an hour to spend three or four hours finding a dollar-forty? It’s much easier if I just make up the difference out of my own pocket because I’ll get it back next week.”

To pass the time during the tedious afternoons of balancing petty cash, I began swapping absurd stories on the telephone with my friend Ed Gallagher, who worked in advertising. I’d call Ed and identify myself as, say, the plant manger of a yeast factory:

“Sir, it’s Mr. Tompkins and we have a problem at your yeast factory. There’s a fire. … Hold on, sir. I have to put you on hold while I run up another floor. The yeast is rising. … Sir, are you still there? The firefighters are onsite trying to contain the blaze. … Hold on, sir. I have to run up another flight of stairs. …”

The next time I’d be an airline pilot:

“Mr. Gallagher, you don’t know me but I’m a United Airlines pilot. I just picked your name out of the telephone book. We took off from Midway Airport a half hour ago, but the copilot and I got to horsing around in the cabin, and we both fell out. The plane is still up there with fifty seven people onboard. I tried to call Midway and tell them about it, but they said ‘Why don’t you leave us alone?’ and hung up on me. I thought you might call and explain things.”

A friend of ours named Chris Petersen heard about the routines and offered to put up the money for us to record them and send them to radio stations, in exchange for a share of the profits. Ed and I decided to give it a try. It beat working a “day” job.

Ed and I recorded routines that were extensions of our phone conversations. With Chris’s financial support, we mailed out one hundred demo tapes to radio stations around the country.

Three radio stations wrote back and asked how much we wanted for the routines. They were located in Jacksonville, Florida; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Northampton, Massachusetts. Picking a number out of the air, we decided to charge $7.50 per week for five minutes of sketches. This seemed like a good deal for us. All we had to pay for were the acetate tapes and postage. We used the recording studio at the Leo Burnett offices where Ed worked. On recording days, we waited until the offices emptied out in the evening and worked clandestinely into the night.