Now, in our age of television, where we can see anyone famous in motion and hear them and hear comments and chatter about them, it is difficult to imagine what it was like back then to hear that the famous, famous man was HERE. Charles Lindbergh was 25 years old and had flown alone across the Atlantic ocean from New York to Paris. Others had tried and failed. When flying, the pilot often needed to fly low over towns in the hope of reading signs to tell him where he was. Then, he succeeded!
The summer of 1927 he was famous and sought in a way we might not see today:
It is impossible to imagine what it must have been like to be Charles Lindbergh in that summer. From the moment he left his room in the morning, he was touched and jostled and bothered. Every person on earth who could get near enough wanted to grasp his hand or clap him on the back. He had no private life anymore. Shirts he sent to the laundry never came back. Chicken bones and napkins from his dinner plate were fought over in kitchens. He could not go for a walk or pop into a bank or drugstore. If he went into a men's room, people followed. Checks he wrote were rarely cashed; recipients preferred to frame them instead. No part of his life was normal, and there was no prospect that it ever would be again. As Lindbergh was discovering, it was a lot more fun to get famous than to be famous.
Bryson, Bill (2013-10-01). One Summer: America, 1927 (Kindle Locations 4752-4757). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
It can be a wonderful thought to imagine oneself sought after. But if you have seen the scene late in the movie "Love Potion No.9" by that wonderful screenwriter Dale Launer (My Cousin Vinnie, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ruthless People) where a young woman who wants to be sought by men really gets her wish with about 125 of them, you know it can be terrifying and very dangerous. We may want to be sought after but not insanely! We don't want to be torn apart by ecstatic crowds who don't really mean us harm but threaten to crush us in a frenzy.
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Bill
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