Episode 94: Numbers (rebroadcast)

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This is the Memory Palace.

I'm Nate DeMayo.

Maybe you remember.

I don't.

Because of the CBS News special report which follows, Mayberry RFD will not be presented tonight, but will return next week at its regularly scheduled time over most of these stations.

The Draft Lottery.

The news came on.

Maybe you were just going to watch Mayberry RFD and were surprised.

Maybe you had scheduled your whole week or more.

Canceled plans.

Got off work.

To be there in front of the set on December 1st, 1969.

Or you listened on the radio, in the living room with your folks like it was 1940.

Your father pacing like his father might have done in 1940.

Your mom there with her brave face on.

Ash on her cigarette growing long.

Or you were listening on the little transistor radio propped up on the shelf above the sink at your dishwashing job with all the guys in the kitchen, each of you hanging on every number.

The one older dude, north of 30.

keeping his mouth shut for once.

Maybe you got in the car to listen, because the reception was better, you said.

But really you just wanted to be out of the house away from your roommates or your girl or everyone just wanted to be driving Maybe you remember

I don't

The news broke in and there was a reporter Roger Mudd from CBS He's young and handsome in the video on YouTube.

I didn't realize he'd ever been young and handsome tonight for the first time in 27 years the United States has again started a draft lottery and the famous first pick tonight is September 14th, the first birthday that now is designated 001,

which means for 19-year-olds born on September 14th, that beginning in January, local draft boards will induct those men born on September 14th, borrowing deferments, the next birthday in order, April 24th, and so on down the line this evening.

And so on down the line.

It was the first draft lottery since the fall of 1940, a little over a year before the U.S.

entered World War II, but Washington knew where the whole thing was heading by then.

20 million men, ages 21 to 36, had to register, had to have their birthday attached to a number, 1 through 366.

There was an extra number for leap day babies.

So those numbers could be written on slips of paper.

So those 366 slips of paper could be put into 366 capsules and put into a bowl.

There was a big ceremony.

The Secretary of War was blindfolded with a swatch of fabric cut from a chair used during the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

He drew a capsule from the bowl that had been stirred with a paddle made from a beam from the ceiling of Liberty Hall and handed it to the President.

And thousands of people, united only by their citizenship, and by the various outcomes of cascading games of chance, of timing and biological processes and happenstance, that it meant each was born male on that particular day in the calendar, during this narrow window of years, would be sent off to war.

There was less ceremony in 1969.

There was no blindfold, no relics to wrap that night in the spirit of the founding.

Just carpet and curtain in the beiges and browns of Vietnam Arab bureaucracy.

No president or cabinet member to do the honors.

Nixon left the number pulling to selective service officials and their secretaries.

September 14th

September 14,

001.

And at least one young man from the President's Youth Advisory Council.

Paul M.

Murray, Rhode Island.

There were supposed to be others, but others refused.

Said they didn't want to be used as props by the Nixon administration.

But the numbers were pulled anyway.

Drawn from blue capsules drawn from a clear bowl, in full view of the camera so no one could call foul.

On the process at least.

And slips of paper were read out and stuck on bulletin boards.

A printed date.

Posted beside numbers listed in order.

001 to 366.

And you just waited.

Waited to hear your birthday called.

That date you know better than than any other.

Waited to hear it called out and posted beside what would be your draft number that would determine when you had to report for induction.

You even waited through commercials.

And here's the Norelco Santa with some new ways to say Merry Christmas.

Give the Norelco triple header with a cord or in a rechargeable model.

Give the inexpensive Flip Top 20 or the new battery cordless.

And say Merry Christmas to the ladies with a lady Norelco, shaver, or beauty salon.

Norelco, even our name says Merry Christmas.

February 29th.

On another night, later, there would be another lottery, drawing letters this time.

It would determine the precise order in which men who shared the same birthday would have to report to be inducted.

Those with the initials JSM before JJS or JRS or whatever.

Later, there would be a study, a statistical analysis that suggested the drawing of dates wasn't truly random, that the bowl wasn't stirred well enough, that December birthdays weren't picked often enough, early enough, but the numbers called on that Friday night in the winter of 69 would stand.

And so 850,000 men would wait.

Hearts in throats, knee bouncing, fingers drumming on steering wheels.

Whatever that thing they would do when they were nervous was.

When they were waiting for something, some game of chance to set the course of their life.

That might upend every plan they'd laid, dash whatever hopes they'd harbored for their life, might end their life,

that would go on to separate their generation into draftees and deferments and dodgers.

It was doing it already that night, as they watched and heard their friends' birthdays get called, and were glad it wasn't theirs.

As they'd stand around in the kitchen comforting a co-worker that the war would be over before his 37 meant he ever had to go to Vietnam.

Hoping that was true.

Where they knew already that the guy who pulled 224 was never going to have to make good on his promise to run to Canada.

Where they had to look their brother in the eye when he had 16

and you had 172.

They were sitting on the warm hood of a car in a field on a cold night with their best friend.

His birthday they always remembered because it was Valentine's Day.

Which meant he was number four.

And they got him good and drunk.

And so on down the line.

October 5th, February 19th, December 14th, July 21st, June 5th, March 2nd, August 31st, May 24th, April 1st, March 17th, November 2nd,

August 24th, May 11th, October 30th, December 11th, May 13th, December 10th, July 13th, December 9th, August 16th, August 2nd, November 11th,

November 27th, August 8th, September 3rd, July 7th, November 7th, December 22nd.

The Memory Palace is produced by me, Nate DeMayo, with engineering assistance by Kathy Tu and research assistance from Andrea Melne.

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You can follow me at Twitter at TheMemory Palace.

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If you are in Providence, Rhode Island, or southeastern New England, come see a kind of a special hometown show.

going back to Providence at the Columbus Theater on September 14th.

If you're in the Southern California area, I am going to be performing at the Now Hear This Festival in Anaheim the weekend of October 29th.

I think I'm going to be performing on the Saturday, the 29th.

There's also going to be like meet and greets and stuff.

It's going to be fun.

The idea is that it's kind of like Comic-Con for a podcast.

So there's a ton of shows there.

The Moth, WTF with Mark Maron, My Friends in Criminal, my buddy Mike Pesca from Slate, some other Slate shows.

It's It's going to be a good time.

And you can find information for both those shows and any upcoming shows at thememorypalace.us.

Thanks for listening.

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