One Summer: America, 1927

through the park. He picked out celebrities. He made the listeners feel present and welcome, like old friends. People loved his broadcasts even if he didn’t always entirely grasp what was happening on the field. Ring Lardner wrote on one occasion: ‘I don’t know which game to write about, the one I saw today or the one I heard Graham McNamee announce as I sat next to him at the Polo Grounds.’ Soon McNamee’s was the best-known voice in America, and not just for World Series games but for every kind of important gathering – championship prize fights, political conventions, Rose Bowls and the arrival home of Charles Lindbergh.
    Lindbergh Day in Washington was in many ways the day that radio came of age. It takes some effort of imagination to appreciate how novel radio was in the 1920s. It was the wonder of the age. By the time of Lindbergh’s flight, one third of all the money America spent on furniture was spent on radios. Stations sprouted everywhere. In a single year, 1922, the number of American radio stations went from 28 to 570. Anyone could start one. Nushawg Poultry Farm in New Lebanon, Ohio, had its own station. So did many department stores, banks, hardware stores, churches, newspapers, utilities and schools. Production at even the larger stations tended to be more than slightly amateurish. When Norman Brokenshire, a broadcaster for WHN in New York, found himself with a long lull to fill and nothing more to say, he announced: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the sounds of New York City,’ and thrust the microphone out of the window.
    Not everyone was captivated by the new technology. Many believed that all the invisible energy flying through the air must be dangerous. One widespread belief was that birds found dead on the ground were there because they had been struck by radio waves. But on the whole people were enchanted. The ability to sit in one’s own living room and listen to a live event in some distant place wasapproximately as miraculous as teleportation. When an advertiser wrote, ‘Radio Leaps the Barriers of Time and Distance!’ it was as much an expression of wonder as of fact. For many, the broadcast of Lindbergh’s arrival was nearly as notable and exciting as the arrival itself.
    ‘Here comes the boy!’ McNamee cried now as Lindbergh appeared on the deck of the Memphis . ‘He stands quiet, unassuming … He looks very serious and awfully nice. A darn nice boy!’ An estimated thirty million enraptured listeners hung on his every word that day. What none of them could see were the tears of joy running down McNamee’s cheeks.
    Among the welcoming shore party were the secretaries of the navy and of war, and a phalanx of naval officials, including Commander Richard E. Byrd, dressed in dazzling whites and still strangely and conspicuously earthbound. People were wondering if he was ever going to leave for Europe. It was not a matter he and Lindbergh could discuss now, for Lindbergh was hustled into an open-top Pierce-Arrow with his mother to proceed under cavalry escort to the Washington Monument.
    No one knows how many people lined the streets of Washington that day, but it was universally agreed that it was the largest gathering the capital had ever seen. As his motorcade proceeded towards the Mall, Lindbergh waved occasionally, but mostly stared opaquely at the crowds. Many of those lining the streets wept as he passed – ‘they knew not just why’, reported the writer and explorer Fitzhugh Green (who was also to be editor of Lindbergh’s book We ). At the Washington Monument, a sea of heads covered the entire visible landscape and young boys filled the nearby trees like Christmas ornaments. At the foot of the monument stood a canopied platform on which President Coolidge and all the members of the cabinet but one were gathered. The lone missing figure was Herbert Hoover. He was stuck in Gulfport, Mississippi, still dealing with the Mississippi flood, which was as bad as ever but almost completely forgotten now by those who weren’t directlyaffected by it. Even Hoover’s tireless PR operatives couldn’t keep it on the front pages with Lindbergh in the country.
    When at last Lindbergh reached the speaking platform, he nodded to those present and accepted the cheers of the crowd. President Coolidge made a short speech of welcome, pinned a Distinguished Flying Cross on his lapel, and with a gesture invited Lindbergh to speak. Lindbergh leaned into the microphone, for