There
are only so many times I can bike to Band of Brothers, which leads me to
channel surfing. Somewhere beyond the
Turner Classic Movies on channel 501, Tuesday I settled into The Sand Pebbles, with
Steve McQueen and Candice Bergen. This
is one of those movies that, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, the next time feels
like the first.
Not
that I’ve forgotten the first time, a Sunday afternoon in September of
1967. My mother and I took the bus downtown
to the Michael Todd, where an usher led us to our assigned seats. I went instead of my father for two reasons:
first, he was working at the firehouse on Archer and Sacramento that day, and
second, he probably didn’t want to go, anyhow.
That left me to get lost in a love story about a beautiful missionary
and a Navy seaman set against a backdrop of 1920s’ China in turmoil (I could’ve
have written press releases in an earlier life, and did, for a time). I’m a sucker for gunboats and B-17s, and one
Southside baseball team. I brought a
transistor radio along to check on the White Sox score.
They beat the
Indians, 3-1, behind a five-inning relief stint by Don McMahon, to move within
one game of first place in the American League.
There were five games left in the season, but that was the last win for
the Sox. I should’ve known from the
movie. McQueen’s character gets killed in the end.
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