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"You're insidiously clever, you pig jackals of the running dog press. Will you use the story?"

"Maybe. My boss will eventually make the decision."

"Your boss! Man, can't you see you're as much exploited as the worker and peasant? Except that the mailed fist is concealed in a silk glove. Get your head together, man, recognize that you're just in a slightly more privileged boat than your brothers in the factory and the field."

"Thank you for your call, sir."

"You don't have to call me sir, man. You don't have to call anybody sir! Get your head together..."

Is this how we really sounded in 1973? I just finished reading a paperback I picked up in Manila called The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a bestseller back in 1973. (The cover price was just $1.75!) It's a fairly engaging story about a gang of crooks taking a New York City subway car, which was later made into a movie starring Walter Matthau. But the most interesting parts to me involved the 1970s dialogues, which made me ask, again, did we really talk this way in 1973? Here's a scene where one of the passengers on the train, a black man, had just been shot:

He felt a tap on his arm. The old dude beside him was offering a large folded handkerchief.

"Take it," the old man said.

Mobutu pushed the handkerchief away. "I got my own." He held the bloody rag and the old man turned pale, but didn't give up.

"Go. Take my handkerchief. We're all in the same boat." ...

"I will take nothing from a white peeg, so f*** off, old man."

"White, granted." The old man smiled. "Pig, you happen to have the wrong religion. Come on, young man, let's be friends."

"No way, old man. I am your enemy, and one day I will cut your throat."

"That day," the old man said, "I'll borrow your handkerchief."

It's interesting to me to read this. I'm not old enough to remember race riots, but Mom has told me about them from time to time, along with a story about me from around 1970:

We were in a department store in downtown Des Moines, riding in an elevator with a black woman and her son, who was about my age. As Mom tells the story, I reached out and ran my finger along the boy's arm, then turned my finger towards me and looked to see if anything had rubbed off.

Apparently, it was a tense moment in the elevator. And if this dialogue from 1973 New York City is at all accurate, I can understand why Mom still carries this memory.