Eight thousand banners, did you say? Covering 120 miles of Los Angeles? Hanging from 300 different types of lampposts? O.K. Some of the brackets for the banners had to be different too; a real headache. Certainly not, you wouldn't want to use just any colors. Had to be magenta, vermilion, chrome yellow, violet, aqua. "Festive Federalism," the designers call it. (What does that mean?) Oh, sorry. Please go on. You were talking about construction: 3,500 construction workers at 67 different (sites, including Olympic Villages, places for the Games, training facilities, parking lots. That is, if the cars can get there. Gridlock city, eh? No! Fifty-two miles of chain-link fence? Well, you can't be too careful. By all means, read the grocery list for the athletes. Pork, 63,700 Ibs.; beef, 206,555 Ibs.; 70,000 dozen eggs. (You do deliver?) You say that if someone laid those eggs end to end they'd stretch for 25 miles? One pooped chicken. That's a joke, son. No harm, no foul.
But where is the center of this thing? No, not the $525 million budget or the anticipated infusion of $3.3 billion into the local economy or the 269,000 dozen cookies. One million new trees planted by a conservation group? Good for them. Nothing like a tree. The question is why. Why, as the magenta was going up at the Los Angeles Coliseum, were 7,800 athletes from 140 nations loading their gear and kissing Mother goodbye? Numbers? Here's a number. On July 28, 2 billion people of the great trembling bipolar world will lay down their washing and watch these Games. Why?
Looking mighty Establishment in his white open-collar shirt and navy-blue suit, John Carlos sits at a table in the headquarters of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, where he now works. Behind one shoulder the American flag, behind the other the Olympic. But for a bum ankle, he says, he could still tear up the track. The last time we saw John Carlos was 1968 on a podium in Mexico City, standing in the grainy evening light rigid as an exclamation point. The black-power salute; an antique of the '60s. He is speaking of something else:
"I was a fair-to-exciting swimmer. I guess I put as much energy into swimming at that age [ten] as I ever did into track and field. I wanted to swim the English Channel. I told my father: I want to know something about this English Channel. Why are these people swimming it? How does one swim with, you know, the sharks? How do swimmers go to the bathroom? What happens in the night? And then I learned about the Olympic Games. And I said: Oh, wow. I'd like to do that.