“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Adventures of a Curious Character

The big guys were so taken aback by the fact that their intimidation didn’t work that they backed away and left.

After a while one of the guys came back and said to me, “You’re right, Curly’s always doin’ that. He’s always gettin’ into fights and askin’ us to straighten it out.”

“You’re damn tootin’ I’m right!” I said, and the guy sat down next to me.

Curly and the other two fellas came over and sat down on the other side of me, two seats away. Curly said something about my eye not looking too good, and I said his didn’t look to be in the best of shape either.

I continue talking tough, because I figure that’s the way a real man is supposed to act in a bar.

The situation’s getting tighter and tighter, and people in the bar are worrying about what’s going to happen. The bartender says, “No fighting in here, boys! Calm down!”

Curly hisses, “That’s OK; we’ll get ‘im when he goes out.”

Then a genius comes by. Every field has its first-rate experts. This fella comes over to me and says, “Hey, Dan! I didn’t know you were in town! It’s good to see you!”

Then he says to Curly, “Say, Paul! I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine, Dan, here. I think you two guys would like each other. Why don’t you shake?”

We shake hands. Curly says, “Uh, pleased to meet you.”

Then the genius leans over to me and very quietly whispers, “Now get out of here fast!”

“But they said they would …”

“Just go!” he says.

I got my coat and went out quickly. I walked along near the walls of the buildings, in case they went looking for me. Nobody came out, and I went to my hotel. It happened to be the night of the last lecture, so I never went back to the Alibi Room, at least for a few years.

(I did go back to the Alibi Room about ten years later, and it was all different. It wasn’t nice and polished like it was before; it was sleazy and had seedy-looking people in it. I talked to the bartender, who was a different man, and told him about the old days. “Oh, yes!” he said. “This was the bar where all the bookmakers and their girls used to hang out.” I understood then why there were so many friendly and elegant-looking people there, and why the phones were ringing all the time.)

The next morning, when I got up and looked in the mirror, I discovered that a black eye takes a few hours to develop fully. When I got back to Ithaca that day, I went to deliver some stuff over to the dean’s office. A professor of philosophy saw my black eye and exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Feynman! Don’t tell me you got that walking into a door?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I got it in a fight in the men’s room of a bar in Buffalo.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed.

Then there was the problem of giving the lecture to my regular class. I walked into the lecture hall with my head down, studying my notes. When I was ready to start, I lifted my head and looked straight at them, and said what I always said before I began my lecture-but this time, in a tougher tone of voice: “Any questions?”

I Want My Dollar!

When I was at Cornell I would often come back home to Far Rockaway to visit. One time when I happened to be home, the telephone rings: it’s LONG DISTANCE, from California. In those days, a long distance call meant it was something very important, especially a long distance call from this marvelous place, California, a million miles away.

The guy on the other end says, “Is this Professor Feynman, of Cornell University?”

“That’s right.”

“This is Mr. So-and-so from the Such-and-such Aircraft Company.” It was one of the big airplane companies in California, but unfortunately I can’t remember which one. The guy continues: “We’re planning to start a laboratory on nuclear-propelled rocket airplanes. It will have an annual budget of so-and-so-many million dollars …” Big numbers.

I said, “Just a moment, sir; I don’t know why you’re telling me all this.”

“Just let me speak to you,” he says; “just let me explain everything. Please let me do it my way.” So he goes on a little more, and says how many people are going to be in the laboratory, so-and-so-many people at this level, and so-and-so-many Ph.D’s at that level …

“Excuse me, sir,” I say, “but I think you have the wrong fella.”

“Am I talking to Richard Feynman, Richard P. Feynman?”

“Yes, but you’re..

“Would you please let me present what I have to say, sir, and then we’ll discuss it.”

“All right!” I sit down and sort of close my eyes to listen to all this stuff, all these details about this big project, and I still haven’t the slightest idea why he’s giving me all this information,

Finally, when he’s all finished, he says, “I’m telling you about our plans because we want to know if you would like to be the director of the laboratory.”

“Have you really got the right fella?” I say. “I’m a professor of theoretical physics. I’m not a rocket engineer, or an airplane engineer, or anything like that.”

“We’re sure we have the right fellow.’

“Where did you get my name then? Why did you decide to call me?”