9

"Bring along that portable public address system," Elliott Freem,~jitle commanded. "We may be glad of it."
The Meadowood community meeting in the Sunday school hall of Meadowood First Baptist Church was sizzling with excitement which Lawyer Freemantle had skillfully generated. The meeting was also about to move on to Lincoln International Airport.
"Don't hand me any bilgewater about it being too late, or not wanting to go," Elliott Freemantle had exhorted his audience of six hundred a few minutes earlier. He stood before them confidently, impeccable as ever in his ,-Iegant Blue Spruce suit and gleaming alligator shoes; not a single barber-styled hair was out of place, and be radiated confidence. The meeting was enthusiastically with him now, and the rougher tongued he was, it seemed, the more they liked him.
He continued, "And don't let's have a lot of footling excuses for not going. I don't want to hear about babysitters, mothers-in-law left alone, or stews on the stove simmering, because I couldn't care less; neither-at this moment-should you. If your car's stuck in the snow, leave it there

and ride in someone else's. The point is: I'm going to the airport tonight, on your behalf, to make myself obnoxious." Ile paused as another aircraft thundered overhead. "By God!-it's time somebody did." The last remark had caused applause and laughter.
"I need your support, and I want you there-all of you. Now I'll ask you a plain, straight question: Are you coming?"
The halt resounded to a roar of, "Yes!" People were on their feet, cheering.
"All right," Freemantle said, and the hall had hushed. "Let's get a few things clear before we go."
He had ilready told them, he pointed out, that legal proceedings must be the basis of any action to gain relief for Meadowood community from its over- whelmine airport noise. Such legal proceedings, however, sh~)uld not be the kind which nobody noticed, or which took place in some out-of-the-way, unpeopled courtroom. Instead, they must be conducted in the spotlight of public attention and public sympathy.