Scabs <i> are </i> burned at the stake, of course, but not until after a fair trial by union militants. : Horns and Fingers

I was out on the old picket line the other day helping the Writers Guild of America in its strike against what we regard as the scum.

I’m a member of the guild because I write for television on weekends in order to keep busy. If I go for more than two days without writing, it is liable to short-circuit the synaptic connection that motivates me in the first place.

The scum, as you might have guessed, are the producers we are on strike against. Basically, we want a decent wage and they want us scratching around below poverty level in order to intimidate and manipulate us.

A producer, for your information, has no specific creative function in television except to develop a writer’s ideas.

Let’s say, for instance, you come in with a terrific concept for a series about a blind cop who solves crimes utilizing a keen sense of smell.

The producer sits there looking at you through vacant blue eyes as you tell it and then says, “Great, we’ll call it the ‘Wizard of Oz!’ ”

You study him for a moment to make sure he’s serious, then say, “Uh, Rog, I think that one’s taken.”

He seems so disappointed you’re almost sorry you told him, so you come back with, “How about ‘Winnie the Pooh’?” and he loves it.

That’s why I was out on the picket line last Friday in front of New World Productions, but it wasn’t at all what I expected.

When the Newspaper Guild hit the bricks some years ago up in San Francisco, we drank at Jerry and Johnny’s then picketed while singing old Woody Guthrie songs like “Which Side Are You on, Boys?” and “Union Maid.”

Sometimes we’d spit at members of management who happened by, but at that stage of the game we’d be pretty smashed and mostly drool on ourselves and not hit anyone.

It was considerably more sedate on the Westside of L.A. Hundreds turned out and I don’t believe there was a drunk or a spitter among them.

These were not swaggering toughs itching for a fight, but balding, middle-aged gentlemen who had written episodes for “Bonanza.”

The younger writers wore shorts and running shoes and talked about playing tennis that afternoon. The older ones reminisced about how great it was in the old days on the Ponderosa.

A few couples pushed strollers with infants in them and one woman nursed her baby in the scum shade of the struck building. There was even a guy doing hand puppets and an old man strolling through the crowd playing soft notes on a harmonica.

I don’t know what he was playing, but it sure as hell wasn’t anything Woody Guthrie wrote.

Still, being outdoors is better than working in the Writers Guild office, which I did the week before.

I answered the telephone and filled out forms for members who called in to explain why they couldn’t do picket duty.

One, for instance, suffered from vertigo and didn’t want to fall suddenly into the gutter and embarrass the union movement, and another was old and incontinent, which might have embarrassed the movement even more.

There is a code number for most of the excuses. Being sick is No. 503 and being old is No. 512. There is no number for being incontinent, so I put him down as refuses to picket, No. 509.

There is similarly a code for being deceased (No. 513), but it would have been in extraordinarily bad taste to list someone as dead simply because he could not hold his water.

The code number for celebrity writers like Neil Simon is 514, though I am not certain if being a 514 is considered a legitimate excuse for declining to picket, unless you are a 513 514.

There is also a form to be filled out if a guild member is suspected, as they say, of “scab writing.”

For those unfamiliar with union nomenclature, scab writing has nothing to do with writing until your fingers bleed but with writing anything at all during a strike.

It’s OK to turn out a newspaper column because a column isn’t considered very important, but you can’t create anything of a serious nature, like episodes for “Marblehead Manor,” for instance.

By the way, you don’t just casually accuse someone of being a scab. It isn’t like the kids in Salem who screamed “Witch!” when they didn’t like their baby-sitters and got them burned at the stake.

Scabs are burned at the stake, of course, but not until after a fair trial by union militants and evangelical ministers of God.

The only exciting moment on the picket line came when a car passed with its horn blaring. A lot of passers-by honked to show their support, but this particular driver really leaned on his horn.

I waved back and the guy picketing next to me said, “What’re you waving for, he’s giving you the finger.”

I took a second look and sure enough, he was flicking me off. The gesture was not intended for the union generally but for me particularly. He must have been someone who read my column and was indicating his appreciation.

For a moment, I felt like a 514.