Age Can Play Queer Tricks on One's Mental Processes

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

date unknown; probably 1952-1954

   NOBODY can put his finger on the day when time began catching up with him.  Nobody can say that "yesterday I was young but today I am old."  Some folks are old at 40 and some are young at 60.  I am mired somewhere between and, if memory serves, have been "getting along" for quite a spell.

   A fellow becomes aware that youth is behind him when he stops being kittenish with the ladies, when he quits tripping lightly upstairs, when he knows that a job can wait, that nothing need be done "right this minute."

   I do not go to bed anymore and die for eight hours.  I toss and turn and get fits of insomnia and wonder why I ate the fried onions.  The weight of the covers is burdensome to the toes.  The corns scream. The mattress is too soft and the pillow too hard and the room is too hot or too cold.

   A man is on the far side of the hill when, as I do, he prefers home to going out on the town.  It takes stern distaff persuasion even to get me to a movie.  I like home cooking and home loafing--and home.

   THEY SAY that if you want to stay young you should get interested in something.  You should develop hobbies such as gardening or woodcraft.  That may be but there are some things even worse than old age.  If petunia culture or cabinetmaking is the way to youth, I'll just keep on resting.

   It isn't so much what age does to one's looks that frightens me.  You cannot judge age by appearance.  Some grey-heads are young and alert and so are others who sport bay-windows and are well into the molting process.

   WHAT GIVES me the creeps is time's erosion of the brain.  I confess that the only difference between me and an absent-minded professor is that I'm not a professor.  I walk into places and forget why I'm there.  I start shaving and can't find my razor.  I can't find the car keys because they're in the other pants.  I drive off to a show without the tickets.

   My wife will say when I get home , "Hurry up and dress.  We haven't much time."  When I ask why we are short of time this particular evening she will say, "For Pete's sake!  Don't you remember we're meeting Joe and Gracey downtown for dinner?"  Then I recall that we've gone over all this at breakfast and hang my head in shame.

   Now I've quit asking questions.  Every time I do I run into one of these fast ones.  When my wife reminds me that I've promised to get home by 5:30 it's usually news to me.  But I say "Oh, sure," automatically.  It saves humiliation.

   IT BECAME clear a few years back that the contracting veins were shutting off the blood flow to the cerebrum.  An incident occurred which gives me the shudders even yet.

   My brother-in-law was here briefly en route to Kansas City and wondered if he could get a plane out.  I found that one was leaving in 30 minutes and rushed out with his suitcase to the garage.  I put down the luggage, flung open the door--and backed the car over the suitcase.  The thing split open like a melon, littering the driveway with shirts, pajamas, socks and toiletries and leaving me nonplussed and aghast.

   You do not bounce back from such an experience overnight.  You never quite do.  For a time I feared I'd blown my stack.  I wallowed in self-analysis.  I told myself that it was a phase that would pass. But the mental lapses have continued and each one opens the old wound.  My dreams are tormented by shattered suitcases.

   THE OTHER evening after dinner my wife was putting on her coat and I asked her where she was going before I realized I shouldn't.  She gave me that incredulous glance and it broke me down.

   "Look," I cried, "this bothers me more than it does you.  I can't help it, I tell you!"

   "What in the world are you talking about?" she asked.  "What bothers you?"

   I told her not remembering things bothered me, not being aware of what was going on bothered me. "I," I said , "am getting old."

   "Don't be silly," she said.  "What makes you think you're getting old?"

   I said I'd just told her.

   "Because you don't listen when I'm talking?  Because you forget to buy the stamps or stop at the grocery store for the eggs?  Because you put the empty bottles in the refrigerator and leave the milk on the porch?"

   Then she said something I thought was rather sweet.  "Why, that doesn't mean you're getting old. You've always been that way."

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Christmas Traditions Are Worth Preserving

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

December 8, 1956

   CHRISTMAS is a time of memory and tradition as much as a time of giving, receiving and feasting.  Who cannot look nostalgically back at Christmases past which, though thin in material things, will always be remembered?  Some of those I best recall were during the depression, when there wasn't much sense in Santa bothering to make the trip.

   For Christmas to be good, traditions must be kept.  Even those that bring temporary agony assume a rosy hue in retrospect and become part of the Christmas lore.

   I AM ALWAYS reluctant to plunge into the marts of trade and get my shopping done.  Neither am I wild about buying the tree.  But the tougher the job at the time the longer it lives in the mind.

   Traditionally I delay my buying until a week before Christmas.  It would seem a violation of my holiday code to do otherwise.  In keeping with tradition, I do not know what my wife wants, although, according to her, she has dropped innumerable hints.

   So I grope through forests of negligee, feeling like a peeping Tom, through mountains of crockery and silverware and luggage, through mazes of blankets and jewelry and electrical labor-savers.  Such tours can be rewarding.  Sometimes you see something that brings awakening.  By George, she did say something about a steam iron, or a musical jewel box or a candelabra--and there one is!

   But usually confusion mounts as the tour progresses and I shoot from the hip, wishing profoundly the while that she would settle for a gift certificate or a check, buy what she wanted herself and relieve me of a task too big.  But she is right in insisting that the gift be bought by me.  The experience stores up Yuletide memories.

   TO MAKE purchase of the tree something that will stick with you forever, never buy one on a pleasant day.  Wait until the temperature is around zero.  If a stiff wind is blowing, so much the better.

   Do not settle beforehand the question of whether your choice should be a spruce, balsam or pine.  Talk this over at the lot while trying to keep your hat on and your nose dry.  "Wasn't it a spruce we had four years ago that shed all its needles while we were  putting on the tinsel?"  No, you say, stamping your feet to stir up the blood at the risk of snapping off a toe, you think it was a balsam.

   "How about going to that lot we passed yesterday, like I wanted to do in the first place?"

   Sure.  Go to a half dozen lots.  You haven't suffered near enough yet.  Then return to the lot you went to originally to get the tree you saw first--which, in the meantime, has been  sold..

   The tree we had that I remember best looked  like something salvaged from an avalanche,  but I can see it still, after 12 years,  because I lugged it home from a lot eight blocks away, freezing hands, feet and nose while so doing.  Such torture keeps Christmas forever green.

   ONE OF  the most cherished traditions concerns Christmas cards.   What would the  holidays be  without them?  The thing to do is to hit upon a clever idea during midsummer,  one around which you  can build a meaningful card, and go to work on it in early fall like everyone else.  A couple of weeks before Christmas have the cards addressed and ready to mail.  You then avoid the last-minute scramble that profanes the spirit of the season.

    For us this would run completely counter to tradition.  Two weeks before Christmas the only idea we   have is that it's high time we got going. Then, after the cards are at hand, we cannot find last year's list, on

which we had  painstakingly noted changes of address and which we were going to card-index.
   When the document finally is resurrected from a jungle of cancelled checks and income tax data, the  deadline is breathing down our necks.  We are compelled to stay up two or three successive nights, fighting fatigue and temper while penning gladsome personal messages to beef up the printed and rather impersonal "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."

   THE MAGIC of Christmas Eve holds us unfailingly in thrall.  There's a blaze in the fireplace.  The tree is lighted and the stockings hung.  The Christmas story is read and carols sung.  Then our son goes off to bed, the lucky lad.

   Bed for his parents is in some vague future.  Gifts my wife has secreted away are hauled out from closets and from under beds, gifts crying to be wrapped and tagged and arranged under the tree.  There are the stockings to fill, perhaps a sled or bike or wagon to get from the basement.

   Then, when the work is done, there must be time to sit a while by the fire and glow to the charm of the occasion, talk of other Christmases and surrender to the unfailing enchantment.

   You know then that Christmas, though fatiguing, is awfully good.

    

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

How We Do Love to Keep Busy!

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

November 12, 1960

   BACK WHEN I was young, dumb and vigorous I walked faster than most pedestrians and took pride in my stride.  Now everyone walks faster than I do, even babes wearing heels so high they do well to stand up.

   I wonder more and more why everyone else is in such a hurry, why they are so intent and purposeful.  You'd think it was a sin to enjoy the passing scene and that strolling was only for lovers.

   TAKE A LOOK at the face of the crowd, especially now that we're getting into the Christmas shopping buzz.  It's downright grim.  The relaxed and unhurried are oddities.

   The other day I was wheezing toward the bank to make a deposit that would keep me honest and came face to face with a young lady who almost stopped me dead.  She lacked both beauty and dash but stood out like a beacon.

   She was smiling.  All alone and smiling.  Moving along at an easy pace and enjoying herself.  Maybe she was a country girl reveling in the city wonderland.  Or she might have been smart enough not to let time be her constant taskmaster, to know that life's success can't be measured in minutes saved and that a day crammed with "getting things done" isn't necessarily a day to cherish.

   THE OLDER I grow the less I can hurry and the less reason I see to try.  In a day of speed and production, when the gross national product is the measure of our worth, I grow increasingly anachronistic.

   We loafers and dreamers have about had it, I guess.  The hustler is the glory boy.  He's sure that if he ever stops hustling he's through, even though what he's hustling about may have no more social significance than a blocked punt.

   Since the body wasn't built for the emotional pressures now put on it, it's no accident that ulcers and heart attacks are on the march, with the nervous twitch keeping step; no accident that a lot of us are as sore beset as a do-it-yourself linoleum layer.

   WE ARE engulfed in a tide of time-saving.  What we do fast must be done faster.  Man could no more return to the lazy, livery stable yesterdays than he could live without computers, coffee and committees.  Nature didn't equip the poor fellow for the ride.  It decreed that he have some time for contemplation, time to ponder life's meaning, time from the office and briefcase.

   But we are so beholden to the "busy" bug we even make work of recreation.  A good vacation is more body-wrecker than rejuvenator, its merit based on the number of miles traveled.  Vacation at home and you're either broke or insane.  And we wear ourselves out trying to use all the leisure-time
 duffle that bulges the basement.

   If I live long enough to retire I'll hie to a quiet cove, if there are any quiet coves by then, watch birds--if there are birds to watch--and retire completely.  And should anyone advise me to develop a hobby to keep from going to pot, I'll tell him my hobby is repose--repose, and escape from bustle and clatter and the fret of care.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Home From Office After 13-Day Pause for Repairs { icy pavement refused to bend }

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 21, 1952

   WELL, I finally got home from the office--on one leg. It was a tough, 13-day journey, with a side trip to St. Barnabus hospital consuming most of the time.  There I acquired a pair of crutches, a metal gizmo for the hip joint, and the assurance that in three months I'd be as good as ever.

   The hospital stay was made necessary when my posterior came into violent contact with Park avenue at Fifth street.  I went down a couple of days ahead of the Flying Enterprise, but with a bit less fanfare.  At any rate, something had to give and it turned out to be my carcass, not the pavement.

   A Good Samaritan in a Cadillac, in whose debt I shall forever be, took over from there.  He helped me into his car and headed for the repair shop, picking up my daughter en route.  She had been waiting for me to take her home.  Anxious to reassure her mother that my chances of living were good, she phoned home from the hospital.

   "Oh, he's all right," she said   "He just can't walk."

   I SPENT a couple of years on an x-ray table and then was put in "traction."  This is where they tuck you into bed with a pulley and a rope and suspend a weight from your foot.  There also was a trapeze overhead by which I could pull myself up and give the upper half of the old cadaver a measure of mobility.

   On the operation itself I can touch but lightly.  I know little more about it than if I hadn't been there.  I was dimly conscious of being wheeled into surgery in a high state of dopiness and not giving a hoot whether they put me back together or sawed me in two.

   Then the wife's voice was cutting through the fog, telling me the operation was finished.  I was sure she was crazy but lay an exploratory hand on my hip just to make certain.  It was bandaged.  I heaved a sigh of relief.  Well, the worst was over.

   But it wasn't.  Lying in bed for days on the flat of the back was worse.  And insomnia was definitely worse.  Sleep was impossible.  Every night was a month long.  The nurses, I'm sure, wished I would die.  Lower the head of the bed a little.  Raise it up.  Get me some fresh water.  Put another pillow under my knee, please.  Put a blanket on me.  Gad, now it's getting hot.  How about some more water?  And take off that blanket.

   AND SO ON AND ON through the witching hours.  Burning cigarets until the mouth tasted like a rabbit hutch, reading whodunits until the eyes smoked, perspiring and having chills, looking at the watch and praying for 6 o'clock to come, when you could get your wash water and start the new day.

   I never suspected the time would ever come when I hated a bed.  How nice it would be, I used to think, to spend a winter under the covers in blissful hibernation, wallowing in rest.

   Now I have put away such pining.  A bed, I find, can be a prison, a torture rack.  You grow to welcome the little distractions that take your mind off the thing.  Washing the teeth becomes fun.  Mowing the whiskers and combing the hair are high adventure.

   But hospital residence has its bright side, too.  The food I got was tasty and bountiful.  Every meal was a delight.  Your friends rally 'round.  They bear gifts to your bedside and tell you how well you're looking and you enjoy their lies.

   Comes then the happy day when you can ease yourself out of bed unaided and crutch down the corridor to the room of some fellow patient.  There you can speak freely about operations.  You have a captive audience.

   I SAVE THE BEST for the last--the nurses, and palpitate pleasantly as I ponder this phase of hospital tenure.  The gals who tended me were not only efficient, they were definitely on the side of pulchritude.  This was right down my alley.  I have ever saluted beauty and was prepared to do so again.  Though handicapped by an abbreviated nightie and an elastic bandage extending from hip to toe I set about spreading charm.

   One who is well along on the wrong side of 40 should have no illusions about his ability to charm a cutie half his age but I have never let this handicap divert me from the old college try.

   I plied the nurses with candy, nuts and other tidbits which my ever-loving wife kept in constant supply--maintaining a patter of conversation the while, and hoping for developments.  Honesty compels me to confess that the only development was on me.  I found myself going into emotional flaps every time one of the fairer angels of mercy rammed a thermometer into my face or took my pulse.

   I DO NOT GUESS that my better half was unduly concerned, or even aware, that I was playing Romeo in my feeble way.  The oldster can do little, anyway, but add to his supply of dream stuff and, if circumstance fans the graying embers of fancy a bit, it can make no real difference.  And nobody knows this better than the oldster's wife.

   I am crutching my way over the hill, I know.  But should the day ever come when badinage with a lovely blonde lacks stimulation, when the flashing smile of a red-head fails to stir the toothless wolf within me, I hope that I slip again on the ice and that this time I fall on my head.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune. 

(A Thanksgiving Day Special) -- Reunions Call for Preparation

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

 November 21, 1959

   IT'S BEEN a year since we've had the whole tribe under the roof, but, barring blizzard or illness, our kids and their spouses and kids will be with us this Thanksgiving.  Anticipation is so high that if anything happens to spoil the plan we'll send back the turkey and cry in our cornmeal mush.

   I'm thinking of kidnapping someone's little daughter for the day to give the gentle sex better representation.  We now number 13, with only three females, all adults.  Our six grandchildren are all boys.  I'd given up hope that either my daughter or daughter-in-law will ever mother anything but sons.

   Any chance of a granddaughter is 10 to 15 years away.  My youngest son is that far from marriage, I trust.  And if he should sire a daughter it may be a little late, with only Memorial Day rites reminding her of grandpa.  The clock is running out on me.

   WE FIND grandsons quite exciting, though.  We fatigue visitors with snapshots of them, parrot their cute sayings pridefully and know they all are gifted beyond their years.

   We've instituted a series of family councils preparatory to their coming so the soiree will not be marred by broken legs or cracked skulls.  The safety factor calls for particular attention because of 10-year-old Uncle Tom, who is regarded by his nephews as the epitome of masculine perfection.  His every move must be copied.  His every word is a howl.

   He does have a way, though, of leaving basement doors open and otherwise unwittingly setting booby traps for his juniors.  However, we've lectured him sternly on the importance of caution when the little ones are here and I'm confident he'll be at least as safe as a color-blind deer hunter.

   "We simply must get everything out of reach," I admonished.  "We'll have crawlers as well as runners and fallers.  There must be no marbles, jacks or crayons on the floor, no cigarette butts where they can be eaten, no vases on the coffee table, no knives within reach in the kitchen, no parakeets flitting around.  Nobody must be allowed to pull the cuckoo clock off the wall, knock over lamps, throw blocks at the TV or fall down stairs."

   "And remember," my wife put in with a stern look at her son, "if anybody gets hurt we'll be to blame.  We want to have a happy time and will--if we're all careful."

   "Also," Uncle Tom grinned, deeming it time to get in a word, "we don't want anyone getting chickenpox."  He had recently been afflicted and was talking to his mother, who'd never had the disease.

   "Don't worry about my getting chickenpox," she laughed.  "People my age are immune."

   SHE DISCOVERED next day she was wrong.  People her age do get it occasionally, a nurse told her, and in such cases the malady is invariably severe.  This cheerful soul even remarked that an 80-year-old woman she knew recently had succumbed to measles, "so you never can tell."

   Now we're worried.  Chickenpox, they say, comes about two weeks after exposure.  If milady gets it--and if our luck runs true she will--she'll break out in a few days and the holiday festival will be shot.

   If this happens I won't even eat mush come Thanksgiving.  I'll drown in the stuff.

L-R, front to back
Todd Guthrie, Cary Shoberg, Uncle Tom, Dave Guthrie, Mark Shoberg
Chuck Guthrie, Carol May (Wessel) Guthrie, Paul Shoberg, Charles (Chick) Guthrie, Mike Guthrie,
 Florence (Kildow) Guthrie, Carol Jan (Guthrie) Shoberg, Stan Shoberg

copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

A Little Mourning Is Enough

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

July 29, 1961

   WHEN the time comes for me to retreat to the far shore, I hope the trip occasions a minimum of lamentation, tears and nose blowing.  I wouldn't care to have them dance around the bier but neither do I want my friends and relatives to feel any obligation to wear long faces or to mourn more than briefly.

   Not that I'm afflicted with premonitions that death is plucking at my sleeve.  I expect to live longer than I should and to tail off into years of senility.  But after the sojourn on earth is finished, I'm certain that gaudy and dramatic obsequies do the departed no more good than do wails from the mourners.

   THERE ARE those, however, who mourn with dedicated and lasting earnestness and who, refusing to respond to the healing balm of time, grow less and less personable and more and more difficult to be around.

   She outlived him a quarter of a century, but my maternal grandmother never got over her husband's death.  She clung to grief as avidly as a shipwrecked sailor clings to a raft and you'd have thought that she and grandpa never were out of each other's sight from their wedding day until his demise.  She was obsessed with the sentimental silliness that she wouldn't be true to her husband, regardless of his time in the cemetery, if she ever again let herself be gay or make eyes at another man.   

   ANYONE in this situation has a right to react as he or she pleases, perhaps, and if grandma elected to wear her widowhood in melancholy martyrdom, complete with sighs audible for half a block, she must have assumed that this was her business.

   Had she lived alone it would have been, despite the bad break she was giving herself.  But she gave an even worse break to those in residence with her and her dolorous, funereal manner frequently caused my father to blow his cork.  She lived until about 80 and under the circumstances lived too long.

   WE REACT more sensibly to death now, but even today there are those like grandma who refuse to stop crying, who retreat into a shell, won't be pulled out, and then wonder why their friends are falling away.  Remarriage?  They reject it as tantamount to infidelity and remain resolute in their determination to remain forever true, death notwithstanding.

   As I see it, remarriage is a tribute to the one who's gone, proof positive that the survivor enjoyed the arrangement so much that he or she didn't want to continue on alone.

   I HAVE a couple of in-laws I'm proud of.  Both lost their spouses within the year and I feared that each would go into permanent decline.  Neither did.  Both are keeping busy, interested and alive.  The sister-in-law never turns down a social engagement.  The brother-in-law has the neighbors in for coffee at the slightest provocation and loves to have folks in for dinner, prepared by him.  He fancies himself as quite a chef--and he is.

   Neither of these persons is having it easy.  To say that they are happy living alone would be ridiculous.  Both confess to loneliness and dark hours.  But life is far more rewarding than it would be if they were burdened by the fixation that the final curtain had dropped, that they had nothing to live for and that it somehow wouldn't be fitting to do anything but cling to the past.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.  

Marriage Isn't Every Girl's Dream

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

February 13, 1960

   IN ALMOST any business establishment that has 50 or more employees you'll find several who aren't married.  One of the favorite coffee-break pastimes of those who can't endure minding their own business is to speculate on how this can be.

   The bachelor, unless he is a prime catch (i.e., a fellow with money) causes no great stir.  His male associates either dismiss him as a person without charm or respect him as a discerning chap who knows when he's well off.  But any girl bertween 25 and 45 who's still single will set the boys to gabbling like chickens in the barnyard.

   "I WONDER why it is that Dolly never got married?" some toothless wolf will muse.  "She's completely charming, dresses well and has a trim figure.  Personally, I coud go for her."  He shakes his head in bafflement and with a trace of dejection.  "She'd better hurry up, too.  Dolly isn't getting any younger."

   His inference is that Dolly would go for him, too, if he as much as crooked a finger, and it's a shame that all the males such as he have been spoken for and are unavailable.

   Then there's Sarah, a lovely dish who can't yet be 30.  A smart kid, too, but without a boyfriend.  Too bad.  Maybe she's too smart.  Her brains probably scare the men off.  She'll wake up some day to find that she's a spinster.  

   IT SELDOM occurs to men, particularly married ones, that the bachelor girl could remain one by choice.  If she isn't married, it's because nobody has asked her.  It's that simple.

   How smug can the male animal be?  While it's true that the question must be popped, any lady with an ounce of guile and awareness of masculine susceptibility to female enchantment can bring this about if she has the desire and is given the chance.

  The bleak fact is, however, that all women are not smitten by all men.  As I get it, most ladies old enough to have their wits about them would rather be dead than married to most men.

   ONCE A GIRL outgrows the dewy-eyed phase when she's in love with romance per se--the age when most of them get married--she becomes harder and harder to snare and is apt to find a career more and more attractive than betrothal to Harry, Herbert or Arthur.

   Also, as she grows in age and experience, the envy that has torn her at being the bridesmaid but not the bride may change to satisfaction with her own freedom--freedom from housework, husbands, financial crises and burping babies.  Following a Sunday afternoon amid the clutter and chaos of Hazel's little family she may return to the quiet and orderly office on Monday morning with renewed appreciation.

   CONCERNED though I am about the population explosion, I'm not attempting here to argue against marriage.  Personally, I wouldn't and couldn't do without it.  But we don't all have the same sense of values, and those who aren't attracted to this particular involvement can remain so, for all of me.

   Unless she's someone whose marriage is delayed or prevented by circumstances, I feel no pity for the bachelor girl.  She doesn't need it.  She probably prefers things as they are.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

You Can't Dream and Save Time

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune

 October 20, 1963

   IT TAKES me two hours to get from bed to desk and to do even that well I must eat breakfast like a St. Bernard.  Most of my co-workers sleep later than I do and many reach the office earlier.  They wonder what I do with my time.
   I used to wonder, too, but wonder no longer.  Dalliance comes as naturally as breathing.  I enjoy it and know that at this late date any attempt at self-improvement would be futile.  Whenever I sleep half an hour longer than usual and determine to speed up my schedule to compensate for the luxury, I get to work 30 minutes late.

   HASTE DOES too much violence to natural inclination and forces one to keep his mind on what he's doing.  Also, one must set the stage the night before.  He must decide what shirt and necktie he'll wear and reach decisions about the pants, jacket and socks.  This eliminates rooting around in the closet and pawing through dresser drawers.

   I read some silly business about this time-saving dodge once and determined to try it, even going so far as to strop my razor before going to bed and fixing firmly in mind the  location of the shaving brush.  But the game isn't worth the candle.  It introduced too much stark realism and efficiency into getting dressed.  To me the infant moments of the day are moments to cherish, moments for dreams, for coming alive gradually and decently.

  THE FELLOW who whips out of bed like a fireman, whisks off his whiskers and gets down to breakfast in 15 minutes is a time-saver, I grant, but the world is too much with him.  He is a purposeful and unimaginative live wire who is going places-- and has ulcers to prove it.  The joys of wandering the fields of fancy are denied him.  He is missing much.

   It takes me 15 minutes just to get on my socks and shoes.  While doing so my ear is cocked to the plaudits of the literati.  I have just written a best seller and the rave reviews are a rhapsody.  Or I'm running for a touchdown after leaping high to catch a pass.  The crowd, naturally, is wild.
   Even brushing the teeth is endurable if you get your mind off your cavities and boom down a ski slope, circle the bases after hitting a home run, or shoot it out with the Clanton gang at Tombstone.

  ANOTHER thing that burns up some morning time but is worth it is the horseplay my son and I enjoy.  We always go a couple of rounds after I rout him out of bed and afterward he frequently seeks my counsel on problems in math or social studies.

   This bow to paternal erudition tickles my vanity but I'm not, I confess, at my best so early in the day.  The principal products of Madagascar and the latitude of Peoria come rather haltingly off the tongue at that hour.  Answers cannot be given in seconds.

   BUT TO SUM UP, it takes me an hour to get ready for breakfast, half an hour to eat--if it hasn't taken more than an hour to get to breakfast--and half an hour to drive to the office.  The stretch between bed and breakfast is the one the efficiency expert would spot as the bottleneck.
   However, he can go take a jump.  I have a book of quotations which credits Anatole France with this gem: "Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream."  Efficiency experts might not agree, but I do.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

10- Year Work Test is Charted

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE  

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune 

October 20, 1963

   NOW I KNOW WHAT I'll do after retirement--devote full time to leaf raking, painting, gardening, window washing, roof mending and junk hauling and see if it's possible to catch up.  This isn't as exciting as taking banana boats to the Caribbean or playing checkers in St. Petersburg but I yearn for the answer.  And I want my epitaph to say, "He got his work done."

   It'll be nip and tuck, but given 10 years, with only an occasional Sunday off and no sick leave, I think I can make it.

   Always in the back of a man's mind is the realization that there's a lot to do that isn't getting done.  This is brought home each fall when you're buttoning things up for winter.  Then you come face to face with the ravages of wear and decay.

   I'm now exchanging screens for storm windows and am acutely alive to--and ashamed of--all the work I'm passing over.  I can let the puttying go for another six months, I tell myself, but a complete job will be a must next spring.  Not one piece of storm-sash is weather-tight.

   THE WINDOWS NEED paint, too.  So do the ledges So do the porches.  The whole house could stand a couple of coats.  And the backyard patio, partially installed in May, remains partially installed.

   Discouragement strikes each time I climb a ladder to clean a window.  This is but the immediate, surface chore, not the basic demand.  It takes time to paint and  putty, though,


and there is too little time.  And if you linger too long on anything but the bare essentials cold weather may catch you with your storm windows down.

   It takes time, too, to wash windows--more time than it should.  It's been my conviction for years, unsupported by my wife, that people expend needless effort trying to make windows shine when they should be content with removing the dirt.  Streaks shouldn't matter.

   You can rub glass until blue in the face, with everything from chamois to winter underwear, and it will, when the light strikes it right, resemble a map of the Missouri watershed.  And even should it sparkle to your wife's satisfaction, it will sparkle only until the next rain.  Then it again will be a mess.

   My wife and I spend considerable time in billing, cooing and smooching, but every October we have a row about the dining room windows--after I've washed them.  The top half of these heartbreakers consists of six small panes, each one determined to remain smudgy.  

   "JUST LOOK AT THOSE dining room windows!" my wife exclaims.  "I never saw them look worse.  Those two corner panes at the top obviously haven't been touched."

   These are fighting words.  "What do you mean, they haven't been touched?  What do you thik I was doing on that ladder for half an hour, fanning the glass with my hat?"

   Such exchanges are quite exhausting and unless my soul mate quits being so finicky about how the glass looks I'll quit wahing windows after retirement.

   It's barely possible that seeing so much of each other will make both of us somewhat touchy.  Wrangles about windows might be just too much.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

      

Guthrie columns will resume Oct 20

I'm on the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) in Spain.  Look for "Camino Trails and Tribulations", a possible real time blog.  ----TKG

Old Fashioned? Sure, He Is! (Advertisement for Guthrie's column)

Comes the Time to Leave Home

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
September 18, 1965


   THE BOY NEXT DOOR went away to school the other day.  As he drove off with his mother and father we yelled final goodbyes.  A lot of memories then came flooding back and I got a lump in my throat.
   Such farewells can be traumatic even when you have but fringe involvement.  I'd lived next door to this lad and his brothers and sisters and parents for seven years and felt a partial claim to him.  The eldest of six, he was the first to take off for new scenes and experiences.  Departure was a dramatic time.  Such occasions are rife with aches and poignant silences and hollow gags and small talk.
   He'll be less than 100 miles away.  He'll get home every three or four weeks.  Still, it's the start of the family breakup.  Things won't again be quite the same.

   OF COURSE, NO PARENT in his right mind would want his progeny around permanently, and those of practical and realistic turn perhaps rejoice when the kids are out from under foot and increasingly able to shift for themselves.
   Departure for college isn't an unmixed calamity for the high school grad, either.  If he's normal, he's chafed at parental restrictions for some years and is pained by the havoc wrought by the younger members of the clan.  The challenge of education gives him the chance to shake off the shackles and enjoy some peace and quiet and independence.
   However, the vast majority of youngsters leave home for college for the first time with heavy heart, acute nostalgia and the realization that little sister isn't such a pest after all.  Home is a sure sanctuary, a place to lick wounds and rekindle morale, a place where the meals are good and the service first class.  To be pushed out of it, even when the pushing is by mutual agreement and when the thirst for education is strong, is decidedly unsettling.
   That's how I felt it was with the quiet lad next door, and that's why my throat went tight.  I know that for him the bonds of home are inordinately strong.  The spirit in this household is unusual.  Sweetness and harmony naturally don't always prevail but the family is a cooperative unit, one in which the members have abundant fun and frequent laughs.  And the place is the play center for kids of all ages up and down the block, which is revealing.
   This is the first time the boy from next door has been on his own away from home, his parents tell me, and though they know he'll make out, they fear his situation will be difficult until he conquers homesickness and makes other adjustments.

   THIS MAY BE SO, but he's so much better equipped for new situations than college-bound lads were a generation or two ago that there's no comparison.  Today's young may be damned as delinquents, impudent loudmouths and defiers of authority, but they are much more knowledgeable and sophisticated than their parents and grandparents were.

The boy next door

   The boy next door and his contemporaries may wonder and worry about their future because of the Viet Nam imbroglio and the Communist threat, but they aren't unwary, apple-cheeked and home-clinging introverts who lack a sense of direction and who break down when dad and mother send them off to the ivied halls.
   My young friend will take it in stride.  I'll be eager to see him when he comes home for that first visit.  By then many barriers of doubt and uncertainty will be lifted.  He'll be on the way to becoming a man.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Garage Job Is a Smash Success

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
September 6, 1964


   IT HAPPENED in early summer but has been too sore a subject to discuss.  Now, however, the end of the garage, though the new wood lacks paint, is free of holes and has no bulge.
   I had one of my momentary lapses that fateful evening.  I had returned momentarily to boyhood and was driving Dad's Model-T.  Anyone old enough to remember the car that put America on wheels recalls that the brake was about where the accelerator is today.

   I was easing the car into it's berth and, in my Model-T seizure, stepped on the gas to stop.  A dramatic rending of timbers resulted.  My alarmed wife and son came running.
   As we surveyed the damage I avoided their gaze, being almost as embarrassed as I had been years before when I backed over a brother-in-law's suitcase.  "Well," my wife said, "this is a great way to fight the war on poverty.  This should shoot another hundred or so."
   I thought her estimate conservative.  Four studs were splintered and the damaged wall had a hole big enough to allow entry of a St. Bernard.
   But next day the damage appeared less extensive-- something I might repair myself.  "Sure you can," said my wife's brother, who is ignorant of my limitations.  "Just saw off those two-by-fours above the break and push the wall back into position.  Put in some new timber to replace the bad studding and then all you have to do is install new siding."

Garage simulation

   He made it sound simple.  Licking the bulge was.  The siding was something else.  I ordered a jag of the stuff, acting as if I knew how much I wanted and hoping delivery would be slow.  It was out next day.  It sat on the garage floor for a month, a mute and mocking challenge.

'57 Dodge rammer

   AT LAST CAME the time of decision, the time to roll up the sleeves, spit on the hands and get at it.  The obvious first step was to remove the shattered siding and, armed with a wrecking bar bought in a surge of prescience, I went at it.
   But removing this particular type of siding cannot be done like beating a rug.  Each board is interlocked with its neighbor and, in removing one, you risk ruining the one immediately above or below.
   Also, none of the siding was damaged its entire length.  To save time, money and energy, it seemed wise to leave the sound sections undisturbed.  But how to saw off a spoiled section in the middle of a stud so that new siding could be nailed on to replace it?  I thought in terms of a circular saw and consulted my book, "How to Use Hand and Power Tools."  It provided no answers.
   In such a situation I go for help to the hardware store.  I acquainted Max and Floyd with my problem.  They told me what to do and Max, knowing the instructions had to be rudimentary, drew a picture and sold me a keyhole saw.

   AFTER THAT I was in command, though my garbage-can sawhorses barely sufficed.  Progress was further slowed by difficulty with measurements.  If a six-foot board is called for I add a fraction just to be safe, knowing that a piece too long has more potential than one too short.  This results in a good deal of extra sawing.
   The job was finished before dark and my lumber order was right on the nose.  Only a two-foot piece of siding was left.  I rate this as an even greater triumph than my bookshelves.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Thomas K.'s note of truth:  it was my mother who ran the car through the garage.  I was there, standing by as she burned rubber and rammed it.  (Dad protected her in his writing regularly).

So You Think Writing's Easy, Eh?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
December 20, 1964


   UNTIL MY DISQUIETING contact with a college-level English text the other day, I'd thought that writing was a simple and orderly recording of thought, in the process of which you gnawed pencils to shreds, bit your nails, or beat an anguished tattoo on the typewriter while dredging for pungent phrases.
   Writing is much more complicated than that, the book shows.   It is everything from semantics and rhetoric to the proper length of paragraphs.
   As a result of this enlightenment, I may give up writing altogether.  I don't know enough of the rules and am too old to catch on.
   Up to now, writing has seemed as much fun as work--something to be done not only at a desk but while waiting for a bus or sitting in a restaurant after ordering a grilled cheese and awaiting its arrival.

   UNFETTERED by restrictions and prohibitions, ignorant of the true function of paragraphs, and not knowing a topic sentence from a gerundive, I've broken all the rules, ignored construction, and been warmed the while by self-satisfaction born of ignorance.
   Now, hunched over the typewriter, I am mired in a procedural morass, wondering how in the name of heaven I ever got involved in a craft which seemed, at first blush, to consist in merely putting words together to convey impressions, characterizations, opinions, mood, description and atmosphere.
   Completely frustrated, I've decided to counterattack, to condemn the book as appallingly wordy, as a flayer of the obvious, and a standout example of academic devotion to minutiae.
   I had not heretofore known that there were so many kinds of paragraphs.  They may be classified as "(1) thesis or introductory paragraphs, (2) transitional or organizational paragraphs, (3) concluding paragraphs, and  (4) ordinary--expository or narrative--paragraphs."
   True enough, no doubt.  Anyone who's ever composed anything more complex than a grocery list has employed all four of them.  But I doubt that many folks wrestle with the classifications or are even aware of them.
   And the paragraph, it is pontifically noted, is not a mere handful of sentences.  You begin with a clear notion of the total idea you want to present.  Then your chances of writing something coherent are good.  Anyone who didn't learn this in grade school is in bad shape.

   SOMETIME OR OTHER during the academic years I must have had a brush with the topic sentence.  The book nailed it down in a manner clear to any Philadelphia lawyer:  "A topic sentence is to the rest of an ordinary paragraph as a thesis or introductory paragraph is to the rest of the theme and as a transitional or organizational paragraph is to the paragraph that immediately follows it"
   There you have it.  And nobody, the reader is told, should attempt a theme without first preparing an outline.  Otherwise organization suffers.  I'm willing to let organization go right ahead and suffer.  An outline, in my opinion, for anything within the 1,000-word range, means unnecessary toil and torment and gets in the way of creativity.
   It might be the wrong approach but it seems to me that the English student would profit by being granted a free hand to write themes in his own manner for a couple of weeks before having his head filled with rules, some of which closely resemble gobbledygook.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StatrTribune.

That Summer Work Pressure

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial /opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 26, 1966

   WE GO INTO rhapsodies about the glories of youth, but the person who has it--and fully appreciates it--is a rare individual.  He may be happy to be snappy on a tennis court but his situation frequently galls him.
   He has reason to be galled.  He's always being reminded that he's the hope of the future and that if he doesn't shape up and modify his dedication to girls, thrills and hamburgers he'll wind up a bum, a pick-and-shovel man, or a charity case.
   The heat is particularly oppressive in summer.  He must get a job and store up money if he's going on to college.  Otherwise he'll be a dropout and a failure.

   AS I PREACH this line I keep trying to forget that the only man among my relatives who ever got rich was a dropout.  He quit school after eighth grade and was quite happy with his lot, even though he may have thought Swinburne a pitcher for the Dodgers.
   The teenager who hasn't found a summer job by now may have to turn to occasional lawn mowing assignments, some baby-sitting, and some work around home.  The odd-jobs boy has the leisure to swim and acquire a tan.  He can shoot firecrackers on the Fourth and perhaps cruise about in the car when Pop isn't yapping at him to clean the basement.  But he realizes he isn't on solid economic footing and that the work he does is piddling and lacks challenge.

The Guthrie sheep

   FORTY YEARS AGO he scarce could have avoided seasonal farm toil.  This had challenge aplenty, especially to the back, and gave the toiler definite kinship with the ox.  It was a type of labor now done largely with machines, which is fitting and proper.
   There always was work at haying and harvest time when I was a lad in Montana, and you could, if you had no sense of pride, herd sheep at lambing time.  If you had a sense of smell, a few weeks of this was enough.
   If you insisted on status employment, such as jerking sodas at the drug store, you might go without a job, but you didn't have to hunt much for temporary work.
   The rancher (Montana had no "farmers") came to town and dragooned kids from the pool hall.  Or father knew a rancher, or you were a pal of a rancher's son and got work through him.
   I hear tell of some present-day lads making $1,000 to $1,500 through summer work.  Back in the '20s this was more than the rancher made.  If the kid who worked for him started back to school in the fall with $100 in his pants he was affluent.
   The going wage was $35 a month--with room and board.  The "room" was a bunkhouse barren of amenities, but the board usually was great.  The rancher knew that a good table was as essential to completion of the harvest as the threshing rig and exhorted the cook not to spare the culinary horses.

CM Guthrie in transition

   THE TRANSITION from boy to man is grim and devitalizing.  Childhood days finally are done and it's time for serious business.  An emptiness comes to the stomach when the sufferer raps on the door for a job.  The prospective employer, who may be a lamb, forthwith assumes the bearing of a drill sergeant and, as a boss, it is plain to see, would be a veritable Captain Bligh.
   I well remember the early-teen days when life was a melody.  They were days meant for baseball and fried chicken and swimming.  Duty plucked but feebly at the sleeve and one could lie on a gravel bar beside the Teton, look at the blue above, know a languorous peace, and not fret about a job.

A.B. Guthrie, Sr.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

A Husband's Challenge to Science

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune
September 9, 1961

   WE ARE IN for more and more electronics and might as well get ready for the eventual reign of the robot.  The computer already has invaded about every area save romance and we can't rest serene even here.  Sooner or later some scientist with nothing better to do will bring out a wonder machine that will tell George whether Gertrude is really his dream girl or would, as a wife, be a nightmare.

   But electronics has its place and I am not one to discount it, even though it seems a crying shame that the human brain, nourished by blood, can't think as fast as a metal one nourished by electricity.

   Because of the current passion for keeping records, government, industry and schools would be chin deep in paper work were it not for the help of these uncanny devices.  And file and payroll clerks,  bookkeepers and stenographers would be reduced to babbling irrationality.

   WE SERIOUS and philosophic thinkers have long since concluded that man has got himself so boxed in by the complications, contradictions and bustling efficiencies of progress that he must take aid where he can get it if he knows what's good for him.

   We're just as sure, however that there must be limits to what electronics can do.  It cannot be expected to supply solutions to everything.  On the residential domestic front, for instance, it would wash against an unyielding reef.

   In this field, of course, cursory gains have been made.  We recognize and approve the fruits of simpler science --vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, power can openers and stoves that cook dinner while milady is lousing up a small slam in spades.

   

LINC computer 1961

   BUT THE REAL core of the problem goes far deeper.  What man really needs to chase the bugs from under the roof is a device that will anticipate and reckon with feminine emotions and reactions, something that will eliminate the booby traps, the sins of omission and the consequent frosty silences which repeatedly shake matrimony to its foundations.

   Elimination of these would reduce divorce, stanch tears and keep the home fires--rather than the wife--burning.

   To be worth its price the household computer would have to keep a man alert to all the special days his wife holds dear, from wedding anniversaries to the anniversary of little Judy's first tooth.  It would have to  make him remember to mail the check to the gas company and the get-well card to Fran, to return the shoes for credit during his lunch hour and pick up the aspirin en route home.

   

   THUS IT would have to be pocket-size.  If not on his person at all times, papa would flub about as many assignments as he does now.  One of my associates suggests that a satchel-size job would serve, but I disagree.  Too often it would be left on the cloakroom shelf at the office and buzz all night to nobody's profit.

   But a pocket-size computer would pose an appalling problem in shrinkage.  Even today's small brain machine , I understand, dwarfs a grand piano.  Fitting one of these babies into the manse would confound an Einstein.  And the only possible place for it would be the spot the boss had reserved for the matching planters.

Steve grants Guthrie's wish

   SUCH A stay-at-home installation wouldn't be worth the cost.  It might tell you where to find your other  sock or help with the tax forms but it wouldn't be around to gig you awake when you were tooling homeward without Aunt Harriet, whom you'd promised to pick up at the station without fail.

   My challenge, then, to the electronics industry is a miniature husband-helper.  If science can score a break-through here it can break through anything.  But I rather hope it doesn't try.  Some jobs are too big to tackle.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.