90 Dozen Eggs Present a Test of Salesmanship

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune 
April 15, 1954


   IT COMES a bit hard to get into the swing of Easter this year.  I am as ready as anyone for spiritual awakening, as ready as anyone to lift mine eyes to loftier horizons.  The Sabbath may even find me in my other shirt.  But in thinking of Easter I become obsessed with the thought of eggs--and I am sick of eggs.
   I have but recently been delivered from the egg business, and during my involvement I ate 'em fried, boiled, deviled, poached, coddled, creamed, over easy, sunny-side up and raw.  Up to then I never considered breakfast worthy of the name unless it included bacon and eggs.  But when you face the prospect of a straight egg diet extending into the fall the cackle-berry loses much of its allure.

   THE BIG scramble had its birth recently in a weekend trip to the south Minnesota countryside taken by my son.  His host suggested that he take a consignment of eggs back to the city and sell them as a means of financing his journey.  He figured that three cases would be adequate.
   They were--adequate in the extreme.  They represented 90 dozen eggs, a trifle to a produce man, I suppose, but a gargantuan gob of omelet to the layman, and my son was overwhelmed at the enormity of the deal.  He had thought that a case of eggs was 12, not 30, dozen.
   As soon as he reached the Minneapolis outskirts he phoned to tell us of our bounty.  His voice was a blend of anxiety and urgency.  He exhorted us to phone relatives, friends and neighbors and tell them we had eggs to sell.

   THIS STRUCK me as a picayune way of going about it.  In our extremity we needed far greater volume than a market made up of kinfolk, friends and neighbors could absorb.  I thought I might contact the Commodity Credit Corp. and perhaps peddle the eggs to the government for the school lunch program.  Another recourse might be to give away a rabbit with every half dozen,.  I knew there always was a demand for bunnies at Eastertide.
   One fleeting thought, which I now confess was impractical and can be attributed only to my understandable frenzy, was to buy a few setting hens and convert the eggs into poultry.  On further reflection, however, I realized the folly of this.  It would take about 90 hens to do the job and would alter my whole way of life.  It would necessitate moving out of the city, where you cannot raise poultry, and establishing a chicken ranch in the hinterland.  I used to be a country boy but my roots in the city now run rather deep.

WHILE I was mulling over the most expeditious means of peddling the hen fruit, my wife was telephoning the alarm to those with whom we are linked by ties of blood--and getting their egg orders.
   I sought to sound her out about the feasibility of seeking advice from the production and marketing administration but she suggested that I skip the dramatics and go out and ring some doorbells.  "This is an emergency," she said, "not a time for dreaming.  Any minute now the bottom may drop out of the market.  Don't you know that it's spring and the hens are starting to lay like mad and that this will depress the price?"
   I did not know about this nor particularly care.  I was willing to leave the hens to their own devices.  The prospect of going from house to house and saying I was working my son's way through college claimed my entire attention.  It appalled me.  I had tried something similar with vacuum cleaners back in my halcyon days and my career as a salesman was studded with mediocrity.

   BUT I WAS spared this bleak mission by the arrival of my son.  He had risen to the crisis sufficiently to already have disposed of one case of eggs to a kindly restaurant keeper and six dozen to someone else.  With the orders my wife had scrounged over the phone, and the generous ration we had allowed for ourselves, we were down to a mere 30 dozen.  They went rapidly, thanks to an assiduous canvass of my office associates and the cooperation of neighbors.
   The whole thing worked out remarkably well, really, and in retrospect I realize that such ventures go a long way toward showing what enterprise can do and proving the merit of the American way.
   The business was not without its heartache, though.  One evening I had to miss both "Strike It Rich" and "This Is Your Life."  I was out on my egg route.


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 Do Adults Fit Into the "Boy-Dog" Routine?

By Charles M. Guthrie
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
Feb 27, 1953


   NEIGHBOR BROWN won't be enchanted but one of these days I'll have to break down and buy the small boy a dog.  Our other two kids had one and just because our third came along some 14 years late seems insufficient grounds for denying him a pet.
   I am trying to back into this dog question nice and cozy-like because it has been a torrid issue of late and I don't want anybody getting on the phone and hissing, "You cur,sir" or yelling epithets and such.

   HERE IS an issue with no middle ground.  It defies compromise.  To discuss it is to consign yourself to a dance on hot bricks.  You either hate dogs or you love them.  And to love one for itself alone is not enough.  To escape castigation as a dog hater you must love them all.  This, frankly, I cannot do.
   I had a fair share of dogs as a lad, and to this day loathe the soul of the unidentified character who poisoned one.  But the pooch that really won my heart was a Boston terrier elegantly registered as Jimpse of the Bluegrass.

   She came into the household when my daughter was 4 and my son a toddler and remained for 13 years.  She was no great shakes in appearance, being runty and poorly marked.  Her tail was too long and so were her ears and she required a deal of housebreaking.  She clawed up the furniture now and again and one night ate all the buttons off my vest.  Also she had a couple of unsavory trysts with a mongrel down the block that resulted in events not so blessed.

   She was a nuisance--and everyone in the family was sold on her.  She would wade into any beast five times her size but was gentle as a lamb with the kids and always ready for a romp.  We hauled her along from Kentucky to Wisconsin to Montana to Minneapolis.  In her anguished rides on baggage cars we were  anguished with her.  Hers was a vast capacity for affection and when she died we grieved mightily.  There'll never be another dog like her.  Other dog owners have made that statement, too.

   BUT WERE IT not for the small boy, I'd never have another dog on the place.  I wouldn't give a thin dime for the best-of-show at Madison Square Garden.  Not that he wouldn't win my devotion if I had him.  I simply wouldn't want him.
   You see childless couples, or couples whose kids have grown and gone, burdening themselves down with a dog or two and maybe a cat and you wonder what gives.
   Childless folk, when they have dogs, are voluntarily abandoning the only advantage there is in not having kids--freedom.  Youngsters certainly rate high recommendation.  But nobody can deny that it is nice to have that relaxed feeling that comes with freedom from such harassments as mumps and measles and babysitters.
   Kids saddle you with cares, cares you are happy to assume.  And kids are entitled to dogs.  So, of course, are adults, if they want to assume about the same burdens they would have with children.
   You have to take the dog along with you on trips, or park him in a kennel or impose him on a neighbor.  He has to be fed and watered and walked and bathed and medicated.  The dog lover does this willingly in payment for the dog's companionship.  Not me.

   ANOTHER THING.  The dog has developed into a mighty delicate critter of late.  You can't even feed him bones unless they're the right kind.  Back in the old days we'd turn the leavings of three or four fried chickens over to the pooch after Sunday dinner and he'd absorb the feast with no ill effects.  Do that to Rover now and he passes away.  A bone splinter has pierced his innards.  Table scraps are standard fare no longer.  He is fed balanced rations out of cans and packages--with chlorophyll yet.
   Keeping a dog on leash, as advocated in the proposed ordinance that has stirred up all the fuss, is, by dog standards, a dirty trick.  But, from the neighbor's point of view, it's rather unseemly to turn the dog out the back door and let him wander about unchaperoned.

   A FRIEND told me recently that he was hard put to keep his garbage cans upright.  Dogs foraging for tidbits constantly were knocking them over and strewing the contents around.  And I am less than charmed when my sense of tidiness forces me outdoors to play swamper to the dogs that have convened on the lawn from around and about.  This perhaps is one of the natural hazards that comes with home ownership.  The chore can be irksome, none the less.
   But despite all the vexations a fellow who doesn't love all dogs can think of, I plan to get a pup for my progeny.  I trust that Neighbor Brown will be reasonable.

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.
 

Critic's Lot Is Not a Happy One

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 30, 1959

   EVERY FIVE or six months someone gets me on the phone and says he's written a short story or essay and would I be kind enough to look it over and tell him whether it's any good.
   Not knowing good work from bad, I'm ill equipped for the assignment.  The sane response would be to admit it and refer him to someone who knew about such things.  But there is implied flattery in the request.  And since I'm a sucker for flattery I assume a learned and pontifical tone and tell him to send his manuscript along.
   I usually find out afterward that he's confused me with brother Bud, who actually can write and has a Pulitzer prize as evidence.  Or he assumes that I've vicariously absorbed some of Bud's ability.  This is a sobering and deflating discovery.

   ONE OF MY literary friends tells me that the only way to handle those seeking gratis advice is to send back the manuscript by return mail with a note to the author urging him to rush it to the Saturday Evening Post without changing even a comma.  The piece is priceless--at least up to $1,500.
   "By doing this," said my friend, "you protect yourself.  You don't lose the time it would otherwise take to wade through the stuff and you don't lose the writer's goodwill by telling him the truth.  He will count you as a bright and discerning chap, even though you are a cheat and a liar.
   "You see, what he's really after is praise, and praise you give him.  When the manuscript is rejected, he won't blame you.  He'll blame the magazine editors for not sharing your vaulted opinion of his piece, and comfort himself with the rationalization that one must be a 'name' writer to sell anything.
   "The aspiring author will accept criticism from someone he pays for criticism.  He won't accept it from you because he pays you nothing.  From you he expects cheers and encouragement.  If you point out flaws in his stumbling prose, or tell him to take up piano tuning, he'll dismiss you as an illiterate and tell his friends you're a fraud."

   THERE IS much truth in what my friend said.  I knew it even before he told me.  But conscience and innate stupidity never permitted me to so act.  I burned up the better part of each weekend for a solid winter years ago trying to help a little old lady pump life into a love story that had all the fire of the official proceedings of the county board of commissioners.
   I should have said, "My God, Miss Frisby, this thing is appalling.  Why don't you relax and go back to 'When Knighthood was in Flower' and save time for us both?"
   But she was a gentle and Victorian retired teacher who had corrected more English themes than I could lift.  She knew a gerund from a gerundive and thus thought she could write.  I lacked the heart to awaken her to reality.  So the great futility continued until I left town.

   I CANNOT really blame aspiring writers for taking offense when amateur critics find fault with their work. You sweat and strive and finally come up with something that sounds good to you and you assume it should sound good to everyone.  You've finally produced a gem.  Your hopes run high.  Why should you thank anyone for dashing your dreams by telling you it's no good?
   I had a novel experience a while back, however.  A friend of a friend of mine sent me a short story.  It wasn't bad.  However, I criticized it rather severely and returned it, confident that I'd never hear from the author again.
   But I was wrong.  Here apparently, was a fellow who really wanted criticism..A couple of weeks later I got a nice letter of thanks.  He'd redone the story along the lines I'd suggested.
   Now I'm torn with misgivings.  I'm not sure my criticisms were valid.  Maybe he'd have been wise to keep me out of the act.  I've never written a salable short story and have quit trying.  It's always seemed like such an easy way to make money, too.
   Try it sometime, and see.

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.

   

Little Things Have a Big Payoff

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
March 15, 1958


   IT WOULD profit us to be more like children.
   Many of the current bedevilments--hate, prejudice, jealousy and greed--would vanish if we could recapture the attitudes of childhood.
   But we grow older and get blase and sophisticated, harassed and busy.  Responsibilities close in and so does immunity to small satisfactions that, when savored to the full, make our stay on earth not only endurable but exhilarating.
   If life were as thrill-packed for me as it is for my 9-year-old I'd resent every hour spent in sleep.  I'd want to be always alive to what was going on.

   WHAT HE has that I haven't is unflagging curiosity and energy, almost complete freedom from worry, anticipation of tomorrow and an enthusiasm for trifling events--not trifling to him but to me.
   He was bubbling for days while he and some school companions planned a talent show.  At home he could talk of little else.  And he practiced diligently to make his instrumental contribution to the program adequate.
   I'm confident that this projection of his talent will nourish him a long time--that he will look back years from now at this event with both amusement and satisfaction.
   His school's annual hobby show rates mention in this regard, too.  It's not of staggering importance, although it is amazing what children can do in art, cooking, carpentry, modeling and the like under parental direction.  What makes it meaningful is the thrill of accomplishment, the fillip to pride.  The hobby show becomes a tradition, with preparation for it a family-welding enterprise--a little thing but long remembered.

   LOOK BACK and you must agree that the stand-out events, from an emotional and enriching point of view, are in the fabric of routine living.
   I'll always enjoy reliving a long-ago reunion we had when my mother and sister returned home from a month's visit in Indiana.  Fresh in memory, too, is the reception my 2-year old daughter gave me after a dreary, depression-imposed separation.  Joy was so deep in her eyes that it shook me, and life at that moment was as good as life ever gets.  It hit a similar high last fall when two grandsons I hadn't seen for weeks erupted from a car and raced to me in wild greeting.
   Another memory I wouldn't sell for gold goes back 11 winters when I helped my older son deliver Sunday  papers.  The weather was invariably wicked and even then I was beyond physical prime.  I dreaded that early Sabbath endeavor acutely but in retrospect I'm deeply grateful for it.  The father-son bond grew firmer.  Such is the profit in small experiences.

   THE PERSON who looks ahead can dismiss the boners, embarrassments and regrets of yesterday and start today with a fresh, uncluttered outlook.  He's to be envied.  But if he can't look back and recapture life's small joys he's to be pitied, too.
   The pitfall for those who have this capacity lies in the fact that they retain the unpleasant.  There are bruises as well as balms.  The present that isn't pleasant can become the corrosive past.
   I'd like to have back a recent late afternoon when spring showed promise of return and my son asked me to play catch.  I demurred.  It was too chilly and I was tired.  Maybe we could play tomorrow.
   I wish I hadn't rejected his small request.  The opportunity to play catch with your boy is not a small one.  The tomorrows don't continue forever.  There comes a time when you wish he would ask you to play--but he won't.  He'll have too many more compelling interests.
   I've been through this once and I know.

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

Success Isn't for Everybody

By Charles M. Guthrie
of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 4, 1967

   THERE'S ALWAYS some zealot dedicated to the proposition that any man who isn't a killer or a sex maniac is capable of reaching the top in whatever field he fancies.  And said zealot is eager to take you on his knee and give you the formula for attaining your heart's desire.
   All you have to do is follow his directions faithfully, crank up your determination, not get distracted by liquor and sins of the flesh, and do your morning pushups.  Finally will come the day when you have finished your best seller, become chairman of the board, made a million dollars or won the election.

   INVOLVED ARE CHARACTER and courage, courtesy, personality development, the will to succeed, the knack of making stepping stones out of stumbling blocks, conquering fear and worry and developing imagination.
   Far be it from me to pooh-pooh personal improvement.  I am behind it four-square and, had I stuck with my piano lessons or continued  to raise pigeons, life would have been different.  There is a crying need for self-improvement, and though the need seems most apparent among the young, the adult could use a big dose of it, too.
   But what irks me about those who peddle the self-improvement nostrums is their failure to make allowances for individual differences.  Such differences are the heart of the matter.
   We differ physically.  We differ in taste, interests and inclinations.  Some are smarter than others and some have more drive and ambition.  Some are satisfied to be hewers of wood and haulers of water, some are content to dig holes or herd sheep.  They don 't want to own a company or be a foreman.  They want to put in their day's work, go home, and let somebody else worry about production and payroll.
   I recall a fellow who made an adequate living raising chickens.  When a friend of his went broke in the shoe business, he advised this friend to consider a career in chickens.  Raising them, he said, was a cinch.
   So the friend bought chickens and went broke again.  He was no more cut out for chicken farming than he was for selling shoes.  He may not have been cut out for anything but loafing, and all the success books ever written would have given him nothing but eyestrain.

   WE LIVED A MILE north of town on a 10-acre tract when I was a boy, and Jay Cowell, a freewheeling Montana sheepman with a bay window, a bald head and considerable money, advised my father to invest in a few rambouilets.  He thought it a shame that our place had nothing on it but a cow and a flock of chickens. "Just buy a little band of sheep," Jay told Pop.  "You'll never know you have them."
   So Pop bought the sheep but they never let him forget that he had them.  Every time he carried a cold and near-dead lamb in for resuscitation at the kitchen stove he would repeat Jay's remark, grit his teeth and smile grimly.
   He gave up on the sheep after a couple of years, abundant grief and no profits and found it hard to forgive Jay for his bad advice.  But it would have been good advice--to the likes of Jay.
   Pop simply marched to a different drummer.  Reading books about sheep didn't make him a sheepman any more than reading the labels on seed packets makes anyone a truck gardener.
   Determination has its rewards.  Hard study and sacrifice are not to be ridiculed.  They produce great men. But every aspiring law student can't become a Clarence Darrow or an F. Lee Bailey.  And every kid baseball nut, try as he might, can't develop into a Willie Mays.
   We need the nourishment of hope but must look, too, at the hard face of reality.
 

 


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.