Plaint of a Bashful Parishioner

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 3, 1965

   ONE MAIN VIRTUE of the church is its social appeal.  The lonely and oppressed find fellowship 

there-- or should.  Too often they don't.  The fellowship is confined to those who already are acquainted, the stranger remains a stranger, and departs determined to find a church home elsewhere.

   The clergy and officials of the congregation are well aware of these failures to communicate and repeatedly exhort members to mingle more with the visitors.  In my church there is more than exhortation.  There is compulsion and entrapment.  When you stand to sing the second hymn of the service, the preacher tells you first to greet those behind and in front of you and those at your left and right.  You are supposed to say a friendly hello, give tongue to some banality about the weather, and otherwise let those around you know you are real folks.  You cannot stand mute without appearing to be anti-social.

   A FEW SUNDAYS BACK during this get-acquainted period I heard one woman giving another her recipe for apple turnovers.  I thought this unseemly but didn't protest.  Rather, I marveled at the easy informality and wondered how it was possible to attain such a cozy relationship so fast with a total stranger.

   I find the entire procedure acutely distasteful and embarrassing.  While acknowledging its indubitable merit, I know it is not for me.  I can't remember names, have difficulty even identifying myself when under pressure, and wish I were in the woods communing with the owls.  It wouldn't be so bad if my wife were at my side but she's in the choir loft, lost to me in my time of need.

  After church she asks whom I met.  I used to confess that I didn't know.  Now I rattle off four or five names at random--Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Snodgrass, Patricia Percy, Charley Farrell, George Givens-- whatever  pops into my head.  My wife does not press me further, knowing I'm lying but saluting my ingenuity.

   Few members are as definitely hostile to the get-acquainted business as I, probably because few are so withdrawn, so cursed by shyness and so completely unable to make small talk with strangers.

   J. Adelbert Picklewwurst is my complete opposite.  During a moment of ill-advised missionary zeal I induced my opinionated neighbor to join the church a year ago and now he repeatedly upbraids me for not telling him about it sooner.

   He is one of the biggest hams in Christendom and for him the finest hour of the week comes at Sunday worship, and the finest moments of that hour come when he can pump hands and boom out his name.

   SHORTLY AFTER JOINING the church, Picklewurst professed interest in the choir, seeing this as a convenient avenue for his exhibitionism.  I asked him if he knew how to sing and he said certainly.  He had the lead in the Christmas musical back in the eighth grade and was the talk of the county.

   He never joined the choir, however, and finally told me he'd lost interest.  I later talked to the director and he told me he wasn't about to have a good choir ruined by a leather-lunged monotone.

   But Picklewurst is eager and should have a chance to contribute of his talents.  The place for him is in the kitchen, helping clean up after church dinners, but this wouldn't interest him.  His audience would be too small.  We do have "greeters" who serve four or five Sundays at a stretch.  Picklewurst would love this assignment--on a permanent basis.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

On Making Coffee the Hard Way

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

February 20, 1960

   UP TO NOW my coffee consumption has averaged about six pleasure-packed cups a day, but since reading a piece in Harper's magazine I'm close to swearing off the stuff.  I've been drinking embalming fluid.  I've never enjoyed a really good cup of coffee.  To make coffee right you must have laboratory facilities and time on your hands.

   My procedure has been to put the desired amount of water into a pot, bring it to a boil, throw in the coffee and shut off the burner.  Admittedly this is old-fashioned, but since the resulting product always tasted as good as that yielded up by a thermostatically-controlled, silver-plated appliance, it seemed good enough.

   BUT I NOTE that the true coffee connoisseur buys freshly-roasted coffee in the bean, grinds it only according to the needs of the moment, puts it into water that's not boiling but of precise heat, lets the grounds remain less than a moment, and then strains the contents through a cotton filter into another container.  Only then is the brew fit to drink.  Also, metal pots shouldn't be used.  They impart a foreign flavor.

   For this operation one needs a coffee grinder, filters, two non-metal containers, a thermometer, a funnel and patience.  Without question a savory and unclouded coffee should result.  But in the rush of the day's demands, with Pop having to hurry to work and Mom to the white goods sale, how many of us common folks can lavish such time on the morning beverage?

   MY LATE father-in-law was a stickler for good coffee.  He insisted that it be purchased in the bean and ground as needed.  But once when his wife was away for two months and he had to rustle his own breakfast, things changed.  We discovered the cupboard defiled with a can of ground coffee.  He had sacrificed quality for convenience.  He discovered that grinding coffee was a chore.  

   I'm sure of but a few things about coffee.  It's no good when allowed to boil, no good when warmed up, and best when made in large quantities.  Whenever entertaining a large group, we employ a 30-cup enamel pot and stir an egg into the coffee before consigning it to the steaming vat.  This invariably makes a lordly drink.

   BUT EVEN egg coffee cannot hold its bouquet overnight.  My wife always makes more coffee than the guests can consume and I tell her to save the balance for breakfast.  I'm too penurious to see it thrown into the sink.

   I regret my thrift next morning.  Also I'm the sole sufferer.  My wife drinks coffee only as a bow to convention and makes no such bows to me.  For breakfast she prefers cocoa, which I rate on a par with warmed-over coffee.  For dinner we have tea, which some folks enjoy, including milady.

   SOMETIME when I have a morning to kill I plan to make coffee as M.N. Stiles, who wrote the Harper's piece, suggests, if I think to buy some coffee beans and can induce my wife to remove the African violet from the old coffee grinder and can borrow a thermometer and a couple of glass or earthen receptacles.

   If the coffee proves so good that it spoils me for any other, I'll have nothing to lose but the habit.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Story of the Great Hat Mystery (Morison-Guthrie Snafu)

By BRADLEY L. MORISON

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

October 25, 1958

   MY EDITORIAL page colleagues have commissioned me to tell the poignant story of Charles M. (Chick) Guthrie and his lost hat, and so I shall do so with simplicity and restraint.  That is the way Guthrie would want it because, as readers of his Saturday column know, he is basically a simple, corned-beef-and-cabbage fellow who would not like fustian and furbelows even if he could spell them.

   The staff first heard the bad news shortly after the start of the morning editorial conference--at 9:36 a.m., Oct. 10 to be exact.  We were just getting into the Quemoy and Matsu situation when Guthrie, who is a master of the irrelevant, blurted it out: "Say, fellows, that reminds me, I lost my hat."

   WE WERE politely attentive.  Over the years Guthrie had lost, stumbled over, mislaid, broken and forgotten more things than any three men in the department combined.  We could recall, for example, when he backed his car over the suitcase of a house guest whom he was about to drive to the airport and when he slipped his football tickets into the inner pocket of someone else's coat.

   But the missing hat routine was new.  It was a sort of beat-up Stetson, Guthrie explained, size 7 5/8, modest but classy.  The staff's best guess was that Chick, being a sort of Baltimore Lunch bon vivant, had probably left his hat in some nearby beanery where good fellows get together to hoist a genial ham-on-rye.

   At 10:32 a.m. the same day Sandy Fincham, one of the department's secretaries, began the first of a long series of inquiring telephone calls which was ultimately to embrace three quick-lunches, a bar, a drug store, a pool hall and a garage.  On the following day, she placed two calls to Forest Lake where Guthrie had twice dined within the week.  No hat.  The long distance calls cost Guthrie 35 cents apiece, an outlay which to some of us, remembering the hat in vivid detail, seemed unjustifiably lavish.

   BY THE third day, Chick's customary joie de vivre was missing.  Despite the fact that we opened each morning conference with sympathetic references to the missing hat, Guthrie sank ever deeper into a morass of self-pity.  He even snarled at printers, abandoning his usual winsome manner, and once became so immersed in gloomy contemplation of his lost chapeau that he forgot to join us in the morning coffee break.

   Chick and I ride together in a car pool.  As the days wore on, he brooded more and more about his hat.  The cooler the weather, the more he seemed to resent my hatted presence in the car.

   "Don't you ever lose your hats?" he snapped one morning.  I told him I never did.  "With a hat like yours," he growled, looking disdainfully my way, "it really wouldn't matter."

THE STAFF was beginning to talk about getting up a hat raffle for Chick when the gladsome news broke.  Chick had found his hat--or at least what looked like his hat--over at Lee's Broiler on Sixth street.  He came into the office one noon, his face wreathed with the old familiar grin.  "If it isn't mine," he crowed, "it's an even better one.  Look, Brad..."

   So now the hat drama moves to its astounding climax.  The hat
that Guthrie recovered, as he shoved it jubilantly beneath my nose, sent little impulses of fond recognition down my spine.

   It was my hat.

   All through those days of Guthrie's unhatted tribulation, I had been wearing Guthrie's hat.

   The hat that he had alternately sneered at and envied on our rides to and from work was his hat.

   In retrospect it was all so simple.  At Lee's Broiler, 10 days before, I had picked up his hat.  Guthrie had walked out hatless, leaving mine to languish on a rack at Lee's.

   Well, the switch has been made.  I am now wearing my own natty 7 5/8 Stetson and Chick is smiling again beneath what passes, at least on dark nights, for a gentleman's headpiece.

   MEANWHILE, the staff is waiting anxiously for Chick's next misadventure.

   Will he fall down a manhole on his way downtown?  Will he burn a dollar-sized hole in his new topcoat?  Will he have four flat tires all in one day?

   Whatever it is, the staff will be warmly sympathetic and full of sage advice.  As certain as tomorrow's sunrise, Guthrie can depend on that.   

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.