About Docks, High Water and Tree Doctoring

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

May 11, 1969

   THERE WAS enough to do at home to sober a horse, but after working until late Saturday afternoon with no end in sight, we decided to abandon the city and its multiple woes for the rest of the weekend and give no more thought to storm-windows.  We'd have to work at the lake, too, but might have a couple of chipmunks for company or, if lucky, a pileated woodpecker.

   The ravages of winter at our home away from home had been extensive.  The front and one side of the cabin cried for paint, as did what passes for the bathroom.  More than half the Norway pines that flank the road leading into the place looked like they'd been sat on, and there was evidence of a roof leak on the fireplace stones.

   BUT WE arrived in high spirits.  The countryside, we noted as we drove north, was clad in the blooming garb of spring -- to borrow a poetic morsel -- and the lake was the highest we'd ever seen it.  Gone was the marshy mass of cattails along the point.  Gone also was the point.  And the pines which had flourished there and were among neighbor Lyle McMurchie's many contributions to arboreal beauty, stood forlorn in deep water, awaiting a rescue that wouldn't come.

   High water had nearly washed away our dock in late September.  Save for the good offices of Bill Weber, another neighbor, it would have been gone.  Bill moored it to the shore and when my wife and I arrived the next weekend we piled the half-dozen sections on cement blocks 15 feet from the water.  We didn't try to salvage the supports.  These, fashioned from poles and two-by-fours, were still submerged in the lake.  They are under water now, too, and may always be.  Even the piled-up dock sections are partially in water, so high has the lake become.

   BUT OF FAR more concern than the dock were the damaged roadway trees.  They had grown amazingly from the time of planting six years before and seemed immune to misfortune.  Now immunity had ended and as I surveyed the damaged branches and toiled at repair, I mourned for each tree individually.

   A few summers earlier I had taped and trussed a Scotch pine that had been mangled when I kept the car too long in reverse.  Surprisingly, the tree survived, in somewhat contorted form, so I gave the Norways similar tape-and-twine treatment.

   WHEN we first noticed the damage we blamed the snowmobile set.  We had seen the boys gunning through the premises the winter before, to our mild dismay, but we thought protests would seem petty.

   The snowmobiler gets more blame than he deserves anyway, I guess.  He is charged with everything from running down game to disturbing the mating cycle of the groundhog, and I have pangs of conscience when I think that we associated this symbol of progress and winter mobility with our tree damage.  Close inspection satisfied us that the unusually heavy snow was to blame.  It had been too much for the branches.

   Maury Heyer, whose mother owns the cabin next to ours, wasn't sure that my repair work would be effective.  Maury works for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources so qualifies as an authority.

   "Limbs that are pulled away so badly that the central core is well exposed might as well be cut off," he told me.  "The tree won't die but the limb will, and trying to save it makes no more sense than bandaging a wooden leg."

   His advice came late, after I'd already cared for the wooden legs.  Now all that sustains me is the flagging hope that time will prove Maury wrong and that I have wrought a coniferous miracle.

   But miracles are not my thing and I am prepared, by July or before, to amputate.

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.

Spring's Not a Complete Blessing

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

April 4, 1959

   LATELY I've had a spate of requests for a piece about spring.  The good folk have in mind rhapsodies about robins, pussy willows, crocuses, tulips, rhubarb, asparagus and nature's abundance.

   Frankly, I'm not up to it.  The glories of the season have been warbled so everlastingly by poets, song writers and romanticists--all better qualified for the job than I--that aping them would be not only presumptuous but impossible.

   Besides, my heart would not be in it.  I cannot give spring unqualified endorsement.  It represents a nice change in the weather but is not an unmitigated blessing even when the screens are up and the fuel bills down.  There is something I have disliked exceedingly about spring ever since coming of age. Spring is not only running sap and germinating seeds, it is work.

   WITH SPRING all the neighbors get busy on the yards and your wife gets busy on you.  You must make with the paint brush.  If the place isn't decorated right away she'll go mad.

   In winter you can loaf in good conscience.  In spring, custom being what it is, you cannot loaf at all.  And the tragedy is that you don't want to--at first.  All about you is the mess of winter's departure and dog visitations.  Twigs and leaves and candy wrappers, cartons, papers, Christmas trees, refuse and decay are everywhere.  Ubiquitous garbage cans stand out back, crying for paint or concealment.  The garage is full of flower pots and old bed springs.  Work is all around and your impulse is to get at it.

   YOU CAN'T forget the demands of spring even by reading.  Sunday newspaper supplements won't let you.  You are advised on everything from potting begonias to paneling walls.  You must rake, fertilize and seed the lawn so that the dandelions and crabgrass will have something to thrive in later.  You must plan your rose garden.  The assumption is that the roses now in the ground are all dead and any planting and planning done last spring is water over the dam.  In my case this is correct.

   You are urged to hang a lot of paper, paint everything that will hold still, sand the floors, replace latches, doorknobs, rusted screens and severed sash cord, rewire and re-roof the house and modernize the bathroom.

   I am reminded every spring about the backyard patio I haven't put in, which would provide us a place to cook hamburgers.  I should also drop in on the Flemings and see what they've done with their kitchen.  I can't help what the Flemings have done with their kitchen.  I will not and cannot do all the things that should be done.  Mind and body will not permit it.

   NO TREATISE on spring would be complete without inclusion of the car.  The car is an investment no thinking man neglects.  How could he, with those payments?  In spring it must be tuned up for summer.  I do much of this work myself.  Then I know it's done right.  This includes replacing the antifreeze with water, washing and polishing the exterior, rotating the tires and checking them for pressure.

   Better minds than mine carry on from there.  You must, of course, have new plugs and points.  These you always need.  Transmission and differential also should be checked, if you value a sense of security when you take to the highway with your loved ones.  Likewise the fuel and water pumps and the oil and air filters.  Also have the wheels lined up and the brakes adjusted.  If you can think of anything else don't tell me.

   THE BIG spring curse is housecleaning.  Reams could be written about it--and have.  It's not as bad as in the old rug-beating days but even electric appliances haven't made it a ball.  Why more women don't go stark, raving crazy polishing woodwork, scrubbing floors, dusting, fighting moths, washing windows and installing shelf paper is a mystery.

   I shun these chores like the plague, yielding only to the extent of washing the outside windows.  It isn't fitting for women to work outdoors on ladders.  It makes the husband look bad.  Anyway, I'm busy enough painting.  That's about as monotonous as housecleaning.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution 

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Fond Farewell to the Balladeer

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune

July 31, 1966

   BRAD MORISON cleaned out his desk Saturday and went home.  He won't be back--except to visit.  This was retirement, the end of an editorial writing career that spanned 40 years, in 18 of which he was Tribune editorial page editor.

   He estimates that he's written 20,000 editorials, which is probably conservative.  He's been a great man to have around.  When an editorial had to be written, and written fast, Brad was the man to turn to.  He has written on everything from the United Nations to politics, from the Minnesota Gophers to the short peony season.

   He once told me with a chuckle that Tom Dillon, a former boss, had characterized him as the most adept fellow on earth at writing authoritatively on any subject, whether he knew anything about it or not.

   But his job has demanded familiarity with the issues and the torments of the times and Brad knows the current scene, both locally and nationally, and has a keen sense of history.

   IN SOME AREAS, though, he is an appalling blank.  All he knows about an automobile is that it has four wheels and runs on gasoline.  He wouldn't know a carburetor from a spark plug and has changed only one tire in his life--with his wife, Gwen, supervising the job.

   He calls the plumber when a faucet drips, couldn't install a switch if his life depended on it, or mend an extension cord.

   This may have been what endeared him to me.  It gave us something in common.  Our association has stretched over 17 years.  We've ridden to work together daily, had lunch together, and never been on the outs, though we insult each other as naturally as we breathe and even chase the same secretaries, in a toothless, bland sort of way.

   Everyone likes Brad on sight, and his popularity is no mystery.  He has great sympathy and understanding.  He has time for the little things, and is not too busy to be gracious.  He comes to the office bearing roses or begonias.  Unfailingly, and with an assist from Gwen, he has provided Christmas cookies for the staff.  The ill or the injured get phone calls or cards--or special "Breakfast Ballads."

   When an associate, Jay Edgerton, now two years dead, had a heart attack and could not go at full throttle after a long convalescence, it was Brad who provided the attention and buoyed up Jay's drooping spirits.  He chauffeured him around, went with him to lunch, adjusted unobtrusively to Jay's slow walk and never had to leave him and go on ahead because "I must hurry back."

   BRAD IS BEST KNOWN, perhaps, for his Breakfast Ballads, the delightful jingles that have seasoned the Tribune editorial page from once to three times a week for more than a decade.  But if this stamps him as a versifier, the label is far too restrictive.  Brad's range as a craftsman is broad.  He is a writer of vast and varied competence, a man skilled with words and blessed with a discerning ear.

   Many who write never quite achieve polish, lucidity or organization.  But for Brad the right words fall into the right places with little apparent effort and no evidence of strain.

   Years ago he wrote a guest column for me, a hilarious piece involving hats.  I had lost mine and he was wearing it, with both of us blissfully unaware of the fact.  The riddle wasn't resolved until I found his hat in a restaurant while hunting for mine.

   It took Brad half an hour to write that piece.  It would have taken me half a day.  For years folks told me it was the funniest column I ever wrote.


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