Thanksgiving With Grandparents

By DAVID W. GUTHRIE

Guest columnist of Charles M. Guthrie

published by the StarTribunewww.startribune.com

David  Guthrie  (front-center)

November 22, 1964

   GRANDPA GUTHRIE sent me one dollar and said why didn't I try writing a colum for him and if what I wrote was worth puting in the paper I could keep the one dollar.

   I asked what I should write about and he said he did not care as long as it was something I knew about and it would be rediculus for a 10-year-old kid to write about Vet Nam or Goldwater.

   He said Thanksgiving is coming up and you might try something about that.  My cosin Mark Shoberg did that last year and Gramps thought it might be good for all his grandsons to have a go at Thanksgiving and make it a tradishon.  But there are eight of us and that would be six more years to go and the old gent might not be writing a colum that long on account of being dead and besides there is no law against the stork bringing more kids.

   I THOUGHT A BETTER idea would be to write about our two Scotties but Gramps said he had wrote a piece about dogs earlyer in the month and the readers could not stand another one so hear goes about Thanksgiving.

   Sometimes we go to Butch and Edna's which are my other grandparents in Jeffers but usually we spend Thanksgiving on Grandma and Grandpa Guthrie and probly will do it again this year if Dad can get off work.  He is a dog and cat doctor and dum animals are just as lible to get sick or hit by a car on a holiday as any other time, Dad says.  But it is to late to cry about that now.  He should of thought about that before he went into vetnery.

   A while back I heard Gramps say that maybe we would eat out this Thanksgiving to give Grandma a breather and not be working her head off in the kitchen.  I would not care much about eating out as Grandma is a neat cook.

   There are six in our family counting Mom and Dad.  And Dad's sister and her husband have four boys to and they are driving to the old folks for Thanksgiving to.  That makes 12 of us and Uncle Tom and Grandma and Gramps make it 15 so I am not worried about eating out.  This would cost the old fellow 40 bucks or more and there is nothing he likes better than money.

   MAYBE HE THINKS he could feed the grown ups for about 21 dollars and us eight little kids could get one half portions and maybe eat for a buck and a quarter each.  Well, if he thinks we will hold still for that he has another think coming because I and Todd and Mike can put it away about as good as Dad.  And my cosins Mark, Cary and Paul eat good to.  The only ones who would not cry about one half portions are my brother Scott and cosin Bobby who are to little to know it when they get gipped.

   We go kind of pot luck on Thanksgiving.  Grandma gets the worst of it with the turkey and dressing and potatoes and stuff but my Mom brings salad and pickles and stuff and my aunt brings minse and punkin pies.  She could leave out the minse for all I care but it is Gramps favorite and he is her father and she likes to humer him.

   It is fun to go there because Grandma never throws nothing away.  There are old cars and trucks in the garage and toys in the basement and atic and if Gramps had his way they would all be throwed out as he says it is just something to stumble over but Grandma says as long as us kids like to play with it she will hang on to it because that is what grandmas are for.

   My Dad says to pay no attention to Gramps as he does a lot of blowing which does not add up to nothing but wind and Dad ought to know what he is talking about as he was Gramps little kid once.

Mad magazine  #39  May 1958  

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.

'Storms'--a Pain in the Neck! (It's Time to Change 'Em, Gents)

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Minneapolis Tribune Staff Writer

published by the StarTribune

October 3, 1948

   Let's face it, gents.  The melancholy days are here.  It's time to put on the storm windows.

   The thought of it may fill you with deep and abiding repugnance, as it does me.  I have long listed the storm window as the home's top torment and its inventor as a Machiavellian fiend.  In my moments of calm I realize that he may have been a benign gentleman who sought only to stop winter's march past the threshold.  But when in the throes of jimmying storm windows into place I know no calm.  The ghost of this inventor haunts me.  I feel his scoffing presence as I strain to affix protesting sash to window frame.  He chuckles as I bark knuckles, and howls as I inadvertently stick my foot through glass.

   Were it not that my family's wish is my command and that I am a slave to convention, I would let my storm windows rot in the garage.  I would wear red flannels, earmuffs and overcoat in all my waking hours, thumb my leaky nose at the drafts and be rid forever of a chore that converts me from an affable husband and father into a screaming despot.

   I have endured this torture for some two decades, however, and deem it a solemn duty to pass along to the neophyte the pointers I have stumbled upon along the way.

LOOK 'EM OVER

   Although taking off the screens and putting in the windows is enough to try a man's soul, there is more to the job than this.  The screens must be inspected for holes, mended and painted.  My tendency is to postpone this until spring.  Come spring, I postpone it until fall.

   Then look over your storm windows.  The four or five that Junior has thrown his baseball through will have to be hustled off to the glazier.

    You will find gaping voids in others crying for putty.  Fail to install same and your window is but half efficient.  I always figure to put on the putty after the window has been hung.  Then I forget the whole thing.

   Your screens pointed up for spring and put away, your storm windows chinked, you are set for what can be the most irksome job of all--washing the glass.  But you can make of it a casual, breezy job.  I line the windows up against the garage, blast them fore and aft with the garden hose, then let the law of evaporation take over.

YOU CAN'T WIN

   Your windows will emerge with a few streaks, but research convinces me that there'll be streaks regardless.  I've rubbed the glass with cheesecloth, muslin, winter underwear, old flannel shirts, newspapers.  Look at the pane from one angle and it sparkles like a trout stream.  From another it resembles a map of Minnesota rivers.

    On most window ledges you will encounter a discouraging assortment of debris--cobwebs, bobby pins, dirt and cigarette butts.

   I find it expedient to bat this refuse away with my hat.  Be certain to do this while the little woman isn't looking.  She'll insist that you clean ledge and window frame with soap and water.  Women cling to the outmoded belief that one must toil mightily to do a job well.

   But the hat-fanning method accomplishes the major results and speeds progress amazingly.  In all jobs around the house I give studied inattention to the little niceties.  After all, time marches inexorably on.  Our little stay is brief enough at best and if we louse it up with petty and tedious detail we have no time for loafing, bridge, ball games and quiz shows, the things that give life character and meaning.

   Now to hang the storm windows.  First, you must know what window goes where.  This data is mandatory.  If you've done the job on your present abode before, you have already sweat out this  information and have marked the windows.  We experts favor the number system and I recommend it to any layman not confused by numbers running into two digits.

OH, YEAH?

   But if you're putting up the windows for the first time you might as well know you're going to suffer.  The fellow who lived there last year will tell you you'll have no trouble.

    "They're all marked," he'll say.  "Can't go wrong."

   They're marked, yes, in Sanskrit.  And rather than knock yourself out trying to crack the code you'll be ahead in time and sanity if you start from scratch.

   Although many use a measuring stick to advantage, I favor the trial and error method.  Feet, inches and fractions thereof irk me.  If you're lucky you'll find that one in five windows fits without much coaxing.  But most have a nasty tendency to change shapes and sizes during the off season.  You'll have to go at these with a plane.  Do so, though, with caution.  Anger gets you nowhere.  In my hot-headed twenties I was given to paring living room windows down to bathroom size during bursts of passion.  A rule of thumb method I now use with occasional success is to assume that if the storm window is more than a quarter of an inch too large or too small it's in the wrong spot.

   If yours is a two-story house, you may meet your Waterloo on the second floor.  If cursed with hypsophobia to the degree that I am you'll be terror-stricken.  The manly method is to lug your window up a ladder and slap it into place.

    I wouldn't do that for all Fort Knox's gold.  I cart it up the stairway, scuffing woodwork and dressers and swiping mirrors and cosmetics off dressers en route to my goal.

   I ease the storm sash out the window.  Then, with chest and stomach balancing on the ledge, I grope blindly above with my burden, seeking the moorings.  Thus far success has always come before apoplexy.  It would be well, if you have a small boy in the house, to have him hold your feet down, thus preventing a headlong death plunge.  And, if you can reach the seventh rung of the ladder without contracting rigor mortis, by all means hang the window from the outside.  It will enhance your standing in the community.

    A word of caution.  Don't listen to the World Series while putting up the windows.

   In the ninth inning of the seventh game two years ago, tragedy struck the Boston Red Sox and me simultaneously.  While St. Louis was scoring the winning run I rushed from my post of duty to the radio, and smashed the finest storm window the family ever owned.

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.