Woes of a Yule Correspondent

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

December 23, 1962

   THE ONLY MAN I ever heard of who threw himself with complete abandon into Christmas correspondence is me. This year I have been wheeling and dealing on a vaster scale than ever before, squandering time and energy on a binge of Yule verbiage that has pleased my wife and exhausted me.

   I perform under grave handicap, too, being unable to write with a pen at all. What talent I ever had in this direction was crushed by making those crazy loops during grade-school penmanship class in a remote yesterday. An inclination to palsy compounds the difficulty.

   The happy personal thoughts my wife and I consider a necessary adjunct to the out-of-town Christmas card are no problem to her. She can bat them out with assembly line precision. Her pen flies over the cards like lightning--the message neat, legible, precise and meaningful.

   I MUST CRANK CARD into typewriter, an exacting job in itself if the card is not to emerge looking like something snatched from a meat grinder, and give the thing a 10-minute pre-start glare.

   Once under way, I perform with little dispatch. The big reason is that the short but adequate greeting is not in me. I must tell it all, starting with last Jan. 1.

   As I labor I try not to think that I alone among husbands bear this seasonal yoke. After all, it is a burden I carry voluntarily and the task is not barren of reward. I enjoy being a martyr.

   One fellow asked me why in the name of divine providence--if I insisted on telling folks more than they wanted to know--I didn't get the spiel mimeographed. I always think of this practical solution too late but probably wouldn't employ it anyway. I like to send something different to each customer and have done things the hard way for so long it's difficult to break the habit.

   My car pool pal, a fellow with a genius for ducking work, seldom turns a hand at Christmas correspondence. I doubt that he even buys the stamps. Once mowing the lawn and tending the begonias are ruled out, he seldom turns a hand at anything. His wife puts up the storm windows, makes out his income tax return, and does what's necessary to be done pending arrival of the plumber. He boasts that he's never changed a tire. I doubt that his spouse could say as much.

   I UNDERSTAND HIS reluctance to help with Christmas cards, though, and his wife's willingness to have him keep his mitts out of the job. He is a facile fellow with words but his handwriting would confound a pharmacist. And in all his years of newspapering he never has conquered a typewriter. The machine that does not buck, skip and overline under his touch is yet to be manufactured. Should his wife ever be indisposed during the Yuletide, the most considerate thing he could do would be to send out no Christmas cards at all.

   I had planned to write a nostalgic and sentimental Christmas column but all the sentiment I possess has been lavished on the aforementioned greetings to old friends. I hope they appreciate my effort to add joy to their holiday. I also hope that they, and all readers of these choleric lines, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

   Now that the Christmas correspondence is finished and I've bought my wife that ironing board, I've caught the spirit of the season, too.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

They'll Feast With Old Folks

M.C. SHOBERG

By MARK SHOBERG

Guest columnist for

Charles M. Guthrie

published by the StarTribune

November 24, 1963

   GRANDPA wrote and asked me to write a colum for him and he would give me one doller. Dad said Grandpa had a lot of nurve to expect a 10 year old kid to do a thing like that and probly he would not use it in the paper after I wrote it but Mom said to give it a whurl anyway and beside getting the doller I might get credit for it in school.

   Mom said she would look at what I wrote before we maled it back to Grandpa and corect the words that were not spelled right and so forth but I knew if she looked at it she would want me to do it over so I said nothing doing and Dad agread with me.

   

For one buk, he said, one try is enough and Grandpa can throw it away if he does not like it or corect the words himself. The trouble is, said Mom, that Grandpa cannot spell very good either but I guess the proof readers are sposed to take care of stuff like that.

   WE ARE GOING to Grandma and Grandpas for Thanksgiving, me and Mom and Dad and three brothers and my uncle, who is Moms brother, will be there with his fore boys and wife. At lease they have been invited. All told we will be 15. Eight of us are grandsons and there are no little girls which makes Grandpa real soar and when my little brother Bobbie was born last April the old gent was fit to be tide.

   We have not all been together at the old folks for a couple of years which is probly just as well as after about fore hours of it everybody is a nervus reck except the kids and all that saves the day is that Grandma and Grandpa have a third flore and the kids can go up there and play with all the old games and toys and stuff in the atic with Uncle Tom keeping an eye on us. He said it would not be so bad if Mike was not on his hands.

ME AND MY CUZINS

   MIKE IS MY cuzin and if you have not seen Mike you have not seen a genuwine rip snorter. As far as that  goes his brother Tod is no angle either and the two of them bring out the worst in my brothers Cary and Paul, which is not hard to do as far as that goes. The fore of them can turn that atic into a rats nest in no time and if Tom was not presant to soupervize they would nock out a wall. The only ones that know how to behaive are me and cozin Dave. We are the oldest and have some branes.

   GRANDMA is a neat cook and we always eat good at her house. Grandpa can realy put it away for one of his age but you have not seen a genuwine eater until you see Uncle Chuck. Grandma says that when he was a high school kid he would come home after school and eat five peanut buter sanwiches and a qt of milk and still be a tiger at super.

   By the time we get to the pumkin pie Grandpa is telling how it was in the olden days before terkeys came in sellofane and you had to chop there heads off in the barn lot and clean them yoreself and it would be enough to turn my stomick. Folks must of been pretty dum in the olden days to live like that. After diner Dad and Uncle Chuck and Grandma take some lowsy pictures of everybody and yell at the kids to hold still.

   Mom says I should not count to heavy on Thganksgiving plans working out. One of us might get sick or one of my cuzins might, in which case we could not all get together. If that hapens Grandma and Grandpa will be real soar. And I will be real soar to.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Constitution Protects the Atheists, Too

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

March 22, 1964

   THE ATHEIST is pictured by the fervently righteous as a fellow of base instincts who wears a cynical sneer, lurks in dark alleys and is up to no good. He thinks the Golden Rule is for suckers, morality for morons and honesty for boobs.

   WHAT'S MORE, runs the theory, the atheist is a Communist and not entitled to such constitutional rights as freedom of speech and assembly, rights which he is out to destroy.
   All this is nonsense, of course, and the wonder is that so many accept it as fact. It does violence to the very democratic principles we have fought to defend. It is lunatic-fringe thought control. It says that a man cannot believe what he chooses to believe, and that while freedom is a word with a nice ring, nobody should be free to say what he thinks if what he thinks does not jibe with popular and majority opinion.
   The public must be protected against radicals, grandstanders and screwballs. If such characters are allowed to speak, their baleful influence might spread. Better play safe and gag them.
 

.

  BUT  THOSE who fancy themselves as keepers of public morals and who inveigh the loudest against deviation from "right thinking" are not the kind who lead the search for the brave new world, or who score economic, political or philosophical breakthroughs. Rather than stimulate inquiry, they do their best to stifle it, thus slowing what should be man's eternal and uninterrupted quest for truth, understanding and a better tomorrow.

   Man does progress, but there are occasional regressions. In a time when immorality and crime abound, we are highly moralistic and pious in politics. The man without church affiliation is without political qualification, regardless of character and ability.

   Yet Abraham Lincoln was not a church member and neither was another president, Rutherford Hayes. And Robert G. Ingersol, a lawyer and Illinois attorney general, who established quite a reputation in politics in the post Civil War period, was an avowed agnostic.

   THE ASHBROOK amendment to the civil rights bill passed by the House is a jolting example of regression. It would sanction employment discrimination against atheists, a brash attempt by zealous do-gooders to violate the Constitution.

   The effort to equate atheism with communism is a manifestation of cold war jitters brought on by the Russian bugaboo, and it shows how a threat can be blown out of proportion by fear. The Russians are up to plenty and want to bury us. And one of their main desires must be to induce us to adopt Communist methods to fight communism, in the hysterical conviction that the end justifies the means. If that ever happens we'll be had.

   MY FATHER passed from the scene about the time our struggle with the Russians was taking shape, before communism was such a scare word. He was principal of the high school in our town, taught an adult Bible class for years and gave generously of his time and talents to the church.

   But all the atheists in the county knew him, respected him and considered him a friend. When one of them died the old pards would gather around in Charley Connor's funeral parlor and "Prof' would say a few words. He always found something kind to say, too, something praiseworthy but true.

   For, as is the case with practically everyone, there is good in atheists, too.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

A Layman Looks at Prayer

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

Feb 18, 1961

   WITH morality at such low ebb despite all the cries of alarm, it might profit us to take a closer look at prayer and our cozy attitude toward it. Our prayers, I think, are too passive, too much an appeal to the Lord to do things we should do for ourselves.

   Church membership is at an all-time high and our prayers are abundant, but crime rises. A store detective estimates in a recent magazine article that 9 out of 10 people are dishonest. We have had rigged TV quiz shows, king-size price fixes and crooked politics. Everyone is out for status and a fast buck, and ethics gets lost in the scramble.

   CHURCHES can't be blamed for this, but neither can they be excused. Too many parishioners figure they've put in their stint of worship for the week when they show up on Sunday, unite in prayer and hear a sermon.

   Perhaps a mere church member--and not one of the best--has no business criticizing organized worship, but I'll criticize it regardless. To be frank, ritualistic prayer does little for me. It frequently nettles me.

   The order of worship has been changed at our church to permit more praying. Some members like it but I don't. We all confess in unison to being a bunch of sinners and technically, I suppose, we are, since none among us is perfect.

   But I fail to see this admission of abasement as the way to uplift or salvation. I think we need to be taken by the scruff of the neck and told that rote prayer is not enough, that church attendance is not enough, that it avails little if we give only lip service to belief and do nothing to implement prayer.

   THE POOR will not be nourished nor the injured made whole unless we take a charitable interest in their needs, unless we become instruments of God by providing understanding and sympathetic help. We do them no good if we pass by on the other side and parrot the beatitudes.

   My wife tells about a lady in her home town who let her 80-year-old mother support her by scrubbing floors while she minced about in prissy piety waiting for the "call" and seeking to impress one and all with her sanctimony. She had no more Christian spirit than a head of cabbage.

   But her tribe remains. I suspect that, though refined and sophisticated, it has increased and that the failure of too many to live their professed faith has much to do with today's travail.

   WE SUFFER from the comforting illusion that churchgoing makes us automatically good. It does nothing of the kind. It can only inspire us to be good and radiate goodness. We can sing hymns and pray, I firmly believe until blue in the face and get little but vocal exercise.

   If we don't leave the church with a fresh resolve to be kind, charitable, patient and tolerant we have missed the purpose. If we don't realize that there is work for man to do, services to render, sacrifices and contributions to make, we are indeed as tinkling cymbals, the Golden Rule is nothing but 11 words and refuge in prayer avails little.

   I've always felt the most rewarding prayers could be said in solitude, when one took time to ponder life's meaning and his place in human destiny and sought guidance according to his personal beliefs. Anyone who's too busy to take such time, I'm sure, is too busy.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Remembering Charles M. (Chick) Guthrie

Today marks the date of my dad's death 38 years ago (8/22/1977).  Here are a few commentaries on his life and work:

Charles Guthrie

1903 to 1977

Tribune

Retired June 1970

        "I worked with him..."

      Chick Guthrie and I were car pool partners for 17 years, during which time I developed a huge affection for him, a circumstance which probably disqualifies me as an unprejudiced observer of his performance at the Tribune, from 1944 to 1970.

      During those years we exchanged insults continually, and we finally agreed that if one of us were ever asked to write a valedictory for the other, we would title it, "I worked with him (the lazy loafer)."  Well, the insults were all in fun and I can now reveal that Chick was really a gentleman and a scholar, though he would undoubtedly resent my saying so, modest fellow that he was.

      Let us pass over quickly Chick's high competence as an editorial writer and makeup editor who assembled each day's editorial page with unfailing skill.  Let us charitably forget the time he backed his car over a house guest's suitcase as he prepared to drive that now visibly shaken gentleman to the airport.  Let us not recall, either , the three distraught weeks when Guthrie searched for his missing hat and finally found that I had been wearing it all the time, due to a horrendous mixup.

      For Chick's most remarkable talents were as a columnist.  His weekly Tribune pieces were sometimes faked by one of his precocious grandchildren.  He created an acerbic character named Picklewurst whom many persons suspected was Guthrie's alter ego.  In his column, Chick often exposed his family to kindly goldfish-bowl treatment, including his  patient and adoring wife, Florence.  Whether he wrote about peanut butter or his early preference for a straight-edge razor or his boyhood days in Montana, Chick emerged as the homey sort who captivated countless readers, the majority of whom were apparently women.

      What was Guthrie really like, they would ask.  Well, he was man of extraordinary writing talents, as was A.B.Guthrie, his Pulitzer prize winning novelist brother.  Chick's was the human touch, the capacity for making loyal friends, the deep devotion to family.

      "A great guy, Guthrie," I wrote on his retirement.  "The word for him is genuine and genuineness is reflected in every word he ever wrote."  On his death, that judgment still stands.

By Bradley Morison

Tribune retiree

From "To Believe That Spirit Triumphs"

A Memorial Meditation for Charles M. Guthrie

by Richard Mathison, pastor Lake Harriet Methodist Church

August 25, 1977

      Here was a man who could write like Norman Rockwell could paint.  He watched our great moments and our disastrous ones, our hilarious times and our clumsy ones, our presumptuous days and our humble ones-- and then let his typewriter tell the world about us!  Most of all, of course, he also revealed himself.  Among the most comforting revelations for me was the disclosure that he belonged, with me, to the select company of those who do not make their way in the world by trying to be handymen!  When Chick sat at that typewriter, somehow all the glory of the commonplace sang through the keys.

      Even the neighborhood children will miss him: four of them took pencil and paper in hand and scrawled their own note of sympathy this week.  His host of friends join the family in missing a man who saw life straight but with a twinkle of humor; a warm, positive, complimentary guy; one concerned about the world around him but most of all about people.  He lived his principles and earned the description, "genuine."

      

From:

Four Miles From Ear Mountain

by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

               BROTHER

      You were bossed all your life,

      dear, gentle brother,

      bent to duck strife.

      It was "Do so" and "Do not" and "Hey,"

      and you did and you didn't,

      meek to obey.

      Seeing you, live and dead, I could cry,

      gentle boy into mild man.

      Not in you to ask why.

      You joked with few days remaining.

      When death became boss

      You went uncomplaining.

published by The Kutenai Press

Missoula, Montana

Copyright 1987

   

Thoughts on High School Romance

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff
 published by the StarTribune

February 22, 1958

   DISCOURAGING statistics on delinquency not-withstanding, and rock 'n' roll aside, it may be that a bright new day is coming for the teen-agers.  They may be smarter than we think.  One group of them, at least, has taken a long step ahead socially and possibly others will follow this enlightened lead.

   I have read with extreme satisfaction that some 70 students at Wayzata high school have organized a club and that the avowed intention of the members is not to go steady.

   "Going steady" has been a long-time high school affliction and the practice never can be eradicated either by organization or law.  But the purpose of the club is noble and its effort in the right direction.

   I HAVE been through the going-steady phase with two children and must face it again with a third.  I have no hope of escape.  It is a sore experience.  The victim is completely cold to adult reasoning and is convinced beyond doubt, at the ripe old age of 17, that he has found his true love.

   Such seizures are inevitable, and you might as well argue with the wind as with a smitten adolescent.  The problem, in fact, defies argument.  The person you're trying to convince will not heed logic.  He thinks his is a special case.

   Love, of course, is within the understanding even of one long in the marital traces but what always irked me beyond unruffled endurance was the conviction that what kept the young fires burning, at least as much as love, was convenience.

   CONVENIENCE is, beyond dispute, an argument for going steady.  The steady-goer is not assailed by doubt.  He or she need not wonder about dates.  Ruth or Mary or Joe or Bob is always available for movies, sleigh rides and proms.  Escort service is automatic, pursuit no longer necessary and social stature assured.

   This is important to the teeen-ager.  Being a lonesome Joe is anathema.  He needs to be one of the crowd.  He craves acceptance.

   But it is safe to assume that if any sane adult had the chance to relive his youth, while retaining his mature outlook, he would not cleave to one girl.  He would be smart and play the field, thus reducing the risk of later regret.

   ROMANCE that endures from adolescence to altar is appealing stuff for song and story but the chances are better than otherwise that it will wear thin in the give and take of marriage.  The one-girl boy does not give himself a fair chance in matrimony.  While it is possible that Gracie may be the right girl, after all marriage is a gamble and she may prove to be the wrong one.  When such a discovery is made after marriage it brings the spouse up short.  It is too late then to shop around.  He who does so operates at great peril and in violation of his vows.

   I favor marriage unreservedly but think it should get a fair chance.  It doesn't get such a chance when the parties involved are young sprouts who have never been around or dated on an unrestricted basis.

   ONE MARRIAGE in every four now ends in divorce.  This indicates not only too little thought in picking a mate but too light a concept of the resolve, responsibility and sacrifice that marriage entails.

   I view with alarm the drift toward marriage by youngsters who go into it with blithe abandon and who rate the union of a man and a maid as an eternal lark.  Going steady accelerates this trend.

   Most of us oldsters never gave marriage more than a nebulous thought until we were through school and had a job.  Now high school marriage is not uncommon and the fellow or girl who gets through college unhitched is becoming a rarity.

   Any effort to alter the high school social pattern may seem hopeless but the movement at Wayzata has this much promise: it gives the student member a chance to "belong" without going steady.

   It also may convince him that while high school life can be beautiful if you have a steady girl, it can be more exciting if you have several occasional ones.  The girls may find it so, too.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Worry, an Incurable Affliction

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune

April 9, 1967

   A VAPID BIT of advice was given to a high-strung ball player the other day by his manager. The fellow was told to "quit worrying."

   This automatically disqualified the manager as a psychologist.  The worrier, as anyone should know, does not quit worrying on command.  He may be told half a dozen times a day to forget his problems and relax  All this does is anger him and increase his worry.  If he could shut off his worry as he shuts off the tap, life would be beautiful.

   According to psychologists there's nothing abnormal about worry and one should not be ashamed of it.  This is comforting to know.  Worry has been my portion ever since I got my first report card.

   My wife scoffs.  "The only thing you worry about is whether you'll get a night's sleep.  Your worrying act strikes me as strictly phony."  

   BUT I MAINTAIN that anyone who out-worries me needs a psychiatrist.  It's all very silly, I tell myself, but I worry anyway.  What gnaws at the innards is of little importance, really, and vanishes as soon as I'm out of bed.  If I got up instead of tossing for half an hour worrying about the window screens and the garage roof I'd suffer a lot less.

   It's only when worry gets in the way of thought, say the experts, that one is in trouble.  This means that you should attack the roof problem from which worry springs.  And if you must worry, worry creatively.

   The challenge seems plain.  He who worries about not having enough money to pay the bills should solve everything by making more money.  It's as simple as that.  Maybe a bit of moonlighting at Joe's Bar would turn the trick.  Or maybe the worrier should sink his all into Consolidated Pig Iron or Allied Spaghetti so he could worry about invesrments instead of athlete's foot.  Or maybe he should send

the kids off to summer camp and worry less about the population explosion. 

   One of my pet worrries involves the car.  I fret about dents and scratches, about tires and wheel alignment and spark plugs and gas mileage.  I checked the oil the other day and the level seemed too high.  Next morming before getting up I realized the worst.  Water was getting into the crankcase.  The head gasket was shot.  Also the car had started shifting from high to second when speed was reduced. Obviously I faced a major repair bill.

   I kept chewing on the problem morning after morning.  Finally my mechanic looked things over, said the head gasket was okay and that no water was getting into the crankcase.  The transmission oil was low, though, because a part which contained a diaphragm which controlled the gear shift was defective.  This was replaced at small cost.  My worry had been for nothing.

   WE'LL START DRIVING to the cabin again soon, the weatherman willing, and I'll worry about that.  You can't drive 200 miles time after time without eventually getting smeared by some crazy driver or being a crazy driver yourself.  The law of averages can't be repealed.

   "That's what we have insurance for," said my wife.

   "But insurance doesn't guarantee life.  Statistics show that--"

   "Statistics show you can kill yourself tripping over the cat or having a brick fall on your head.  There's danger in everything.  But you can't be immobilized by risk.  If you stayed home and just sat you'd eventually die, too--of starvation."

   That's another thing that worries me--losing arguments.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of  the StarTribune.

Fourth of July--Then and Now

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

July 1, 1961

   MY SON will be able go get a few rolls of ammunition for his cap gun--if he's not too old to disdain such--and perchance may acquire some sparklers.  But that will be the extent of his Fourth of July do-it-yourself pyrotechnics.  Most kids will be similarly restricted.  

   In the course of human progress, Independence Day has become relatively safe in the fireworks department.  Thirty-eight states have laws so restrictive that the celebrator can do little more than pop his knuckles and in most others there is some degree of control.

   Since we value human life, this is all to the good, but as I ponder my progeny's pallid efforts to mark this milestone in our history, I cannot forget that traffic now kills more people on July 4 than fireworks ever did.

   This doesn't mean I'd want the holiday to be celebrated with the no-holds-barred abandon it once was.  If it were, I'd not permit a child of mine out of the house and would be loath to leave it myself.

   BUT BACK in the boom-boom yesterdays any kid who roamed abroad with nothing more lethal than sparklers or a cap gun would have been judged insane and laughed out of town.  To qualify for the demolition corps you had to stick to firecrackers a minimum of two inches long (usually lighted in the hand), torpedoes which exploded with shattering violence when thrown against a hard surface, and giant crackers the size of stove wood capable of lifting a privy from its moorings.  

   Loud noises frightened me when I was tiny.  Luckily I conquered the phobia.  Otherwise the Fourth of July in Choteau, Mont., where they did everything but burn down the courthouse, would have been intolerable.

   A MAJOR part of the  celebrating was done around the saloons, the kids shooting firecrackers outside while the menfolk got shot within.  On one Fourth that I well remember a bunch of the boys were whooping it up outside the Family Liquor store and Wallace Coffey, a lad who put heart and soul into the observance, tossed a king-size boomer into the entrance of the place just as Ewing Steel, who drove the stage between Collins and Choteau, was coming out.
Ewing was an angular, rough-hewn character who got more mileage out of profanity than anyone I ever encountered.  He was visibly shaken by the blast but after satisfying himself that he hadn't caught fire and was only slightly crippled he rent the air with a string of epithets that scattered the firecracker set like prairie chickens.

   THE LADIES AID always had a picnic in the park featuring lemonade in washtubs, potato salad, watermelon, ice cream and an oration..  There was a greased-pig chase with the winner getting $5 from the Rod and Gun club, a ball game complete with rhubarbs, horse races and usually a rodeo.

   The day was concluded with father officiating at the fireworks ceremonial in the back yard--roman candles, skyrockets and pinwheels.  After it was over, mother put salve on your burns and you went to bed with a sense of completion.

   It was a more memorable day, certainly, to you who lived it, than you'll have next Tuesday, not merely  because you then had the bright-eyed wonder and enthusiasm of youth but because the Declaration of Independence is now more remote in time and we observe it with a more sophisticated calm.

   There are now more diversions and complexities, more worries and more of everything to swivel the mind from simple things enjoyed in a less cluttered yesterday, a yesterday when doing one thing at a time was considered enough.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune

Boobs Can Be a Joy--in Fiction

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

April 29, 1961   

   SOME of the most engaging characters I ever knew were boobs I encountered while reading for fun.  I don't read for fun much any more.  This particular art form is going the way of the taffy pull, the basket social and loafing.

   We don't have the time for it now.  We're too busy wearing ourselves out with leisure-time activity.  We read mainly to be informed.  This is commendable, of course, but we don't even do enough of that.  And if I'd never read for fun I'd never have met Ring Lardner's Jack Keefe, the dumb but opinionated ball player; James Thurber's mousy but imaginative Walter Mitty, or P.G. Wodehouse's befuddled and self-righteous English gentleman, Bertie Wooster.

   Keefe, Mitty and Wooster are not important characters in literatrure.  You won't find them snuggled up in school libraries with Hamlet, David Copperfield, Huckleberry Finn, Ivanhoe or King Arthur.  They are three fumbling jerks caught in the toils of ignorance and inadequacy.

   I FANCY that most folks of my vintage are familiar with them.  Those who arrived late should get away from the television sets, phonographs, radios, comic books and cars long enough to experience the pleasure.

James Thurber

P.G. Wodehouse

   But they probably won't.  Sustained reading has become rather old hat.  We read in snatches now, 15 minutes to half an hour from magazines and newspapers--and the more pictures the better.  Good storytellers are dying off for want of demand.  The fiction market has shrunk.  The accent is on facts--facts on business, history, defense, delinquency, do-it-yourself hocus-pocus and how to prepare Johnny for life.

   The fellow who reads a book a month has become almost an oddity and among us are those who don't read one a year.  When we do tackle a book it's either because we think it will do us good or because everyone else is reading it and we don't want to be shut out of the conversation.

   WHEN DID you last come upon a book you had to read for sheer pleasure?  Not for the light it might shed on the space race or our drift into materialism but for the laughs it contained?  This joy came to me the other day when "The Best of Botts"** caught my eye.

   I've followed Alexander (the Great) Botts, the Earthworm tractor salesman with the high octane ego and low I.Q., for some 30 years, off and on.  He's never let me down and here was my chance for a sustained crack at him.  I went for the book like a kid for the cookie jar.

   THE STORIES about this indomitable, thick-hided halfwit are much alike.  Bott's fatheaded effrotery gets him into one jam after another but he always emerges triumphant.  As author William Hazlett Upson leads him deeper and deeper into the gumbo, the reader has an absorbing time trying to anticipate the twists of fate that will haul him back to dry land, muddy but victorious.

   If I can get my 12-year-old to sit still long enough,, I'm going to read a Botts story to him and see if he's absorbed even remotely to the degree I was at his age when dad gathered the family around the stove and read Ring Lardner yarns.

   I DOUBT that it will hold his interest, not because my son lacks a sense of humor but because he is the product of a time with different tastes and different values, an era of quickie amusement provided by the flick of a switch.
   But I hope that Botts, Keefe, Mitty and Wooster aren't lost to him forever.  Years from now, I trust, he'll take time to feast on the laughs they provide.  I'm sure he'll regret having waited so long.

William Hazlett Upson

**THE BEST OF BOTTS,

    by William Hazlett Upson

    (David McKay Co.,Inc.,

    $3.95, 241 pages)

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Reflections on Paper Collections

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

July 16, 1960

   LET THERE BE no more mention of paper sales for a while.  I've labored long enough to raise funds for youth via old newspapers, phone books, magazines, mash notes and circulars.  The hour has come for repose.

   From the time my son entered kindergarten until his recent graduation from grade school, I lived from one paper sale to the next to satisfy the Robert Fulton school's gluttonous appetite for paper and my son's desire that his class be the top provider.

   It was more than chance, I like to think, that 90 per cent of the time his room did bring in the largest amount, and it would have been only fitting, when he finished sixth grade, had I received a plaque acknowledging my contribution, or at least a nod from the PTA.

Robert Fulton

   BUT THE school paper collections were mere warm-ups for the real thing.  The Boy Scouts are the unquestioned champions.  Not only do the kids learn how to tie knots, pitch tents, fry eggs, identify plants and live in the woods, but by the time they've passed their Tenderfoot tests they are experts at persuading their parents to help rustle paper.

   The troop my son is in--one of the greatest collections of father-son eager beavers I have ever felt out of place with--is going to camp for two weeks in August and is selling paper to partially defray expenses.  The Scoutmaster announced weeks ago that each boy was expected to bring in 40 feet of the stuff--a pile of newspapers 40 feet high, folded once.

   I recognized this as a staggering assignment but determined that my child and I would give it our best.  It was only right that we should.  I am quite a sedentary scouter and definitely not an "overnight" man.  I cannot sleep in a tent, cook on a camp stove or be denied a chair.  But through paper salvage I could partially save face.

   THE GARAGE soon bulged with paper, crowding out the car.  The cooperation of friends was at once heartwarming and exhausting, particularly on our final journey of collection.  At one stop the news of our coming had spread through the neighborhood and we were engulfed.  In the flood, I suspect, were collector's items dating back to the Custer massacre.

   When we hit home port with this last installment of treasure, I set up an assembly line from car to picnic table to garage.  I tied bundles and my son lugged them into the supply depot.  It reminded me of a newspaper mailing room handling the Sunday edition.

   All we needed was the roar of presses and I provided a fair substitute.  I had to keep roaring at my helper because of his maddening way of knocking off to read the magazines.

prized find at school paper drive

prized find at Scout paper drive

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              THE BITTER payoff came when we neared the end of the job.  My wife's prized scissors disappeared.  One moment  I was using them to cut twine.  The  next  moment they were gone like the morning dew, as though whisked away by a  malevolent and unseen hand.

   We searched the grass and we  searched the car and garage, while each accused the other of  dereliction.  Apparently the scissors had been wrapped inadvertently in a  bundle off paper.  We squirreled through several with no luck and then, fatigued and dispirited, gave up. This was the  crowning insult, the final galling reward for dedicated and sacrificial labor.

  But justice  occasionally  triumphs.  Heavy  hearts are  sometimes made light. A few days later, after  we'd made five  trips with paper to the final pickup point,  my son returned  home from  the  loading  job with a blissful smile--and handed me the scissors.


Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Thoughts on "Being Near the Kids"

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 18, 1958

   WHEN you get on the far side of middle age you don't win friends as fast as you once did and you lose them a lot faster.  They have a way of dying or moving to Tucson or Los Angeles or Peoria "to be near the kids."

   Death, of course, is inevitable but moving to strange country is not.  And while the desire to be near your own is natural, to yield to this pull can be folly.

   For the first time in our married lives we failed to have the whole family around during the just-departed holidays.  My wife and I missed the absent ones sorely and chafed at the enforced separation.

   BUT THERE are compensations.  Right now we are steamed up over the impending visit of our son and his family.  They are due in from South Dakota tomorrow and the anticipation of again being grandparents, in fact as well as name, runs high.  But the prospect would not be so enriching if they lived a mile away and had been over for dinner last Sunday.

   The mingling of parents, sons, daughters, in-laws and grandchildren can be overdone and I am content to play patriarch only occasionally.  Parenthood can pall, too, after the accustomed span, and I see no point in striving to continue it after the brood has flown the coop.

   My theory is that once the kids are off your hands you're lucky if they stay off your hands--and so are they.  And while you can't quit being John's father just because he is a father, too, you can and should quit thrusting yourself into his life and perhaps messing it up.

   A FRIEND of mine retired a couple of months ago and in a rosy glow he told me that he and his wife were selling their home and moving out west because their two children lived out there now.

   I hope the rosy glow continues, that retirement will be up to their dreams, bulwarked by close association with their own and the continuation of the old family relationship.

   But my doubts are strong.  The old family relationship has a way of entering a new phase once son and daughter are married and established in their own homes.  Any attempt to superimpose the old setup on the new is futile.  Sad though it is, a son-in-law or daughter-in-law can weary of having you around, doting and kindly though you be, and so can son John or daughter Sue.

   YOU PAY a heavy price when you retire to a strange place, I suspect, even though the climate is mild and the kids and the seashore close.  You cannot take the old neighborhood and the old friends along.  And it's a bit late to make new friends.  The close ones only come with years of living in one place, and with ties of school, church, children and common interests.

   Living close to grown children is insufficient recompense.  The Browns and the Bakers don't live next door.  The community grocery, hardware store and filling station, where badinage comes with the potatoes, nails and gas, aren't around.  The Meades don't drop in.  They are a thousand miles away.

   IF YOU don't think familiar surroundings and faces mean much, go away for a spell and experience the joy of return.  You should get away occasionally, medical friends tell me.  You grow old fast if retirement restricts you to the same old scenes and people and activities and attitudes day after day.

   But I cling to the conviction that the old home should be there to return to as long as you are able to make it on your own, that while you're still on your feet it's too dear to abandon for any reason  whatever, including children.

   MY WIFE and I rate our situation better than most.  Our daughter lives 300 miles to the east and our son 400 miles to the west.  Both are within a day's drive--far enough to make friction unlikely and close enough to nourish devotion.

   And when, in some 14 years , our youngest strikes out for himself, while my heart says it would be nice if he lived around the corner, my head says he'd have greater peace of mind if he didn't.  So no doubt, would we.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.