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.
 

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  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.