Hating Is Easy But Devitalizing

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
January 7, 1961


   DESPITE all our attacks on sin and our prayers for tolerance and peace, we seem just as sinful and intolerant as ever--and peace is just as elusive.
   It's all the fault of the Communist conspiracy. If the Russians and Red Chinese would see the light and abandon their evil designs everything would be dandy. The millennium would be at hand and the lion would snuggle up to the lamb.
   This is just too cozy a rationalization. The threat of world war would diminish, of course, if the Communists became agreeable. But since man is imperfect even under a democratic govermnent the little office, church and neighborhood wars would continue and backbiting would not cease.

   WE HAVE just been through a season which emphasizes the virtue of goodwill and brotherhood. But its message too often is forgotten, scorned or submerged by prejudice. We all know that hate is a monstrous and self-consuming thing, but we keep on hating regardless, usually for picayune reasons.
   We hate someone's looks or his tone of voice. We hate him because he's too aggressive or too patronizing. If he's aloof it's not because he's shy but because he's conceited. If he has a ready laugh he's not an affable fellow but a phony.

   I'VE ACQUIRED an imposing list of hates in my time but am not as good a hater as formerly. I lack the strength for it. It's robbed me of sleep, composure and rational thought. And as I ponder the list, it shames me to realize that most of my hates have sprung from envy.
   A lot of people throw themselves into hate with missionary zeal and abandon. They cling to suspicion, gossip and grudges as though they were meat and drink. They are constantly being slighted, constantly having their feelings hurt and constantly plotting revenge.

   THOSE WHO have immunity to hatred are as rare as sand hill cranes, and the irony of it all is that we so often hate without reason. You sometimes meet a person you dislike on sight and whose faults you magnify in subsequent encounters to bolster your nonsensical notion that you are "a good judge of character."
   Then this social misfit does something that opens your eyes. By act or word he reveals himself as a solid citizen and may even become a bosom companion.

   YOU CANNOT honestly hate anyone unless you know him. And if you know him you seldom hate him. There are some genuine jerks in the world but the good guys far outnumber the bad. For every one who would hold your head under water there are thousands who would pull you to shore. Despite his faults, his frequent ill humor and his parsimony, the other fellow is basically decent. Anyone who doesn't think so either has a persecution complex or is letting hate destroy him.
   If I had the capacity to keep a New Year resolution I'd make this one: "Be charitable, compassionate and patient. Avoid snap judgments.

Be good to those you hate. If you find this too tall an order, avoid and forget them."

   Copyright 2017 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune

Peanut-Butter Addict Tells All

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
October 28, 1961


   IF YOUNG enough to go trick-or-treating, I'd count it a good evening's work if I got nothing more than a slice of bread plastered with butter and peanut butter. This combination, washed down with milk, has served me well as long as I can remember. If eaten just before bedtime, it gets one through very nicely until breakfast.
   My youngest is a peanut butter fiend, too, and so were his older brother and sister. But I always was more the purist than they. Whereas they defiled peanut butter with jelly for sandwiches, I've never even cared much for plain peanut butter when it was imprisoned between two pieces of bread. I want it spread thick and I want it straight up.

   HOWEVER, I don't like peanut butter all the time. It is repugnant in the morning. Some odd balls enjoy it on toast at the start of the day. None of my brood ever had this revolting habit and I'm humbly grateful. The odor of it at that hour rocks me.
   Also, unless plagued by starvation, I can walk away from a platter of peanut-butter cookies without effort. The same goes for peanut butter candy. I hope to be spared any such goodies during the holidays.
   But if forced to limit my intake to a dozen items of food from now until the finish, I'd include peanut butter. I couldn't live comfortably without it, particularly before going to bed. Ordinarily I spread it on bread but for really fast refueling eat it direct from the jar.

   I WAS an even greater addict years ago, before the food processors got in their licks and made peanut butter smooth and creamy so it would spread prettily for television. Slaves of modernity claim that this has improved it. I say it hasn't and deplore the fact that today's small-fry is largely unaware of just how good peanut butter can be when left alone and not put through the homogenizer.
   There's little current demand for old-fashioned, pre-Madison avenue peanut butter but in my estimate the spread popular today compares about as favorably with the original article as cultured buttermilk does to the kind we used to get from the churn.

   FOR YEARS I've implored my wife--for Pere sake--to buy some peanut butter with a quarter of an inch of oil on top. Supported by my son, who rates my tastes as Neanderthal, she's resisted, saying our grocer had more brains than to stock it and that if she did get some she'd have to throw it away when it was half gone because it would get dry and hard as a rock.
   I admit that the oil has to be worked in with practically every using, whereas the homogenized article will remain pliant until the next presidential election. But must even our salivary glands be sacrificed on the altar of convenience and easy spreading?

IN a small-town store the other day I chanced upon a jar of old-style peanut butter. It was comparable to seeing a barrel of pickles, a round of cheese and a bunch of bananas hanging from a rope.
   I pounced on it with a glad cry, took my treasure home and, at the first opportunity, plastered a generous potion on a slab of bread, poured a beaker of milk, and went to work.
   Here was big-league eating. Here was time flung backward. Here was the unglamorous, unrefined article. As I intermittently ate and cleared the roof of my mouth, I recaptured a flash of childhood. I was a boy again, sitting beside the kitchen range or stretched under the old cottonwood out back, having a snack in a blissful yesterday.


Copyright 2017 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.