Grandpa Is a Weary Christmas Enthusiast

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
December 14, 1969


   ALL MY long life I've been gung ho on Christmas and still must be numbered among the day's staunch supporters. But ardor has cooled to the point where I catch myself wondering why everybody scurries around so at this time of year, buys with such abandon, and never allows sufficient time for stringing the lights or whipping up the eggnog. Everything is done under pressure.
   No lights yet twinkle in front of my residence and I shudder at the effort required to establish the setting. For years we have draped blue lights on a Colorado spruce and strung yellow, green and red bulbs along the porch windows.

   I ONCE was revved up for this chore by the spirit of the season, but no more. This goes particularly for the spruce. Back when it was six or seven feet tall it posed no challenge. Now a 14-footer, it's not only a challenge but a threat. A ladder must be used and my meager aptitude for ladders is cancelled out when snow is on the ground and overshoes on the feet.

I MAY LEAVE the decorating job to the weather. It has done admirably for most of the month, and the snow on the branches provides a natural look that blue lights do not. Anyway, the bulbs are stolen as often as not and why risk a broken neck to gladden the hearts of thieves?
   My plaint about Christmas, I confess focuses on the grinding effort it demands. I am physically out of tune with the season.
   The Christmas card custom drives me to the brink of madness, which is a shameful admission. The attitude saves postage but does violence to the love, joy and fellowship the holiday engenders.

   CHRISTMAS cards have been blown out of proportion by those having a vested interest in their production and sale. You are a cad if you don't send cards to everyone with whom you have a nodding acquaintance. A cheery "Merry Christmas" to those you see regularly is not enough. You must send a card. I emphatically disagree-- but will spend hours, nevertheless, addressing cards, licking stamps and penning little messages to all and sundry.

   MY grandchildren--and most children-- simply dote on Christmas. Why shouldn't they? The abundance that awaits them is the stuff of avaricious dreams. They receive so many gifts that each one loses identity and blends into a glittering and confusing amalgam-- bicycles, tricycles, scooters, walkie-talkies, books, dolls, doll houses, radios, cameras, record players, construction kits and tools-- an all but limitless flood.

   WHEN GRANDPA was a kid he considered Christmas breathlessly rewarding if he got candy, nuts, an apple and an orange in his stocking, an Uncle Remus book, a necktie and a flashlight. He also got some time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas.
   But those days are gone. The journey to Bethlehem and the divine birth no longer are the big story. The hucksters have taken Christ out of Christmas and made Santa Claus the top man; the preachers can't compete with Madison Avenue and anyone who can spare a dollar for a gift might as well forget it. In today's world, a dollar is peanuts. Christmas comes much higher.


Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Music (?) Has Turned to Noise

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 19, 1966


   WE'VE BEEN warned by the World Health Organization that it's time to worry about something besides air and water pollution. Mental pollution is an even more pressing concern.
   Mental pollution, says a WHO report, is associated with urban living and is caused by noise--honking horns, screaming jets, blatting radio and TV sets, loudspeakers, jackhammers, and the guy in the next apartment hanging pictures.
   Another cause of mental pollution is crowding. Dr. Arie Querido, president of the National Federation for Mental Health of The Netherlands, says that when too many people are massed in too little space, acts of violence occur and there also is a drop in the birth rate.

   HOWEVER, it is the debilitating effects of noise--a type of noise generated by youth--with which we deal here, noise from which there is no easy escape unless your house is big as a livery barn and you can isolate yourself from the racket.

Jimmy Smith running amuck

   Today's teenager seems unable to tolerate quiet. He is a different and mysterious breed. A phonograph is as important as his right arm. Far from being distracted by records or radio, he cannot study without their discipline, particularly if the music is rock 'n' roll or some long-haired folksinger is muttering in his whiskers or a jazz organist is running amuck.
   That celebrated folk rocker, composer and balladeer, Bob Dylan, no doubt pays his bills on time and is good to friends and relatives, but he is my sworn enemy. The author of a recent magazine piece was charitable enough to call him a poet, which I dispute. Poetry should make a scintilla of sense but I doubt if I could detect any in Dylan's even if I could understand him. His flat, blurred and weary monotone makes one wonder if he is trying to sing and simultaneously eat hash.
   I agree with Allen Tate, poet and professor of English at the University of Minnesota. Tate says that Dylan and others like him "flatter people who want to believe that, without knowledge and discipline, they may paint pictures, make sculptures, and write music or poetry."

   THE NORMAL ADULT, on hearing for the first time one of the new breed's instrumental numbers, swears that the needle is stuck, so persistently are identical cacophonies repeated. I used to hear better than this at charivaris.
   "I define nothing," Dylan is quoted as saying, "not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be."
   This I can believe--and Tate's judgment seems confirmed. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby say that today's composers aren't writing songs fit to sing. The latter declares that had he come on the scene with only today's rock 'n' roll tunes to choose from, he'd have abandoned singing and been a lawyer.
   I have hopes that melody will return, but the quiet of yesterday probably won't. We are engulfed by cars,  people, television and radio, and there's no hint that the kids will turn the volume knobs down.
   My father used to make derogatory cracks about Ada Jones and Billy Murray, singing stars of the Victrola era. And when "Yes, We Have No Bananas" was a hit, he sighed and shook his head. But the Beatles and the Rolling Stones would have been too much. They'd have shortened his life by 10 years.

 Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Who Picks Up the Dinner Check?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 4, 1960


   AFTER I'D been married long enough to know that two could live for about four times as much as one if they were careful, I turned over the family finances to my wife.
   They say that women spend 75 per cent of the money anyway and who am I to buck such odds? As long as my cigarette and lunch needs are met and I have a credit card for gas and a few dimes for incidentals I'm content.
   This is a base admission. Financially speaking, I'm typical of the drift toward matriarchy. But since milady can keep a check book straight and I can't, and is willing to clutter up her mind with when the utility bills must be paid to beat the discount date, I'm happy to let her. I'm busy enough keeping up with the cold war and Willie Mays' batting average, and dreaming up excuses for escaping the church picnic.

   MY RELUCTANCE to do anything more about bills than provide the money has become such a fetish that it amounts to a moral principle. Consequently, when we go out to dine at a swank drugstore, I wander off to the magazine rack and let my wife pay the check.
   This seems only right. It's the grocery money we're spending when we eat out and she's the grocery-fund keeper. Women have been seeking equal rights for years and I grant them the right to pick up the dinner tab when they're supposed to pay it. I prefer this to accepting money concealed in a napkin or handed to me under the table. I'm never certain that this subterfuge goes undetected, fear the scornful glances of the waiter, and hate to live a lie.

   WHY DON'T I pay for the extracurricular feeds with my own money and get reimbursed later? Because I too often don't get reimbursed. My loss is the grocery fund's gain and before next pay day I am mooching cigarettes and borrowing lunch money.
   I gave my sister-in-law a nasty turn a few years ago and have been low in her esteem since. She was visiting us for a few days and one evening insisted that we dine out as her guests. After we'd finished eating she pushed the check and the money over to me.
   I pushed it back. "Pay it yourself," I said. "I never accept money from women. It's your money, your check and your party. I oppose artifice in all forms and it won't bolster my ego one bit to pay this bill with your ten bucks."
   She was rocked. "Why," she gasped, "Sherwood would be embarrassed to tears if I paid for a meal. He'd rather die!" Sherwood is her husband.
   "Well," I said, "Sherwood's not here and I'm not like him. He has pride and I have only a scrambled code of morality. If I pay the bill I do it with my own money, not yours" To my vast relief, she capitulated.

   MY WIFE says my conduct is ridiculous and brands me as a tightwad. Maybe, but I prefer to think it brands me as a rich eccentric, a fellow so financially robust that he has no thought of money and can scorn appearances.
   As long as she knows with complete certainty that I'm generous and out-giving, I tell my wife, why shouldn't she indulge my insistence that the person providing the dinner money pay the check--and thus keep the grocery fund honest?
   Of course, I'm not really as stiff-necked as all this. We often do take off on wild flings, and I spend money without stint or thought of the morrow. This usually means meat substitutes for a couple of weeks afterward, but the fun is well worth it and the change invigorating.
   And hot dishes really aren't so bad.

Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Clancy's Drug Store

Correspondence, for Some, Is a Chore

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
April 7, 1956


   EVERY TIME we go to a wedding and afterwards look at the newlyweds' loot I suffer a twinge of pity for the bride, thinking of all the thank-you notes she will have to write to keep on speaking terms with the donors.
   Woe to the bride who fails to do the job adequately. She must know that you sent the bath towels and not the place mats and she must pen an adequate paragraph or two praising our selection of color and saying that they are just what she and Wilbur needed most even though they got enough bathroom accessories to last until their silver anniversary.

   WE GOT a "thank you" from a bride a couple of years ago who definitely was my kind of a gal. "We appreciate your gift very much," it said. "John and I will find it very useful."
   Here was labor-saving phraseology, a note that might have been mimeographed, since it could cover everything from carving sets to pot holders. My wife deemed it a poor thing, but she would. She enjoys writing thank yous, is highly skilled at it, and expects to receive good ones. But I thought the bride's note good enough. I don't enjoy writing notes of any kind, don't receive many, and am satisfied with conditions as they are.

   IN ALL fields of correspondence I am a practical blank and so are my blood relatives. Some taint of character stifles more than a trickle of mailed exchanges. On my wife's side, however, there is a solid phalanx of pen pals. At least a couple of fat letters arrive every week from a sister, brother or aunt. And seldom does a day pass that my mate doesn't dash off a letter to some member of her family.
   She does it without effort. Writing notes in the car while I drive her to town is routine procedure. She can write on a bus, day coach, truck, roller-coaster or surrey. She can write sitting, standing or lying down. She can write on a purse, shoe box or package of ground round--legibly and lucidly, with never a pause. She is a true champion.

   IF SO gifted, I might write more, too, but I cannot write by hand at all, being unable myself to unscramble the code. In my youth I aspired to be a doctor and wish now I'd followed through. I'd be an expert at writing prescriptions.
   I must have a typewriter and a desk. The light must be right and so must the inclination. Even then I am practically helpless, having nothing to tell the victim. Life limps along in the same old routine and there seems little sense in boring anyone with the fact that I attended a meeting of the church finance committee Tuesday or that we had the Browns in for scrabble. I write at Christmas time to my brother and sister, of course, and in July to tell them we'll be out to vacation off them. That about buttons it up.

   THEY ARE as good at writing as I am. I can expect a couple of letters a year but no more. This year has been a blank but I'm undismayed. It's only three months old.
   My sister would write once a week, I suppose, if someone held a gun at her head.
Brother Bud is worse, if possible. When he writes it is never mere chit-chat. He has something to say. Whenever I get a letter from him I take it from the envelope with palsied hand, knowing it will contain news of transcendent importance--something like"Uncle Zeke left all his money to the dog and cat shelter, the heel," or, "Hurrah, they stuck oil on the west forty."

   WHEN HE is going to pass through Minneapolis he never considers it necessary to pen an advance warning. A couple of years ago, when in town between planes, he routed my wife out of bed at 2 a.m. to exchange pleasantries over the phone.
   She realizes now that she married into a family of screwballs and is resigned. But she used to rate the situation as practically scandalous and would entreat me to write. "Don't you owe Janey a letter?" she'd ask. "I don't know," I'd reply, "my memory isn't that good."

   BUT HE who would attribute our infrequent letters to lack of family affection would be wide of the mark. Our mutual regard, I like to think, is so deep that it need not depend on weekly or monthly epistolic enrichment. My brother, sister and I are a devoted trio. We are very close, especially as concerns postage.
   On his last birthday I broke precedent and sent brother a card, more as a gag than a greeting. I never had an acknowledgment and didn't expect one. But I know what his reaction was. He considered it a scurvy trick--and it was. It violated the stern code of the clan.

Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

You Aren't Aging? Look at Old Photos

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
February 18, 1956


A BUNCH of the relatives were whooping it up over some old photographs the other night, amused and astounded at the ravages the years had wrought.
   We had come, by recent inheritance, upon the collection, a picture story of my wife's side of the family.The booty included one elegantly embossed leather album containing characters dating back to the Civil War.
   It proved good more for gags than historic significance, since nobody present could identify more than two or three persons pictured. We fell to speculating on what family patriarch could name them.
   "Uncle Knute would know who they were," a sister-in-law mused as she turned the pages. She had something there--but not much. The grass had been growing on Uncle Knute's grave since shortly after the Taft administration. He may even have been one of the guest stars in the album.

   MY WIFE said there was a third cousin or something somewhere in Florida who was a "perfect nut" on genealogy and she might help us. She might, of course, if we could find her, but anyone of sound mind would think twice before trekking south to hunt around for a shirt-tail relative on the off chance that she could pin a name tag on some yokel holding a derby hat, with his hair creased down the middle, and standing beside a high-back chair and behind a handlebar mustache.
   When we finally confessed frustration my spouse said this should teach us a lesson. It was a shame to have pictures of ancestors you didn't know, people who might be sturdy branches of the family tree. She was going to get out all the pictures we had and write names and dates on the back so that when we died our beneficiaries would not be left in the dark.

   THIS should make those who follow after us very happy. As of now I am a mere twig on my family tree and have little time left to branch out. I think it will make small difference to those who look at my picture 100 years hence if they know whether I am Great Grandfather Charley or his fourth cousin, Adelbert Smith. I am not exactly steaming with curiosity about the folks in that old album, either. It is not my side of the family--which is essentially hillbilly--but is composed largely of Swiss cheese producers who migrated to Wisconsin from the old country before the turn of the century. I am not overly impressed by their pioneer contribution to new world eating, being the one odd-ball in-law who can take Swiss cheese or leave it alone.

   BUT THE collection included other more endearing photos, pictures taken 10 to 15 years ago of aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers and children. Then came the memories, the big laughs, and a  few tears of regret.
   There is little apparent change, from week to week and month to month, in the appearance of those you see frequently. The face you look at while shaving stands up reasonably well from day to day. It's only when you examine an old picture that you know time is not the great healer it's reputed to be.
   Looking back at us that evening were little children, now grown and married, and relatives, then in reasonable bloom, now gone to seed. The aging process is one of life's insidious certainties. You tell yourself that you feel better than you ever did. Perhaps you're convinced of it. But when you look at snapshots taken in 1943 and compare them with those taken last Christmas you begin to have doubts.
   In the one you are a trim 160 pounds. The eyes retain a certain eagerness of youth. In the other there is a puffiness around the jowls and midsection, and resignation clouds the bifocalled eyes. While it is a fact that age lends charm and distinction to the fortunate few, in most cases the opposite is true.

WHENEVER I feel that I have time by the forelock I think of an enlightening experience of 1953. My young son accosted me one day with a snapshot. I recognized the picture as one of my wife and me taken before we were married. I always had rated it a faithful likeness.
   "Good picture, isn't it?" I said.
   He agreed that it was. "But who," he wanted to know, "is that guy with mother?"


Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.


 

What Have You and Spouse Got in Common?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
April 21, 1956


   A PET conviction of the match-makers is that both parties to the marriage contract must have much in common to be happy. If you discover that you and Prudence don't have similar tastes and temperaments, you had better back out of the deal as gracefully as possible before the clergy makes it binding, else there will be the devil to pay.
   Believe this if you will, but I refuse to buy the whole package. Although you would start with two strikes on you if you and your lady had no mutual interests, you can get along passing well if you see eye-to-eye in a mere 50 percent of the area.

   THIS does not mean, as the slide-rule boys might have you suspect, that you and Prudence are on speaking terms only half the time. It does not mean that your marriage must be temporary. If it did, divorce would be more the rule than the exception.
   If, before you and your beloved felt you could decide that you were meant for each other you had to compare likes and dislikes and undergo a psychiatric check, you'd probably retreat into permanent bachelorhood.
   As I get it, a fellow marries a girl because he loves her and even his prior knowledge that she is crazy about Liberace and green onions will not dissuade him.

   SIMILAR tastes and similar interests imply similar traits and nothing could strip the marital gears quicker than the latter. Suppose two reticent souls get married and then can't think of anything to say. What a stupid situation! Not as bad, of course, as the mating of two blabbermouths, but certainly not sparkling. Or let a couple of hot-heads be joined. Their mutual regard for pickled herring or "The $64,000 Question" will not keep them from screaming at each other.

   The chatterbox, I'm sure, makes a better go of marriage if he or she weds someone who doesn't always have something to say. And the hot-head would do well to exchange vows with his opposite, a person of tolerance and restraint.

   I HAVE been mulling over the things my wife and I don't have in common and have toted up quite a formidable list. They are little things, perhaps, but even little things can grow with the years. In the face of these divergent tastes, traits and opinions, however, and maybe in defiance of the psychological percentages, we have muddled through without benefit of expert counsel or apparent need of it.
   This despite the fact that milady likes cocoa for breakfast and I can take it only to arrest starvation. This despite the fact that she likes cake and I prefer pie, that she cannot stand milk while I love the stuff, and that she sips coffee only under social duress while for me it is as vital as air.

   THERE ARE other differences. Football is my wife's favorite sport and baseball is mine. I doubt that she can tell the difference between the split-T and the single-wing but she can name the teams in the Big Ten and knows there are 11 men on a side.
   She does not know what the World Series is all about and she might even suspect that the  National league is on the attorney general's list of subversive organizations. As a consequence relations get a bit strained about this time of year, when I am glued to a ball game and she is making pointed references to the sad state of the yard.
   I like western movies and she likes the song and dance variety. I coaxed her to the cinema a couple of years ago only to have her sleep like a baby through "High Noon." I could not find it in my heart to blame her much, being stirred only slightly myself. Had I known, however, that Grace Kelly was destined to become the princess of Monaco, the Duchess of Valentinois, the Marquise of Baux and such I'd be flapping yet, no doubt. I was wheedled into attending "An American in Paris" and, because merciful sleep would not come, sat through the long dance sequences blanketed in boredom.

   BUT WE are as one in many ways. Neither of us can get to bed at a civilized hour. We both love fried chicken and corn on the cob, we both play horrible bridge and are indifferent to television, and neither of us chews gum in church.
   In the big things we are highly compatible. And that, I confess, is a help.

Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Time for Concern, Not Escape

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
September 18, 1966


   I WAS OUT in the back yard passing a football with Jimmy Tierney, my 11-year-old pal from next door, when J. Adelbert Picklewurst, my know-it-all neighbor, wandered over.
   He watched us a minute and sniffed. "Fine thing," he growled. ""The world is going to pot and you fritter away your time with a football."
   "Well, you can't spend all your time worrying."
   "Quit rationalizing. You can at least show some concern. There is much too little of it. There is too much escapism, too much interest in the Vikings and the Packers and 49ers and not enough thought about Viet Nam. People are more absorbed in the World Series than in the race riots or pollution. We are headed full-speed for the abyss and nobody seems to give a hoot."
   "But," I reminded him, "you've told me several million words about baseball. I thought you were both a fan and an expert."

   PICKLEWURST SUCKED on his pipe. "I am," he said modestly, "but now it's time to put away childish enthusiasms. What difference does it make who wins the National League pennant, with Armageddon at bat? And why should we rend our garments in anguish and ask why the Twins didn't start playing ball until so late? All this doesn't make the slightest difference in the price of pork chops, the wage and price guidelines, or slaughter on the highways. I'm through with sports for the duration."
   "For the duration of what?"
   " Viet Nam, mainly. If things go on as they are we'll get into war with Red China. Then the fat will be in the fire for sure. You newspaper boys are supposed to know everything. Why don't you come up with some solutions instead of so much lofty but tenuous prose? You wail about the threat to democracy. Why not offer a formula for negotiations with Hanoi?"
   "Well," I said defensively, "De Gaulle made a proposal we didn't like because it would involve loss of face."
   "And of course we can't lose face." Picklewurst jabbed me in the chest with his forefinger.
   "Quit throwing that damned football a minute and listen. What's better, loss of a little face or loss of thousands of GIs in an Asian land war that could last into the next century?"
   Not wishing to have him around for the rest of the day, I threw the football back to Jimmy and said nothing.

   "WE COULD USE some solutions, too," said Picklewurst, "to the race question. All Washington can think about is more civil rights legislation."
   "What would you do, ban protest marches, lock up all the bigots, or what?"
   " I'd do more about it than toss a football around or wonder about Sandy Koufax's arthritic elbow or Willie Mays' home-run production. I'd do some heavy thinking--and I am doing some, incidentally--about how to generate more tolerance in the human heart and get the price of beef down to where you didn't have to buy a roast on the installment plan."
   He refueled his pipe and continued. "As a matter of fact, while you squander time, I'm going home now to resume my deliberations and do some serious reading." He looked at his watch. "Heavens!" he exclaimed, "I'm seven minutes late." He hurried off.
   "What he's late for," Jimmy grinned, "is the Pirates and Cardinals. They're on TV today."


Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Thrilling Experiences Pay Off

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
September 6, 1958


   THE OTHER day I huddled with my literary counselor to sound him out on what path I should take to arrive at another rejection slip.
   He told me that the personal experience article seemed very hot at the moment and that test pilots, athletes, jockeys, reformed drunks, gamblers and drug addicts all were having their day in the magazines.
   "The one big drawback in your case," he continued, "is that you never had any interesting experiences."

   "WHAT DO you mean?" I protested. "I'm right on the verge of writing a piece titled, 'I Was a Forest Service Smoke Chaser.'"
   "Hmm," said my counselor. "This is a facet of your career about which I had not been apprised. When were you a smoke chaser?"
   "Well," I said, perhaps lamely, "back about 1925. give or take a few years."
   "You take them," he said. "And my congratulations on a good memory. Did anything interesting happen, by chance, while you were chasing fires? Did you get a leg burned off or rescue a fair maiden? Is there anything that would be remotely entertaining in this resurrection of ancient history?"
   "Let me think," I parried. "I ate baking powder biscuits for a week straight and fried doughnuts over a campfire."
   "Put it in your memoirs," my counselor yawned,"and file it away in a bureau drawer. It will be something for you heirs to throw away when they're cleaning up the place."

   AT LEAST two elements are vital to the personal experience article, he said. It has to be comparatively recent and it must interest more people than the members of one's family.
   "It should be spectacular, such as climbing Mount Everest or crossing Lake Superior in a washtub. Failing that, it should deal with the author's surrender to temptation and his final triumph.
   "One could not possibly sell a piece titled "Women Are a Waste of Time' or "Why I Never Drink Liquor,'" he said, "because such titles imply neither temptation nor surrender--and thus there is no final victory. But you might find a buyer for "No More Cuties for Me" or "I've Had My Last Hangover.'

   "YOUR trouble," said my counselor, "is that you are colorless and middle-of-the-road. You have no bad habits worth mentioning and are disgustingly healthy. You've never had heart surgery or amnesia. You don't even have hay fever. You aren't impetuous and the only hobby you have is mooching cigarettes. You are normal and consequently uninteresting.
   "If you want to succeed in the personal experience field you have to do more than go for the groceries on Saturday morning. You must do something like going below in an aqua lung and killing sharks with a can-opener. You might even do something crazy, such as living in a tree house or sitting on a flagpole. To the outsider your life roughly parallels that of a Hereford, except that the Hereford's is more exciting. He gets slaughtered."

   MY COUNSELOR is doubtless right. I feel a vast inadequacy. Somehow I have missed the boat. While there is merit in an upright life, in a good credit rating and membership on the ways and means committee, there is no drama here, no hot breath of danger or ache of hunger, no gnawing desire for a slug of Old Cornstalk, no thrill of suspense.
   People dream of fame in sports, medicine, finance, politics and letters. Time and kicks in the teeth often squeeze the juice out of such meditations. But mine continue, in a sporadic and anguished sort of way.
   However, I'm not about to go on a two-year drunk just to have something to write about when I sober up. Neither shall I sit atop any flagpoles or fight any sharks.
   A home-body may not have much to go on but I figure that for his own peace of mind he'd better stay in character.

Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Spring Isn't Top Season for a Lover of Slumber

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
April 24, 1954


   SPRING is the most welcome of seasons, mainly because it releases us from winter. But nobody, save perhaps a poet or an incurable optimist, can say that spring is all good. There are things about it that try the soul.
   You dream of lovely landscapes in the spring, of velvety lawns, burgeoning rose bushes and apoplectic tomatoes. Then comes summer and bugs and blight and crabgrass. And for those of willowy will like me the dream turns to dust. My good intentions start to flag in late May. By early July my activities are reduced to brief bursts with the lawnmower and sporadic sessions with the garden hose.

   THE LOSING joust with nature, however, is not my chief complaint against spring. The restricted sleep the season imposes is what really galls.
   Dawn breaks early these days, and with light piercing the eyeballs you are hard put to remain unconscious even when it's quiet. And it's never quiet. With us always are the birds, their throats aburst with gladsome songs to salute the new day.
   A colony of sparrows abides in the ivy which frames my bedroom windows and while I am as happy as they that the nights are not six months long I would deem it a favor if they would settle for at least eight hours, thus laying off their infernal rustling and twittering until the sun was up. They arouse the killer in me, an emotion my ulcers can do without.
    I think well of the robin, but his chirp is no lullaby at 5 a.m. If he were struck mute daily until I was rested and on my legs he would win my vote for state bird.

   THE BIRDS are not the only slumber-chasers, though. My 5-year-old is the chief villain. He awakens at dawn these days and his phonograph claims his immediate attention after which he goes to work on his pegboard with a hammer.
   In an attempt to wean him to quieter activity we plied him with color books hoping the pursuit of art would engross him while his parents captured a last precious hour of shut-eye. This proved about as effective as a soapy hand on a doorknob. It brought out the lad's latent vocal ability. While plying his crayons he hummed, not loud--just loud enough to drive us mad. And after finishing each picture he would bounce into our bedroom to exhibit his skill and solicit praise.
   On Easter Sunday morning he had us limping down the bunny trail at 5:45, no sane hour even for Peter Cottontail, let alone a human buttressed by only four hours sleep. For the last two mornings my son has abbreviated my slumber by coming in and exacting a promise that I buy him a pair of wondrous canvas shoes he learned about through television. He reports that they give the wearer a fleetness of foot rivaling the speed of sound. My fondest wish is to lay hold of the composer of this commercial and take him apart.

   THE SENSIBLE course would be to go to bed early and get in your winks before the birds, dogs and children defiled the dawn. Every morning my wife and I vow to "get to bed tonight by 8 o'clock,"
   But we never do. There's too much to claim attention. There's reading to do, television and radio programs to enjoy, PTA meetings to attend, evasions planned to thwart the bill collector.
   Even when you could get a night's rest you don't. The normal routine is to fall into a chair with a book after dinner and konk off to sleep. You awake in an hour, read again, fog up again, and finally give up about 10 o'clock and totter off to bed.
   Then an astonishing thing happens. You are suddenly as alert as a foxhound. You know your finest moments of the day. So you read a couple of hours and then remember that wedge of pie which survived the dinner hour. Once this is eaten a man is conditioned for sleep. But too much of the night has fled, and at 5 a.m., when the sparrows start to frolic in the ivy and the young one opens the morning program with "Bozo and His Rocket Ship," you are more dead than alive.

   In the spring there should be a way to stretch the time from 1 to 5 a.m. from four hours into eight. Then you would not devote the first half hour out of bed to yawning and eye-rubbing and looking blankly into space. You would awaken as the deer--alert and alive. And you could say "good morning" to your wife and mean it.


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