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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