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.