Child Sizes Up Family Reunion

 By Todd Guthrie

Guest columnist for Charles M. Guthrie

published by the StarTribune

November 20, 1966

   IT LOOKS LIKE the same old story this Thanksgiving and Grandpa tells me its my turn to earn a buck by writing an article for him about the family reunion. Some people might think it would get a little boring by this time but it is always fun to eat turkey and punkin pie and cranberry regardless of the same old faces.

   I told Grandpa that my brother Dave and Mark and Cary, which are my cousins, already had wrote about the last three Thanksgiving blasts and it would be pretty hard for me to come up with a fresh angel and this should make it worth more than one buck, especially since everything else is higher on account of the grate Society but he said it was one dollar or nothing and if I was not interested my kid brother Mike would be glad to do it for one buck.

   LORD HELP US if Mike got the job as he is only a second grader and a rotten speller and will say anything that pops into his head no matter how crazy. And if he did an article he probily would make Gramps seem even dummer than he is because Mike has not forgot what Gramps did last Christmas when he and Grandma and Uncle Tom were in Rochester to spend Christmas with us.

   Me and my three brothers and Mom and Dad and Grandma and Tom got up brite and early to see what Santa claus left but Grandpa must of figured what he would get was not worth getting up at 5 o'clock for and Dad and Grandma had to drag him out of the sack.

   All the while Mike was yelling like a stuck hog as the saying goes and giving Grandpa dirty looks and the old gent made things worse by saying one of the rules was you had to eat breakfast before opening the presents. I knew he was only kiding but Mike starts yelling again and tried to kick Gramps in the shins.

   Dad did not have time before Christmas to put all the stuff together. There was a King Arthur castle with a mote and drawbridge and stuff that was still in the box and another one of a western fort and stockade that wasn't put together either. So after the presents were opened Dad started working on the castle and asked Gramps to put the fort together for Mike. He said all you had to do was follow the directions. Personaly, I did not think Gramps was up to it and wished Dad had asked Tom to do the job and I guess Mike felt the same way. He was looking at Gramps as nervous as a cat on a tin roof as the saying goes.

   Gramps read the directions and asked for a pair of plyers and said he would have it put together in no time. Fifteen minutes later he started scraching his head and talking to himself and looking at the directions again. Half an hour later the fort looked like it already had been attacked by the Indians and Grandpa gave up.

   "Impossible," he grouled. "The bum who thought up this torture should be hanged by the heals from a Sickamore tree except hanging would be to good for the scounderel." By now Mike was yelling again and Uncle Tom and Grandma were having convulshuns.

   MY COUSINS are from Rhinelander, which is way off in Wisconsin and when we are all together there are eight of us without the grownups. All of us are boys and Gramps says he would trade two of us for one girl but Grandma says he is only joking and it does not matter if you are a girl or boy as long as you are healthy.

   We probily will have Thanksgiving at our place instead of at Grandma and Grandpas where you dont have to worry about scraching the furniture. Uncle Tom will try to keep the boys in line so the cleanup job will not be to big. He says Mark and Cary and Dave are old enough to behave themself but they are the worst of all except Mike. Its I and cousin Paul that keep them from turning the place upside down as the saying goes.

Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

    

Too Many Won't Bother to Vote

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE 

Of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune                                                                  November 3, 1968

   THE VOTER is a constant paradox. He may claim to be as patriotic as George Washington ever was. He may talk politics with all the zeal of Hubert Humphrey or Richard Nixon. He may harangue against communism, plead for the preservation of democracy, wrap himself up in the flag--and not vote on election day.

   
Or he may be the apathetic type, the why-bother cynic who knows the election process is a fraud, a meaningless rite in which the results are rigged or at least beyond the meager power of one voter to change. Why waste time standing in line? Why risk pneumonia getting to the polls? Everything will come out as Big Daddy planned anyway.

   THEN THERE'S the outraged liberal. He cusses the Republicans for not having the brains to nominate Rockefeller and the Democrats for not picking McCarthy. What a rejection of the popular will! Mr. Liberal will stay home, thank you.

   This sulking patriot does no more for the system we cherish than does the scoffer who insists that elections are for the birds. And only a minuscule contribution is made by that uncompromising scourge of communism who knows all the political answers but has never pulled the lever on a voting machine.

   If 65 per cent of the citizens 21 or older cast ballots next Tuesday, the turnout will be as amazing as the sight of a hippie in a barbershop. The vote was considered unusually heavy four years ago when Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater. However, 37 per cent of the voters scratched the polls.

   Some had legitimate excuses, but not those who were hung up by bad weather, head colds or sleepless nights, or those who didn't like the candidates. If they see no point in making a choice between Elmer Hickenloafer and Jerome Undertoe they haven't studied the issues or the candidates sufficiently. The qualifications of the two can't be identical, and the voter who can't make a choice can at least cast a protest vote for the Share-the-Wealth party.

   We are at a point in history where democracy is on trial, not because of any rise in Communist influence but because of the scientific explosion. Old values are being eroded and old myths blown up as technology moves ahead at a much faster clip than the social, political and economic sciences.

   SOME STUDENTS of government fear that democracy, though noble in theory and the most successful form of government history ever has known, has about had it. It must make way for a system, they suspect, that though less representative of the people, will be more in step with the forces which push irrevocably into a future that is both bright with promise and rife with uncertainty.

   We want democracy to survive. And in the years ahead when things get rough, it will behoove the non-voter to keep his mouth shut. If he doesn't vote, he has no license to rail against crooked or stupid politicians or conspiracies against the people.

   The best thing for him to do is to start informing himself about government, getting into politics--and voting. Let him leave the cynic's perch and get busy at the task of electing men to public office who can see farther than their partisan noses.

Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Would You Care to Repeat Life?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

March 8, 1958

   IF YOU could live your life over would you do it?
   My car-pool companion, an oldster like me but a perpetual optimist--unlike me--posed the question the other day as we drove to work.
   It was a rather personal query, I said. If my answer was negative he might assume that my home life was unhappy, that I was a social outcast, that I was burdened by insoluble problems and perhaps dogged by ill health, none of which was true.
   "Answer the question," he demanded.
   Did he mean the same me, I parried, the same personality, childhood, the same setting as to time and circumstance, occupation, triumph and misfortune?
   "I mean the same stinking you and the same identical life. How about it?"
   "I'm not sure," I said after a pause. "Would you?"
   He said, promptly and without reservation, that he would. He'd love it. His statement was completely honest. He is a fellow who accents the positive and is torn by no regrets.

   WOULD THAT I were of like attitude. I am torn by regret half the time, given to second guesses and what-might-have-beens and what-I-should-have-dones.
   The smartest thing I ever did was to get a woman who could tolerate my introvertish doubts and Monday morning quarterbacking and convert me, often for as long as a week, into a person of gay abandon and high spirit.

   Any reluctance I would have to starting from scratch again is not born of the fact that life has been bad. It has been very good. Tragedies have been few and blessings many. Hesitance springs from the realization that too many days have been spent worrying about too many misfortunes that never happened. I am plagued by a foreboding psyche.

   BUT IF forced to choose between starting life again at the time I did and starting anew now I would take the old route. A look at what appears to be ahead gives me the shakes.
   An infant today equipped with an understanding of future possibilities and portents would be a nervous wreck before he could toddle if he had my emotional wirings.
   He could see himself blown into infinity by an H-bomb or his bones turned to jelly by a diet overly rich in fallout. He might imagine himself, 15 to 20 years hence, starving to death in a traffic jam, being a reluctant inhabitant of a space station or being dragooned into a trip to the moon.
   The playgrounds and trees enjoyed by those who had gone before he might find displaced by super-highways and parking ramps and otherwise sacrificed to the gods of progress. He would see nature in retreat before population growth and man's lust for efficiency, movement and expansion.

   MY CAR-POOL pal, however, declared that after he had lived out this life he would just as soon take a whirl at another one cast in the future, despite all the risks and uncertainties. In the next 100 years, he declared, a lot of interesting things would happen. Space would be conquered and the parking problem might be licked. One had to face life, he lectured, not be afraid of it. The cold war, the economic, technological and scientific complexities, the civic and educational problems and the traffic snarls posed challenges and exacted a sense of responsibility.
   In many respects, he continued, life might grow infinitely better. With automation on the march, man will have to work less and less. He will have time for more culture and more time to think of something better to eat than hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza. Home movies will get better certainly, since they can't get worse, most shopping will be done via vending machine save in the real estate and durable goods fields, and we might even get off the do-it-yourself kick.

   I LIKED that part about working less but was unimpressed by his over-all picture. I am not a whit interested personally in the conquest of space. Things are tough enough on earth without seeking trouble upstairs.
   As for problems on the welfare and scientific fronts, I could make no contributions whatever and would only be in the way.

   So at the end of my mortal stint, while having no complaints, I'll be willing to say "enough."


Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.
 

A Job Begun Should Be Finished

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 19, 1957

ALTHOUGH experience has taught me that if you want a thing done right you should hire someone to do it, I firmly believe that a job once attempted should be carried through to horrendous completion. Some day I hope to get this conviction off the drawing board and into practice.
   Finish what you start, I keep telling myself. Any job worth doing is worth doing as well as you're able. My wife has lived by this code always, fatiguing me with her enterprise. And her attitude, to some extent, has infected the kids. All but the youngest, that is. In him she may have encountered a rock mired firmly in the paternal slough of "let it go until next week."
 

   HIS COURSE, it is true, is not definitely fixed. Attitude and temperament patterns are in the molding process. The twig still is being bent. There may come a day when he finishes what he starts. But up to now the prod has had to be applied relentlessly. The prodder is his mother. I have been slack, I confess, being unable, in good conscience, to preach what I have not practiced.
   Our son's notion of cleaning his room is to hang his pajamas on a door-knob, push his discarded socks under the bed, and transfer books, puzzles, crayons, phonograph records and guns from floor to dresser-top. He has a place for everything and puts everything anywhere.
   My wife says all 8-year-olds are like that and he will catch on "if we set the right example and insist that he do what he's told." There's the rub, that part about setting the right example. He has seen the old man abandon too many jobs. And the fact that this is less often by design than by the press of affairs is beside the point. The example has not been good.

   ONE SURE WAY to save him from permanent indolence, I suppose, is to stop being indolent myself. But for me this is easier said than done, even with parental duty as the spur. It would impose a new way of life, a life bereft of those little distractions that give meaning to existence. I doubt that I could ever bring it off.

Adlai Stevenson/ Dwight Eisenhower

   I have, however, listed all the jobs crying for completion and affixed the list to the kitchen bulletin board by way of inspiration. It reminds me each morning of a certain situation in the basement, where there is yet to be finished a paint job begun shortly before Ike beat Adlai the first time. The most prominent wall expanses have been treated but sections back of the work bench, furnace and hot water heater molder in neglect, as does a corner area blocked by an ancient refrigerator.
   The over-all effect is not good. There persists an atmosphere of neglect and decay, an atmosphere to inspire the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, one that more than a day or two of painting would take to eliminate. Were my deeds and dreams one, the place long ago would have been rejuvenated entirely, a recreation room installed complete with hi-fi, television and ping pong table and not a spiderweb or box of tin cans in sight.

   HIGH on my work list, too, is a bookshelf project, recumbent since the Japanese surrender. It started as an expedient to get books off the attic floor, where they blocked access to the stuff for the Salvation Army. Boards laboriously torn from orange and apple crates were used in the initial phase. The initial phase is what the effort is still in, the builder finally realizing that his work was a makeshift. He also ran out of nails and decided to give up until another day. I shall attack it afresh when adequate material is at hand and I establish some order of procedure.
   Also on the list is a portable back fence. This was carried to the basement last fall, to be painted, tightened and repaired. The fence must be returned to the yard ere tulip time, my wife keeps telling me, so why don't I get busy? I fully intend to.

   THERE ARE other chores too, such as fixing up the wren house that fell from the lilac bush some months ago, and resuming the job of card-indexing the Christmas card list, but these are mere trifles.
   By diligent week-end application, the major chores could be finished by May and, if the madness persisted, more week-ends then could be shot in planting, fertilizing and yard cleaning.
   The prospect, even when leavened by the thought that such enterprise would make my son aspire to my new example, seems dismal. I like to think that with the passage of time, and regardless of papa, the boy will become more like his mother.

Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

You Don't Play Bridge? Well, It's Not Important

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
date (prob.) Feb 1952

   THERE ARE crosses one must bear which leave permanent scars and make one yearn for the life of a lighthouse keeper on some rockbound and inaccessible reef.
   Mine is a colossal ineptitude at the bridge table, from which prospective participants have been known to scatter like hares before the hounds at my approach.
   You may write this attitude off as complete nonsense. What matters it, in these times of crises, cold war and one dollar hamburger whether one can play bridge? There are, after all, really important things to do.
   I have attempted, as a defense measure, to assume this state of mind. However, one cannot forever go around stoop-shouldered with responsibility just because the war in Korea may become World War III. Man is a social being and is sometimes forced to act like one even when bridge is involved. And my pride, though flattened repeatedly, still survives. When some galoot sitting opposite me, whom I have appraised as no smarter than I, looks at the ceiling and sighs patronizingly when I trump his ace, I long to go home and cry into my pillow. A small thing, really, a mere dagger thrust to the vitals.

   I GAIN a measure of solace, however, from the fact that my partner in life is, herself, as awe-inspiring a blank at bridge as I am. The only time I can play the game comfortably is when she is my partner. Who is she to frown when I am set four tricks? And who am I to point the accusing finger when she, with a bust hand, jumps my bid?
   In a moment of madness last winter--after we had gained delusions of competence by playing, now and again, with a couple about as dumb as we were--we accepted membership in a bridge club. My brother-in-law, curse his iniquitous soul, tendered the invitation. He eased our doubts with assurances that the paramount aim at these once-a-month functions was sociability, that bridge was strictly secondary, and that if we slipped occasionally it didn't matter. "We don't play seriously at all," he said. "It's strictly for fun."

 For him and the others it may have been. For the Guthries it was blood, sweat and fumbleitis. The only times we shined was at the dessert luncheon preceding the fiasco. The wife and I yield to no one when it comes to stashing away groceries, but even the delight of dipping into the cuisine was dulled by thoughts of the approaching ignominy.

   LET ME give quick assurance that our fellows in the bridge club were sound and gracious citizens, with astounding tolerance for our miscues. But they came to play bridge and did not care, overmuch, to mix it with conversation about the weather, and little Joe's recent bout with the mumps.
   They played with rapidity and chilling efficiency. And after a hand had been played they could post-mortem the operation right down to the last trick. The only thing I am reasonably sure of, at the conclusion of each round of play, is that I originally held 13 cards. How many honors? I couldn't say. I am not one to mull over the past.
   Well, demons for punishment that we are, we finished the season out and then resigned, saying that I had come down with a slight case of leprosy. They expressed regret but in their hearts they knew relief. We hold no grudge and if they do, we don't blame them.

   WE DON'T play bridge any more. We have entered new fields. Happily--although it took a bit of doing--we have found two other couples with no more card sense than we have--and we play canasta. At least we call it that. I saw recently where they changed the rules or something but gave the item small heed. I knew none of us would understand.
   We have dessert, too, just like at the bridge club, and approve this practice heartily.


Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.
 
 

Being Polite Shouldn't Be Hard

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
October 31, 1965


  SMALL BUSINESS deserves to survive. If and when we reach the point where the big and brassy restaurant, grocery and gas station chains have buried the small, independent entrepreneur, much charm will have left the American scene.


   If you can't drop in at the corner grocery for a loaf of bread and some conversation, if Joe's hardware and  Nelson's Drug have bowed to a four-acre merchandising complex that has everything but the personal touch, you are going to find shopping less fun and loafing spots less available.
   More and more small operators are knuckling under, shaking their heads at the inevitability of it all, wishing they'd had the foresight to go to work for the gas company instead of trying to buck the system, and bowing resignedly to an unyielding fate.

   YET FATE IS NOT entirely out of their hands. Nobody can precisely pilot his ship of destiny against the present waves of uncertainty, but he can abandon some irrational practices which are washing him toward the economic reefs.
   For one thing, he can be courteous and insist on courtesy by his employees. This is a commodity that costs nothing and which should be expended lavishly. It pays fat returns. But the fellow who fills your gas tank is often brusque and uncommunicative and the clerk who sells you the nails sometimes gives the impression that you've imposed on him.

   There is one drug store I keep out of for fear the boss will wait on me. He's a nice enough person but always clerks with a cigar in his face. Some of my best friends smoke cigars but I don't care to be enveloped in fog while getting a bottle of shaving lotion. A friend of mine went forth to buy a color television set the other day and didn't buy one at a certain store because the clerk perfumed the air with cigarette smoke while waiting on him. How unwary can a salesman be?
   My wife and I recently took lodging for the night in a Wisconsin motel and decided to eat at a nearby cafe. It was an unfortunate decision. The food was no good and the service was so bad as to defy belief.
   The lone waitress finally tore herself away from the jukebox long enough to wander over listlessly with menus. We had to ask for water. When you have to ask for water you know you're in the wrong place. You can anticipate no gastronomic delight.

   BUT WHAT MYSTIFIED us more than the indifferent food was the hostile attitude of the waitress. When my wife asked if she could have a glass of iced tea the gal said "no." Not "I'm sorry, we have none" but a cold and unadorned "no."
   Somehow we had spoiled this babe's day. We shall continue to wonder what activates the mind of such a person, but we won't go there again. I predict that the next time we pass that way the  place will be out of business or under new management. And if the proprietor wants to know why he failed I can tell him.
   There's seldom such stupidity in a chain operation. Bigness dulls contact with the customers. The employees haven't much time for jokes and small talk. But the patron usually finds smiles and courtesy--and is made to feel welcome.

Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

To Be Smart Isn't an Unmixed Blessing

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 12, 1956


   I WOULD NOT MIND winning $1000,000 merely by supplying a few right answers, as did Lenny Ross, the 10-year-old Californian who hit the big television quiz jackpot a while back.
   With that much booty to draw on, a fellow would be rather well sheltered against the darts and arrows of adversity, but I would not say that Lenny's worries are all behind him, even though he is unquestionably smart. One of the chief reasons he'll have trouble, in fact, is because he is smart. I have had contact with a few intellectuals in my day and have vicarious knowledge of their operations and sufferings.

   SOME FOLKS have a flair for mathematics, others for history, literature, geography or science. They are exceptional in one or two subjects and blanks in others. Not so with the real big brains, as Lenny Ross appears to be. They are good in everything. They have the intellect and also the will to excel. They can skim through history assignments and remember names, dates and places. They can tell you the capitals of all 48 states, what countries border on Switzerland, what the principal products of Madagascar are, and what Grant said to Lee at Appomattox.
   The rest of us read slower, re-read, and retain less. As a lad in school I could while away an hour reading about the Whisky rebellion or the surrender of Cornwallis and, come class time, know only that whisky was intoxicating. And I wasn't sure whether Cornwallis gave up at Yorktown or got clobbered at Manila bay.
   But once the intellectual fastens his mind on a subject it stays there. He is above distractions. The cute little blonde at the desk opposite might as well be in the next county. If there's any daydreaming to be done the smart boy reserves a time for it. It's not while he's attempting to prove that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

   STILL, to own a big brain isn't an unblemished gift. The intellectual has his weaknesses and must pay the price. Lenny Ross is a stock market expert and may remain one. He can tell you what companies split their stock at a 4 to 1 ratio last year, but 30 years hence will he be able to give the date of his wedding anniversary? Not if he's a typical big dome. The big dome cannot be bothered with such trifles. He is absorbed with larger things.
   They may not be things financial like mergers, articles of incorporation or when to unload those shares of Consolidated Tinfoil. It may be some wrinkle whereby the circle can be squared or invention of a contraption to ease the first olive out of the jar or a way to convert surplus wheat into insulation.
   While his mind is fastened on these big things he comes a cropper on the domestic front. He forgets family birthdays, fails to notice that his wife is wearing a new dress or hat or has been to the beauty parlor for a shearing job. He forgets that Aunt Hortense is arriving on the 5:38. He is not at the station to meet her.
   Such lapses can foul up the domestic machinery faster than failure to meet television payments, and cause a wife to wonder if she wouldn't be happier had she married someone they had passed through grammar school because he outgrew the seats.

   WE YOKELS of only moderate cerebral horsepower are trapped on occasions. We have our domestic lapses and spend bleak periods in the deep-freeze. But they are few by comparison. This is understandable. We have less to think about than does the intellectual. If we remember to pay the rent and taxes and bring home the bread and look busy when the boss is around and put gas in the car and occasionally mow the lawn we figure we're  pulling our weight.
   This still gives us time to remember that Sunday is Mother's Day. And we may not be too harried to realize that next Wednesday is Julia's birthday and that two evenings later the Crabtrees and the Whites are coming for dinner "so don't wander off to another ball game with Joe."
   It may be sour  grapes and it probably is, but I can't manage much jealousy for the fellows whose brains and ambitions give them no rest. They are the boys who blaze the trail of progress. We owe them much. I salute them and am thankful that we have them. But I can't envy them. I'd think they'd get awfully tired doing all that thinking--and spending all that time in the doghouse.


Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT LENNY ROSS, GOOGLE:
[what quiz show was Lenny Ross in during the 1950's]

Recommended reading is from the NYT article "The Early Death of a Bedeviled Genius"

Children Won't Grow Up Unless Parents Let Them

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
 December 8, 1953


   ALL I KNOW about kids is what I've picked up from having had them under foot for 23 years.
   This doesn't qualify me as an expert but I have latched on to one angle of the business which I think has  merit. I pass it along in the hope that it will help dehorn a dilemma.
   You need only to be half bright to recognize an elementary fact if it slugs you over the head long enough. But some of our authorities and investigators of juvenile delinquency either haven't seen it or consider it too trifling to mention in their exhortations against youths' shortcomings.

   WE READ about juvenile dope addiction, gang wars, zip guns and burglary and hear that these are the natural consequences of present-day aversion to warming Percy's pants in the woodshed. We let Percy do too much as he pleases. We don't say "no"--and make it stick--often enough. We don't keep a close enough eye on Percy.
   This may be true. But my conviction is that we often keep too close an eye on him. We shield him too much, suffocate him with protection. I've known cases where Percy got more money to spend than was good for him and was heavily pampered otherwise but who was denied the family car because no kids of 15 had brains enough to drive. Neither could Percy go out with the gang to anything rougher than a taffy pull. Nor could he date the girls. He must wait until he's 18.
   This adds up to no sense. Any child so under the parental thumb will do one of two things. He'll rebel or submit. Either is bad. The rebel is apt to kick over the traces completely, turn vandal, leave home and wind up a bum--or a solid citizen.
   But the non-rebel is lucky to wind up as anything. Here is the saddest apple in the barrel. His parents call all the shots. He comes and goes by their leave or bidding. He goes out one night a week and checks in before midnight with a full report. Mom and Dad never have to worry about Percy.

   THEY DON'T until the time comes when Percy must go it alone. Then they worry plenty. The poor kid gets lost in the traffic. He's unprepared. He's never faced responsibility, never gotten himself out of a jam, never made a decision, never been weaned.
   If mom and pop aren't around to prop him up all he can fall back on is a persecution complex. Everyone has it in for him. He blames misfortune on his wife, his boss, his job or his health--everything and everybody but the fellow he sees while shaving. Sometimes he wakes up. And sometimes he remains little Percy, forever an egomaniac, a misfit and a pest.

   WE FINALLY got smart enough at our house to make the kids do everything for themselves that they could. Operating on this theory may make home unattractive at times but it starts the weaning process early. Homesickness never touched our young ones. They were always eager for scout camp and would just as readily have taken off for Tahiti.
   If they wanted money we suggested that they mow lawns, shovel snow or babysit. When my son turned 15 and wanted to drive the car I told him nothing doing. Then I thought again and decided to be glad he had gumption enough to want to drive. There comes a time when you simply must give Percy his wings and if he's never had any trial hops he'll flop. Tragedy may befall Percy but if you're guided by fear of what might happen, Percy simply won't grow up.
   Given a loose rein, he may start to smoke or shoot craps. He may come in some night smelling of hops or Old Cornhusk. Such things can be disheartening but this is no proof that Percy is going to the dogs. He's just floundering some in testing his wings.

   WHEN you've sold him as well as you can on the merits of upright living, safe driving and honest toil and keeping out of jail--and when you've done your best to set a good example--you've done about all you can. The rest is up to Percy. You can only trust that enough of what he's been told will stick to get him from the dizziness of adolescence to the common sense of maturity.
   You may pay dearly in worry and frustration by unshackling Percy but you won't keep paying forever. After he grows up, Percy will take over for himself.

Copyright 2020 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.