Spring's a Trial for the Weary

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 6, 1961


   THE MELANCHOLY season is generally associated with fall, but for those of us who can take nature or leave it alone spring isn't so ducky, either.  The trouble is that if you leave spring alone you lose standing in the community.  The green-thumb brigade has taken over.
   We who prefer to live casually are trapped.  Anyone who hasn't a mound of black dirt in the yard waiting to be spread hither and yon is an indolent nobody.  To establish yourself as an upstanding citizen these days you have to push a weed, feed and seed cart around.

   I HAVE no black dirt on the place, don't intend to have any, and will get behind a pushcart with dedicated reluctance.  All I've done thus far is remove the winter cover from what I refer to loosely as the perennials.  The non-blooming climber has struggled through again, as I feared it would, but the expensive stuff, iris and roses of exquisite beauty, appear as dead as they'll ever be.
   We have three no-good peony plants that cling to life for no legitimate reason.  They've never produced more than three or four weary blooms, although stoked with black dirt and plant food since 1945.  I threaten each year to root them out but my wife, in whom hope springs eternal, won't have it.

   I DON'T condemn the green-thumb boys out of hand.  Some of them are quite personable chaps and good to their wives and children.  But I'm sick of having them look down their noses at me and my kind simply because they enjoy landscaping and we don't, and are willing to spend hours currying their lawns while we aren't.  Our only sin is an inherent inability to respond to the season's promises, but they write us off as oafs.
   The fellow I pity is my next-door neighbor.  He has given gardening some of the best springs and summers of his life but his back yard resists every effort to produce grass and should be put in the soil bank.  The payoff came last summer when he worked himself to exhaustion sodding the place.  It made my back ache to watch him and I hoped fervently that success would crown his efforts.
   But this spring the area is again barren and he has given up.  "The damned ground won't even support crabgrass," he muttered.  "I'm gonna put the whole works into patio and to hell with nature."
   I've heard variants of this theme from other non-nature boys, but while such an escape has unquestioned merit I've never actually seen it done and was close to it only once myself.  This was after I'd converted my lawn into desert with crabgrass killer--which was all my fault, my wife said, because I ignored the directions.
   I now merely go through the motions of lawn care to maintain my reputation, knowing that failure is inevitable but knowing, too, that custom being what it is one can no longer loaf the weekends away and permit his mind to feast on the eternal values.

   THE TROUBLE with most fellows of my era is that we were not schooled in sophisticated landscaping as boys.  My father never pampered his lawn or fought weeds.  We considered dandelions manna from heaven.  We ate the greens.  Now I'm caught up in this complicated seed and fertilizer frenzy and can't adjust to it.
   When I explained all this to my wife the other day she brought up the name of a man a couple of houses south who could grow grass on a billiard table and whose lawn is an unblemished carpet.  "He's 20 years older than you are and seems to have made the adjustment."
   Any day now I'll be out with the pushcart.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Tribute to a Patient Mother

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune

date unknown; probably 1962-1963

   SHE WASN'T expected to milk the cow, tend the chickens, mend fences or chop wood.  These were masculine chores and dad performed them with the help of his sons.
   But mother pumped and carried water, did the laundry via washboard and copper-bottomed boiler, churned the butter, strained the milk, baked bread, trimmed the lamp wicks, pushed wood into the kitchen range and considered an ice box the ultimate in refrigeration.
   The kids helped with the dishes, turned the crank on the ice cream freezer for the reward of licking the dasher, beat the rugs during spring housecleaning, kept the woodbox filled and carried out the ashes.

   WE WORKED more cheerfully for mother than for dad.  We were closer to her.  She was our confidante and companion.  Everyone was her friend and she upstaged nobody.  She was an earnest church worker but spoke no ill of the ladies of the night who were entrenched in considerable force at the east edge of town.
   She fed the drifters.  She invited the homeless in for dinner on special days.  Many kids were closer to her than they were to their own mothers.  She had a broad social awareness.
   Dad made no objection to her generosity but initiated little himself.  He was of different stripe, more or less a loner.  You couldn't be sure of him.  He could be kind or tyrannical, gracious or mean.  We were afraid of him.

   NOBODY feared mother.  Her discipline was gentle, her patience astounding.  Looking back now, I know she sought, perhaps unconsciously, to make home comfortable because of her man's inclination to make it otherwise.
   "She was the worst housekeeper and the best mother there ever was," brother Bud recalled recently.
   He spoke well.  She wasn't a good housekeeper.  Nobody who allows two sons and a couple of friends to play "basketball" in the dining room can be a good housekeeper.
   There was a hook above the archway between this room and the parlor.  A punching bag once hung from it.  We'd throw a bean bag at the hook and, if it stuck, It meant a basket.  The bean bag leaked chaff, chairs got banged around, dishes rattled and the dog ran for cover.  After the game mother would provide lemonade or cookies.

   IN ALL BUT bitter weather Bud and I slept out back in a tent to be sure of adequate fresh air.  The tent had a wooden floor and two double beds.  Every boy in town, at one time or another, shared the accommodations with us.
   Mother would come out each morning, ostensibly to waken us, but actually to determine how many would be on hand for breakfast.
   It is a pleasure to hark back to those yesterdays and the mother who made them possible.  I salute her this Mother's day as a great and understanding woman, a woman of compassion, courage and humor.  Dead now for more than 25 years, I see her with the six children who died before her--helping, counseling and comforting--giving to them the abundance she gave to the three who survived.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Moving's Both a Physical and an Emotional Strain

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune

November 12, 1955


   SOME FOLKS down the block have sold their house and soon will move to another neighborhood.  They've bought a place more suitable to present need and in this I'm happy for them.
   But I'm saddened, too.  They're the kind you like to have around, the kind you can drop in on for chatting purposes or for borrowing a cup of sugar or a ladder.  And I'm prepared to shed a sympathetic tear when the moving ban backs up to the curb and transportation of their household wares begins.

   FOR MOVING is as maddening an experience as ever confronts the human animal.  Never, until you're involved in it, do you realize what a store of worldly goods you possess and how much of it, originally retained for sentimental reasons or against some time of need, has faded into the limbo of forgotten junk.
   My father, who could muster a fair temper even when not beset, became a fiend incarnate whenever the family moved, which happily was not often.  I would as soon have been set down beside a wounded grizzly and wondered what on earth possessed the man.  Twenty years and a couple of moves of my own later, I found out.
   The fellow who now lives next door moved in a couple of years ago and had I, personally, never been caught up in the toils of moving I'd have counted his coming a calamity.  He did much of the moving himself and, while straining under tables, chairs, sofas and such, showed all the amicability of a rattler, scaring not only his own kids but every juvenile in the area.  But I recognized his mood as a phase that would pass.

   ABOUT the only good thing to be said for moving is that during the forced inventory you turn up articles you thought had been carted away by mistake in that scrap-metal drive of World War II.  A five -year period of mourning I wasted on a departed ax was broken one moving day.  I found it resting across the garage rafters.  For years I blamed my son for loss of a pipe wrench.  One moving day I found it behind the furnace.  I'd deposited it there and forgotten it.
   You should take at least a month to move out of one place--and a year or two to move into another.  We've camped in the same abode for 10 years now and the attic still bears evidence of the hasty improvisation implicit in every transfer of duffle.

   AND THAT one month you ought to take in preparing to abandon a place does not insure full preparation. Invariably, after the movers arrive, you find candlesticks on the mantel and pictures on the wall that must be herded into cartons, along with cans of pickles, paint and sundry bric-a-brac.
   Then, after you've moved everything that can be lifted, you note the dirt.  You simply can't leave the place looking like a hog barn.  What would the people who moved in think?  So you borrow some cleaning tools--yours have departed with the van--and muck out.

   BUT THE physical torment of moving is less severe than the emotional.  You leave some of yourself behind when you leave a place you've lived in long.  All about are evidences of past days.  Here is where your children have grown up.  Those grooves in what once was the nursery floor were worn there by a baby bed, pushed back and forth during endless evenings of lullabies.  Those tiny holes on the inside of the front bedroom door were left by thumbtacks which supported pictures of daughter's high school friends.  The dent in the baseboard recalls that long ago Christmas when your son strapped on his new roller-skates and made an unwise and amateurish trip across the living room, tipping over a table lamp en route.
   The first floor lacks both bath and bedroom, though, and the place is drafty and hard to heat, difficult to clean and keep in repair.  Better get rid of it and move into something smaller now that the children are grown and gone.  It sure will be nice to live in a house that doesn't have a squeaky back door and doesn't creak as if bewitched whenever the wind blows.

   BUT YOU have to start out fresh, somehow, when you move, even though the shift be only to a different neighborhood.  It takes time to recapture the feeling of home.  The new place takes getting used to.  There's no peony bed or apple tree out back to shout the glory of every spring, no rosebushes to shelter against winter kill, no scuffs on the wallpaper to recall a rumpus between two sons, no pencil marks on the kitchen door to record their growth.
   All these the old place had.  They are the warp and woof of family living, the stuff of memory.  Pain and heartache, exasperation and disappointment, happiness and comfort are there enshrined.
   You can get away from an old home, but it can't get away from you.  That's the big reason why it's hard to move.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Where's Guthrie?

Complaint of an Invisible Man

By Charles M. Guthrie
of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
October 18, 1958


   I VOLUNTEERED to return a garment to the store for my wife the other day.  I should have known better.  A mission that would have taken 15 minutes of anyone else's time consumed most of my noon hour.
   Nobody notices me in stores.  Clerks brush past me as if I were a potted palm or a hat rack.  I apparently wear a mantle of invisibility.  And rather than grab a clerk by the throat and inquire acidly if he or she thinks I am there waiting for a bus or to get out of the rain, I stand mute, fearful of creating a scene.

   IT ISN'T that I don't know what you have to be to win the attention of clerks, waiters and people manning information booths and gas pumps.  You have to be an imposing presence.  For the man of stature there is no wearisome waiting for a restaurant table, no languishing at counters, no futile waving for taxis.
   Service for such a person is practically automatic.  Around him is an aura of authority.  Head waiters recognize him at a glance and become immediately obsequious and attentive.  But try as I will I cannot bring it off.  I am not now and never shall be an imposing presence.

   AND RIGHT NOW I want to salute all those in the service trades for their unerring ability to appraise customers--for knowing which one counts attention as his due and which one will go unnoticed without blowing his cork.
   They have me sized up as a patient and long-suffering sucker, grateful for whatever crumbs of attention they deign to provide.
   The day finally will come, I fear, when I'll go unnoticed until it's time to close up shop and I'll have to step aside to avoid being covered up along with the yard goods.  If I had a dollar for every minute I've leaned on necktie counters or starved in restaurants while V.I.P.s were feasting I'd be quite comfortably fixed.

   IT DOES ME no good to put on my best pants and jacket and assume the pose of a railroad magnate, political boss or chairman of the board of Consolidated Spaghetti.  It does no good to glare and beckon.  On the rare occasions when I'm detected doing this the detector is some churl who is ignorant of the elementary fact that the customer is always right and I am told to keep my shirt on.  My timing also is off.  When I throw my weight around the clerk is looking the other way or the waiter is lavishing charm on the couple at the next table.
   I have no quarrel with those who can command attention, give orders and have them obeyed.  I have only envy.  And when my gorge does rise to the point where I explode I then go into shock, feel like a boor and suffer acute remorse.
   Thus it is that I have retreated into my blanket of obscurity and found, if not satisfaction, at least repose.

   WHEN A CLERK finally does notice me I'm pliant as putty.  I have bought shoes that were a size too small--and felt like it--on the paternalistic assurance that they were my size and that any discomfort was in my head rather than my feet.  I have bought overcoats that would look nice if draped over a Kentucky derby winner and neckties I would not wear to a dogfight, all because some clerk gave me the impression that if I didn't buy them I wasn't quite bright--and also I would be doing him a distinct disservice.
   Also I cannot bear to demand replacement of defective merchandise and seldom squawk even when a squawk is in order.

   THIS SUMMER an associate and I ordered identical 75-cent lunches, which included a beverage.  We asked if the beverage could be iced tea and the waiter said yes.  We later got 85-cent checks and were told that the iced tea was extra.
   We meekly paid and walked out, both of us burning.  But to have complained over a measly dime would have been rather small.  We were above such picayune bickering.
   Ever since then I have felt closer to this associate of mine.  He is one of my kind.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Advice to Dads: Know Carpentry

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
October 7, 1961

   AS THE Father of a 12-year-old I confess some shortcomings.  I'm more than 40 years my son's senior, for one thing.  This can't be helped but it rules me out as his competitor in anything more taxing than pool or ping pong.
   But an even worse shortcoming is my ignorance of carpentry.  This liability hurts little when a child is too small to notice your bungling.  But in the march of time he gets interested in construction jobs and starts giving you odd looks when you try to help him.  From then on until girls get his mind off hammer, nails and hobby shows you are an expanding cipher.

   MY LACK of manual skill tried me sorely a fortnight ago.  To attain Star rank in the Boy Scouts, my son had but one attainment to go-- to build a bird feeder.  He broke the glad tidings to his mother and me on a Saturday morning.  The feeder should be finished, he said, by the next Monday evening prior to the court of honor.
   He ruined my breakfast eggs by exhibiting the plans for the thing.  As a matter of principle I am hostile to plans and directions.  They are either wrong or incomplete and their primary purpose is to befuddle.

   BUT I WAS smart enough to see that the boy needed some lumber we didn't have.  And about 1 p.m., after the lumber yards were closed, he agreed with me.  We cased the nearby stores for boxes and crates they were out of and then, as is our custom in crisis, threw ourselves on the mercy of friends.
   By mid-afternoon on Sunday the junior builder declared he was ready and inquired about the saw.  It happened that this article was 100 miles away at the lake.  So was the hammer.  We did have a keyhole saw, though, that was a tool of sorts but qualified more as an heirloom.  It had gathered dust for decades and must have been handed down by a remote ancestor.  My son sighed and shook his head, but seized it and went to work.

   I HADN'T the heart to watch the struggle and went upstairs, telling him the responsibility was his and that if I made the bird feeder for him it wouldn't be right.  "You're not kidding," he said.
   My pique at this crack wore off as my pity grew.  About nightfall, after listening for hours to his labored sawing and cursing my uselessness, I returned to the basement to check up.  I found him attacking a board with my bucksaw--taken from the garage--and using our luxurious ping pong table, which also is an integral part of my study, as a sawhorse.
   I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  But I did know he needed help, even mine.  So, by this time , did he.  With an assist from Neighbor Tatam, who loaned us some tools, and following loud wrangling over the accursed plans, we came up with a bird feeder.  Just for the record, we didn't have to borrow nails.  I found some in a jelly glass on a shelf between the dictionary and World Almanac.

   MY PROGENY was triumphant and appreciative.  I was pleased but gnawed by remorse.  I wondered why I couldn't be one of those fathers who has a work bench, power tools, lumber and know-how.
   My wife said it would be a good idea if I enrolled in an adult education class in woodworking.  No doubt it would, but I could only shake my head and plead weariness.  Here was the age factor again.
   But next time there's something to build I may be a little more help.  I may remember to bring the hammer and saw home from the lake.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Oldster's Vision Not Good But His Head Is

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 7, 1970

   HOW DOES a man who's within three weeks of being 83 years old make out alone in a six room house?
   John E. Tatam does very well, thank you.  Even though he has no love for cooking and housework, he takes these chores philosophically.  His only complaints are that his hearing isn't what it used to be and he has no sight in his right eye.
   His left eye isn't so good, either, and with blindness to dust and disarray being common even among males with normal vision, it might be assumed that the Tatam menage was a mess.

   BUT NOT SO.  John Tatam is a man with a sense of order.  When I dropped in the other evening unexpectedly there wasn't a newspaper on the floor, a magazine out of the rack, or a chair out of place.
   Tatam and his wife, Helen, moved into the house on York Av.S. 50 years ago.  After their two sons and three daughters grew up and departed, they stayed on.  And when Mrs. Tatam died two years ago John Tatam gave no thought to moving elsewhere.
   "This is home and it's where I belong," he said.  "I won't move until I have to-- until I lose what sight I have or am otherwise disabled."
   That may not be soon.  This particular oldster has remarkable stamina and certainly is not disabled in the head.  He's alert to what's going on, he's articulate, interested and interesting.

   NOT MANY years ago you'd see him on a ladder painting or repairing an eaves trough or doing a bit of carpentry.  He was a demon do-it-yourselfer.  "But those days are over," he smiles ruefully.  "Eyes won't permit it."
   He still does more than most men in the neighborhood, though.  He consistently has one of the best lawns in the block and fights weeds and crabgrass on hands and knees with unflagging resolve.  He plants grass seed the same way.  "I have to work on all fours to see what I'm doing," he explains.

   WHAT'S the secret of his successful management?
   "Self-discipline.  I get up every day at 7 a.m. winter, summer and Sundays.  I shave every morning, have certain jobs to do and do them on schedule, even to checking the thermometer.  If I didn't discipline myself I'd sleep too much and be only half awake even when on my feet."
   Tatam's eyes aren't up to watching much television but he turns on the set anyway.  "When you're alone a lot it's nice to hear another voice.  Sometimes I sing to break the silence, not softly but loud.  It's surprising how singing can cheer a man up."
   He has to use a reading glass for books and newspapers so does less reading than formerly.  A glass makes reading awfully slow, he complains.  Still he reads enough to keep abreast of the news.

   TATAM finally retired in 1965 after half a century "of doing a little of everything."  Everything from banking to promoting, from being a purchasing agent to a manufacturer's representative, from a staff man with the Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association to an insurance salesman specializing in annuities.  He was chief of the contract section of the state procurement office of the Treasury Department for a time and also with the Committee for Economic Development for Hennepin County.
   "I was too much a jack-of-all-trades, I guess," he reflects.  "It seems I was always filling in for somebody else and moving from one department to another."
   But he looks down the years with satisfaction.  His children and 15 grandchildren are "mighty considerate."  A son and a daughter live in the area and he's usually with one family or the other on Sunday.

   ONCE a month he has lunch with a few old friends, including Perry Williams, former executive secretary of the Civic and Commerce Association.
   When he gets lonely he gets busy.  There always are weeds to pull, a hinge to oil or a window to putty.
   And there are old days to recapture, rapturous memories of the Metropolitan Theater which he loved--and those old songs to sing.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.