So You Think Writing's Easy, Eh?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
December 20, 1964


   UNTIL MY DISQUIETING contact with a college-level English text the other day, I'd thought that writing was a simple and orderly recording of thought, in the process of which you gnawed pencils to shreds, bit your nails, or beat an anguished tattoo on the typewriter while dredging for pungent phrases.
   Writing is much more complicated than that, the book shows.   It is everything from semantics and rhetoric to the proper length of paragraphs.
   As a result of this enlightenment, I may give up writing altogether.  I don't know enough of the rules and am too old to catch on.
   Up to now, writing has seemed as much fun as work--something to be done not only at a desk but while waiting for a bus or sitting in a restaurant after ordering a grilled cheese and awaiting its arrival.

   UNFETTERED by restrictions and prohibitions, ignorant of the true function of paragraphs, and not knowing a topic sentence from a gerundive, I've broken all the rules, ignored construction, and been warmed the while by self-satisfaction born of ignorance.
   Now, hunched over the typewriter, I am mired in a procedural morass, wondering how in the name of heaven I ever got involved in a craft which seemed, at first blush, to consist in merely putting words together to convey impressions, characterizations, opinions, mood, description and atmosphere.
   Completely frustrated, I've decided to counterattack, to condemn the book as appallingly wordy, as a flayer of the obvious, and a standout example of academic devotion to minutiae.
   I had not heretofore known that there were so many kinds of paragraphs.  They may be classified as "(1) thesis or introductory paragraphs, (2) transitional or organizational paragraphs, (3) concluding paragraphs, and  (4) ordinary--expository or narrative--paragraphs."
   True enough, no doubt.  Anyone who's ever composed anything more complex than a grocery list has employed all four of them.  But I doubt that many folks wrestle with the classifications or are even aware of them.
   And the paragraph, it is pontifically noted, is not a mere handful of sentences.  You begin with a clear notion of the total idea you want to present.  Then your chances of writing something coherent are good.  Anyone who didn't learn this in grade school is in bad shape.

   SOMETIME OR OTHER during the academic years I must have had a brush with the topic sentence.  The book nailed it down in a manner clear to any Philadelphia lawyer:  "A topic sentence is to the rest of an ordinary paragraph as a thesis or introductory paragraph is to the rest of the theme and as a transitional or organizational paragraph is to the paragraph that immediately follows it"
   There you have it.  And nobody, the reader is told, should attempt a theme without first preparing an outline.  Otherwise organization suffers.  I'm willing to let organization go right ahead and suffer.  An outline, in my opinion, for anything within the 1,000-word range, means unnecessary toil and torment and gets in the way of creativity.
   It might be the wrong approach but it seems to me that the English student would profit by being granted a free hand to write themes in his own manner for a couple of weeks before having his head filled with rules, some of which closely resemble gobbledygook.


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

That Summer Work Pressure

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial /opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 26, 1966

   WE GO INTO rhapsodies about the glories of youth, but the person who has it--and fully appreciates it--is a rare individual.  He may be happy to be snappy on a tennis court but his situation frequently galls him.
   He has reason to be galled.  He's always being reminded that he's the hope of the future and that if he doesn't shape up and modify his dedication to girls, thrills and hamburgers he'll wind up a bum, a pick-and-shovel man, or a charity case.
   The heat is particularly oppressive in summer.  He must get a job and store up money if he's going on to college.  Otherwise he'll be a dropout and a failure.

   AS I PREACH this line I keep trying to forget that the only man among my relatives who ever got rich was a dropout.  He quit school after eighth grade and was quite happy with his lot, even though he may have thought Swinburne a pitcher for the Dodgers.
   The teenager who hasn't found a summer job by now may have to turn to occasional lawn mowing assignments, some baby-sitting, and some work around home.  The odd-jobs boy has the leisure to swim and acquire a tan.  He can shoot firecrackers on the Fourth and perhaps cruise about in the car when Pop isn't yapping at him to clean the basement.  But he realizes he isn't on solid economic footing and that the work he does is piddling and lacks challenge.

The Guthrie sheep

   FORTY YEARS AGO he scarce could have avoided seasonal farm toil.  This had challenge aplenty, especially to the back, and gave the toiler definite kinship with the ox.  It was a type of labor now done largely with machines, which is fitting and proper.
   There always was work at haying and harvest time when I was a lad in Montana, and you could, if you had no sense of pride, herd sheep at lambing time.  If you had a sense of smell, a few weeks of this was enough.
   If you insisted on status employment, such as jerking sodas at the drug store, you might go without a job, but you didn't have to hunt much for temporary work.
   The rancher (Montana had no "farmers") came to town and dragooned kids from the pool hall.  Or father knew a rancher, or you were a pal of a rancher's son and got work through him.
   I hear tell of some present-day lads making $1,000 to $1,500 through summer work.  Back in the '20s this was more than the rancher made.  If the kid who worked for him started back to school in the fall with $100 in his pants he was affluent.
   The going wage was $35 a month--with room and board.  The "room" was a bunkhouse barren of amenities, but the board usually was great.  The rancher knew that a good table was as essential to completion of the harvest as the threshing rig and exhorted the cook not to spare the culinary horses.

CM Guthrie in transition

   THE TRANSITION from boy to man is grim and devitalizing.  Childhood days finally are done and it's time for serious business.  An emptiness comes to the stomach when the sufferer raps on the door for a job.  The prospective employer, who may be a lamb, forthwith assumes the bearing of a drill sergeant and, as a boss, it is plain to see, would be a veritable Captain Bligh.
   I well remember the early-teen days when life was a melody.  They were days meant for baseball and fried chicken and swimming.  Duty plucked but feebly at the sleeve and one could lie on a gravel bar beside the Teton, look at the blue above, know a languorous peace, and not fret about a job.

A.B. Guthrie, Sr.

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.

A Husband's Challenge to Science

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune
September 9, 1961

   WE ARE IN for more and more electronics and might as well get ready for the eventual reign of the robot.  The computer already has invaded about every area save romance and we can't rest serene even here.  Sooner or later some scientist with nothing better to do will bring out a wonder machine that will tell George whether Gertrude is really his dream girl or would, as a wife, be a nightmare.

   But electronics has its place and I am not one to discount it, even though it seems a crying shame that the human brain, nourished by blood, can't think as fast as a metal one nourished by electricity.

   Because of the current passion for keeping records, government, industry and schools would be chin deep in paper work were it not for the help of these uncanny devices.  And file and payroll clerks,  bookkeepers and stenographers would be reduced to babbling irrationality.

   WE SERIOUS and philosophic thinkers have long since concluded that man has got himself so boxed in by the complications, contradictions and bustling efficiencies of progress that he must take aid where he can get it if he knows what's good for him.

   We're just as sure, however that there must be limits to what electronics can do.  It cannot be expected to supply solutions to everything.  On the residential domestic front, for instance, it would wash against an unyielding reef.

   In this field, of course, cursory gains have been made.  We recognize and approve the fruits of simpler science --vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, power can openers and stoves that cook dinner while milady is lousing up a small slam in spades.

   

LINC computer 1961

   BUT THE REAL core of the problem goes far deeper.  What man really needs to chase the bugs from under the roof is a device that will anticipate and reckon with feminine emotions and reactions, something that will eliminate the booby traps, the sins of omission and the consequent frosty silences which repeatedly shake matrimony to its foundations.

   Elimination of these would reduce divorce, stanch tears and keep the home fires--rather than the wife--burning.

   To be worth its price the household computer would have to keep a man alert to all the special days his wife holds dear, from wedding anniversaries to the anniversary of little Judy's first tooth.  It would have to  make him remember to mail the check to the gas company and the get-well card to Fran, to return the shoes for credit during his lunch hour and pick up the aspirin en route home.

   

   THUS IT would have to be pocket-size.  If not on his person at all times, papa would flub about as many assignments as he does now.  One of my associates suggests that a satchel-size job would serve, but I disagree.  Too often it would be left on the cloakroom shelf at the office and buzz all night to nobody's profit.

   But a pocket-size computer would pose an appalling problem in shrinkage.  Even today's small brain machine , I understand, dwarfs a grand piano.  Fitting one of these babies into the manse would confound an Einstein.  And the only possible place for it would be the spot the boss had reserved for the matching planters.

Steve grants Guthrie's wish

   SUCH A stay-at-home installation wouldn't be worth the cost.  It might tell you where to find your other  sock or help with the tax forms but it wouldn't be around to gig you awake when you were tooling homeward without Aunt Harriet, whom you'd promised to pick up at the station without fail.

   My challenge, then, to the electronics industry is a miniature husband-helper.  If science can score a break-through here it can break through anything.  But I rather hope it doesn't try.  Some jobs are too big to tackle.

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.

Lake Living Doesn't Come Cheap

Charles M. Guthrie

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

September 10, 1960

    PROPERTY, someone has said, is a burden.  I've begun to appreciate the impact of this truth since acquiring a lake cabin in a deal I kept telling myself was folly but which I lacked the will to resist.

   The burden includes both labor and money.  The labor I can take in stride, given sufficient help, but the financial burden is fraught with distressing surprises.

The Guthrie burden continued

   Taxes, insurance, utilities and general upkeep, of course, are inevitable and anyone with his wits about him makes the required allowances.  What I hadn't reckoned with was furnishings.  I assumed that the cabin would provide a haven for surpluses we had at home, that we could clear the basement and attic of castoff crockery and sagging chairs which, through the years, accumulate in spite of you.

Kathy (my wife) bulling into it

   MY WIFE crushed this economy summarily, refusing, as she put it, to equate cabin living with slumming.  "If you think we're going to haul a lot of junk up there you're wrong," she declared.  "The cups will match the saucers, we won't eat off pie tins, look at 1959 calendars or otherwise live like sheepherders."

   In line with her concept of gracious country living, we will have more storage space and working surface in the kitchen.  We have a metal cabinet at home which, since our Kentucky days 30 years ago, has been a basement repository for shoe polish and preserves.  I thought that this, along with a loose-legged table to which I am sentimentally attached, would fill our new need and give the cabin a casual, lived-in look.

   But instead we're going to have a pine breakfast bar which also will divide the kitchen and living room.  This, and a built-in cabinet between the stove and sink, may sink me financially but will give the place some class.

   My brother-in-law and his wife inspected the layout the other day and the former furthered my awareness of things that had to be done that cost money.  "Those two dead oaks will have to come down before they blow over on you," he said.  "And you've got a lot of dead stuff in your other trees that should be cut out.  It won't cost over $400."

Bill and Roger: today's Weber and McMurchie

   I'LL SAY it won't.  The fellow doesn't realize my power of persuasion and my ability to project helplessness.  Bill Weber, an old friend who has a place a couple of cabins west of mine, has helped already and promised further assistance, bless him, and I'm cozying up to Lyle McMurchie, my next-door neighbor. Both these boys have strong backs and tender hearts and know how to install docks.

   And if any pointers are needed concerning the dead oaks, a gal named Helen another lake neighbor, can supply them, Weber tells me.  She might even saw them down herself, he says, while I lounge in a lawn chair.

Kevin, Jean and Tom G.

   AS LONG as such a spirit exists we need not despair for our country's future.  Here is brotherhood in action, a heart-warming power that moves mountains--and trees, too, I trust.

   It is such neighborliness that I need and am counting on.  And those who help will not go unrewarded.  My wife promises to serve coffee and sandwiches.


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.

When You're Young You're Different

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


   IN PONDERING my impending vacation, I have fallen to pondering vacations past, comparing former and present attitudes and viewing the gulf between the middle-age that is now and the youth that is done.
   Back in the salad days, my wife and I judged a vacation's merit by the distance traveled.  Far horizons pulled us.  We would head forth in a beaten-up fugitive from the automobile graveyard, with a baby in the back seat and money owed the grocer in my pants, our hearts carefree and our eyes on the far away hills.  I recall once being 100 miles from home on the return trip with a dime as my only negotiable asset.

   WE'LL BE driving little more than 250 miles from home in the vacation coming up--and I'd be happier if it were 50.  Beating the highways mile on endless mile no longer charms me.  The paramount wish is that the distance be short and that I arrive in reasonable health.
   This points to physical slippage, devotion to routine and hardening of arteries and attitudes.  It is surrender to time.  Far off places still lure me some, but I prefer to get there by public carrier, without looking at oncoming headlights or wondering if the road jockey approaching at 80 miles an hour will duck back into line or knock me into a statistic.

Chuck (elder son), a pal (?) and Carol (daughter)

   MY ELDER son would think no more of driving 250 miles than buzzing around the block.  I have known him with a couple of pals, to start out on an ambitious journey with bald-headed tires, a decrepit spare, five gallons of gas and no credit card-- and with barely enough money among the three to finance a round of hot dogs.  Whenever he got stalled, which was often, he would cuss his luck but not his deplorable preparations.
   For the modest junket just ahead I am girded for all conceivable exigencies.  The car is greased, oiled and gassed to the teeth and the tires are tough as a ward-heeler's conscience.  The credit card has been restored to respectability and the motor club alerted.  I will not say we are immune to trouble.  But should calamity befall it won't be because we've invited it, as youth is wont to do.

   YOUTH and age part company in other ways, too.  Kids just married, for instance, have the notion that easy payments are easy.  They will put themselves in installment hock for years without batting an eye, and then wonder why they're always broke.

   The old man is cagier, less inclined to spend it before he has it.  The 1950 bus may begin to rattle, groan and protest but he's reluctant to trade it in on a new job just to keep up with the Joneses.  He'll spend $50 for repairs and drive it another year.  To be less mired in debt he's willing to be less stylish.

   THE OLDSTER is not inclined to violent exercise.  My 7-year-old looks at me strangely whenever I refuse to race him upstairs when it's his bedtime.  When the fatigue of the day's occupation is not too heavy I'll accept his challenge, but these occasions are growing fewer.  It brings a pronounced pounding to the heart and often a cramp to the calf.
   Seven years ago I would play badminton with the kids in the back yard and give them quite a game.  Now the neighbors are doing it and it wearies me to watch them.

   I HEAR about young fathers going on overnight hikes or canoe trips with their young, deals involving portages, long hikes under full pack and nights with the stars overhead and the ground underneath.  I once was a child of nature myself, living in the mountains for three summers, where the only running water was in the river and the bed springs were pine boughs and you had to chop wood and eat smoke and otherwise do it yourself to survive.  My nearest approach to that way of life now is when I am dragooned into a hamburger fry in the back yard, a madness which seems to be catching on in spite of mosquitoes and inconvenience.

   YOUTH is a plunger and youth is impetuous.  He may not know how he'll raise the rent money but is sure he'll have it by the first of the month.  Youth wears the bright face of hope and of faith in tomorrow.  He rides the punches and plans big plans.
   Youth, though often half nuts, is our great national asset.  He fuels the engines of progress and commerce.  I am for him 100 percent.  Just don't ask me to keep up with him.

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.

There's Nothing Quite Like Fishing!

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
August 30, 1958


   MILLIONS are spent annually for bait, boats, tackle, plugs, boots, nets and other fishing impedimenta.  The sport unquestionably is here to stay, and rightly so.
   It gets the devotee into the fresh air, provides exercise, scenery, and relaxation.  There is something mighty soothing about the idle slap of water against boat.  And when a big one takes the lure, when the line tightens and the rod bends, here is a dream come true, here is rapture complete.

   I AM TOLD, at least, that such is the case.  I never have caught a big one and doubt that I ever shall.  If an outsized northern ever was on one end of the line and I on the other, panic, I suspect, would ensue.
   My thirst for fishing was thoroughly slaked the last week of vacation.  The area was invested with lakes of all sizes, "live bait" signs were as thick as birch trees, and it was taken for granted that all vacationers had come primarily to fish.
   I had come primarily to eat, loaf and sleep, and although I took my spinning red, a few hooks and a couple of plugs along--for appearances and at my son's behest--I was sure he would weary of fishing after a couple of attempts, leaving me to my own devices.
   Weary he did.  So did I, but I continued to fish.  I was pushed into it.  All other husbands at the resort were avid anglers.  They would go out at dawn and just as I was thinking of getting up, return with northerns and bass of appalling size.  What's more--and I found it hard to forgive them for this--they insisted on exhibiting same and gloating.

   I HAD BEEN in camp no more than a day when I was marked as the only adult male who had caught nothing of consequence.  My wife, son and I caught some sunfish but it seemed this was kid stuff and didn't count.  And the resort proprietor, who assumed I was burning with disappointment and who took my ineptitude as a reflection on his layout, kept exhorting me to try again.
   So did my wife.  She said I should buy some minnows and instead of sleeping all morning get out on the lake at 6.  I agreed only to the minnows.  The fish could bite on my time, late morning or early evening, or go take a swim.
   Live bait proved no more effective than my vastly more convenient plugs.  "Just put the minnow on the hook and let him work for you," said one of my advisers.
   The work my minnows did was inconsequential.  They would turn belly up after a cast or two or maneuver into the weeds, there to snag my hook permanently in vegetation.

   IT PROBABLY was just as well, for the sunfish we caught proved more problem than prize.  I was elected, of course, to clean them.  I processed the first mess outside the cabin at dusk and was eaten alive by mosquitoes and flies--both horse and deer.
   To add to my frustration, I had no tools for the job but a couple of dull paring knives and pliers.  And most of my previous fish cleaning had been done on trout, which have the decency not to wear armor plate and spiked fins.  I wondered, as I slapped and perspired, by what ghastly whim of fate I had been elected to spend a vacation thus.

Mom liked fish

   I FIGURED that fish for breakfast was my due and my wife agreed.  I got them--all of them.  Our son quit after a couple of nibbles and milady, who professed her love of sunfish while she was catching them and I was baiting her hook, said they were too "heavy" for breakfast.  "When we have them for dinner just watch me."
   We had them for dinner two nights later.  She ate two.  So, by sheer force of will, did our son.
   The next night we had steak, broiled over charcoal and delicious.  Our pride and joy fell upon his portion with a will, interrupting his chomping only long enough to declare:
   "It's too bad fish doesn't taste like this."

Remembering Names Isn't Easy

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune
April 26, 1960

Hubert Humphrey would have remembered

   REMEMBERING names is a gift politicians supposedly have in abundance.  The most talented can meet and chat with you briefly, meet you again five years later and not only call you by name but inquire about your wife and five kids and ask how long little Jimmie was laid up with the mumps.

   It's never been my pleasure to meet any of these wonder men and I have strong reservations about their existence, despite all the stories I've heard about the incredible abilities of Jim Farley and other students of politics.

   I'VE NEVER met a politician or anyone else who could remember my name for five minutes.  I've been called Guffy, Dudley, Jeffrey, Goothrie, Say and Hello There, with the glad-hander making a brave show of buddy-buddy familiarity even though he doesn't know me from a bale of hay.

   I could pick a dozen elected officials who have met me and would give odds that not three of them, encountering me unexpectedly, could call me by name.  Not that I'd blame them, since I'm shy and retiring, seldom have anything to say that needs saying, and would be flustered no end if singled out in a crowd.

   MY REASON for doubting the stories I've heard about those who never forget names is not only that they all forget mine but because of my own embarrassing limitations along this line.  I forget names as fast as I hear them and even fumble when introducing my sister or brother to the folks next door.

   Once when I was hospitalized four fellows from the office came visiting and everything was jolly until the preacher dropped in and I had to introduce him.  Three of the names came readily to mind but I forgot the fourth--the fellow I ride to work with every day.

   Whenever we have four or five couples in who never before have met I either tell them to introduce themselves or turn the job over to my wife.  She is no wizard, either, but 100 percent better than I.

   THE WHOLE trouble with us easy forgetters is that we lack poise and have a low panic point.  Rather than concentrate on one name at a time when there's a line of people I'm duty-bound to introduce to Aunt Gertrude, I have them all buzzing through my head simultaneously.  Soon I am asking myself who the little bald-headed guy in the gray suit might be, the fellow I must identify after I have presented Sarah Menglekook.  He may be a lad I eat lunch with four times a week and know like a son.

   Fortunately, my wife often spots impending disaster and leaps to my rescue.  The telltale sign, she says, is a look I get which is common to anyone who has just lost a filling.

   THE WAY to remember names, she admonishes, is by association.  Meet a person named Smith who wears whiskers and you associate him with that brand of cough drops.  Perhaps Mr. Gibson is somewhat like good old Joe Gibson of Peoria.  And Mrs. Long is short, Mr. Akers earthy and Mrs. Baker crusty.  Get it?

   I get it, and have tried it, but success has been small.  I once met a man named Pond and thought I had him and his name tied together to the end of time because he had watery eyes.  Later that evening I introduced him to a friend as Mr. Rivers.

   But while the association method has pitfalls, it's probably the best there is, short of wearing the printed name on the lapel.  That is the custom at our church dinners and it works just dandy.

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.