Plaint of a Bashful Parishioner

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 3, 1965

   ONE MAIN VIRTUE of the church is its social appeal.  The lonely and oppressed find fellowship 

there-- or should.  Too often they don't.  The fellowship is confined to those who already are acquainted, the stranger remains a stranger, and departs determined to find a church home elsewhere.

   The clergy and officials of the congregation are well aware of these failures to communicate and repeatedly exhort members to mingle more with the visitors.  In my church there is more than exhortation.  There is compulsion and entrapment.  When you stand to sing the second hymn of the service, the preacher tells you first to greet those behind and in front of you and those at your left and right.  You are supposed to say a friendly hello, give tongue to some banality about the weather, and otherwise let those around you know you are real folks.  You cannot stand mute without appearing to be anti-social.

   A FEW SUNDAYS BACK during this get-acquainted period I heard one woman giving another her recipe for apple turnovers.  I thought this unseemly but didn't protest.  Rather, I marveled at the easy informality and wondered how it was possible to attain such a cozy relationship so fast with a total stranger.

   I find the entire procedure acutely distasteful and embarrassing.  While acknowledging its indubitable merit, I know it is not for me.  I can't remember names, have difficulty even identifying myself when under pressure, and wish I were in the woods communing with the owls.  It wouldn't be so bad if my wife were at my side but she's in the choir loft, lost to me in my time of need.

  After church she asks whom I met.  I used to confess that I didn't know.  Now I rattle off four or five names at random--Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester Snodgrass, Patricia Percy, Charley Farrell, George Givens-- whatever  pops into my head.  My wife does not press me further, knowing I'm lying but saluting my ingenuity.

   Few members are as definitely hostile to the get-acquainted business as I, probably because few are so withdrawn, so cursed by shyness and so completely unable to make small talk with strangers.

   J. Adelbert Picklewwurst is my complete opposite.  During a moment of ill-advised missionary zeal I induced my opinionated neighbor to join the church a year ago and now he repeatedly upbraids me for not telling him about it sooner.

   He is one of the biggest hams in Christendom and for him the finest hour of the week comes at Sunday worship, and the finest moments of that hour come when he can pump hands and boom out his name.

   SHORTLY AFTER JOINING the church, Picklewurst professed interest in the choir, seeing this as a convenient avenue for his exhibitionism.  I asked him if he knew how to sing and he said certainly.  He had the lead in the Christmas musical back in the eighth grade and was the talk of the county.

   He never joined the choir, however, and finally told me he'd lost interest.  I later talked to the director and he told me he wasn't about to have a good choir ruined by a leather-lunged monotone.

   But Picklewurst is eager and should have a chance to contribute of his talents.  The place for him is in the kitchen, helping clean up after church dinners, but this wouldn't interest him.  His audience would be too small.  We do have "greeters" who serve four or five Sundays at a stretch.  Picklewurst would love this assignment--on a permanent basis.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

On Making Coffee the Hard Way

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

February 20, 1960

   UP TO NOW my coffee consumption has averaged about six pleasure-packed cups a day, but since reading a piece in Harper's magazine I'm close to swearing off the stuff.  I've been drinking embalming fluid.  I've never enjoyed a really good cup of coffee.  To make coffee right you must have laboratory facilities and time on your hands.

   My procedure has been to put the desired amount of water into a pot, bring it to a boil, throw in the coffee and shut off the burner.  Admittedly this is old-fashioned, but since the resulting product always tasted as good as that yielded up by a thermostatically-controlled, silver-plated appliance, it seemed good enough.

   BUT I NOTE that the true coffee connoisseur buys freshly-roasted coffee in the bean, grinds it only according to the needs of the moment, puts it into water that's not boiling but of precise heat, lets the grounds remain less than a moment, and then strains the contents through a cotton filter into another container.  Only then is the brew fit to drink.  Also, metal pots shouldn't be used.  They impart a foreign flavor.

   For this operation one needs a coffee grinder, filters, two non-metal containers, a thermometer, a funnel and patience.  Without question a savory and unclouded coffee should result.  But in the rush of the day's demands, with Pop having to hurry to work and Mom to the white goods sale, how many of us common folks can lavish such time on the morning beverage?

   MY LATE father-in-law was a stickler for good coffee.  He insisted that it be purchased in the bean and ground as needed.  But once when his wife was away for two months and he had to rustle his own breakfast, things changed.  We discovered the cupboard defiled with a can of ground coffee.  He had sacrificed quality for convenience.  He discovered that grinding coffee was a chore.  

   I'm sure of but a few things about coffee.  It's no good when allowed to boil, no good when warmed up, and best when made in large quantities.  Whenever entertaining a large group, we employ a 30-cup enamel pot and stir an egg into the coffee before consigning it to the steaming vat.  This invariably makes a lordly drink.

   BUT EVEN egg coffee cannot hold its bouquet overnight.  My wife always makes more coffee than the guests can consume and I tell her to save the balance for breakfast.  I'm too penurious to see it thrown into the sink.

   I regret my thrift next morning.  Also I'm the sole sufferer.  My wife drinks coffee only as a bow to convention and makes no such bows to me.  For breakfast she prefers cocoa, which I rate on a par with warmed-over coffee.  For dinner we have tea, which some folks enjoy, including milady.

   SOMETIME when I have a morning to kill I plan to make coffee as M.N. Stiles, who wrote the Harper's piece, suggests, if I think to buy some coffee beans and can induce my wife to remove the African violet from the old coffee grinder and can borrow a thermometer and a couple of glass or earthen receptacles.

   If the coffee proves so good that it spoils me for any other, I'll have nothing to lose but the habit.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Story of the Great Hat Mystery (Morison-Guthrie Snafu)

By BRADLEY L. MORISON

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

October 25, 1958

   MY EDITORIAL page colleagues have commissioned me to tell the poignant story of Charles M. (Chick) Guthrie and his lost hat, and so I shall do so with simplicity and restraint.  That is the way Guthrie would want it because, as readers of his Saturday column know, he is basically a simple, corned-beef-and-cabbage fellow who would not like fustian and furbelows even if he could spell them.

   The staff first heard the bad news shortly after the start of the morning editorial conference--at 9:36 a.m., Oct. 10 to be exact.  We were just getting into the Quemoy and Matsu situation when Guthrie, who is a master of the irrelevant, blurted it out: "Say, fellows, that reminds me, I lost my hat."

   WE WERE politely attentive.  Over the years Guthrie had lost, stumbled over, mislaid, broken and forgotten more things than any three men in the department combined.  We could recall, for example, when he backed his car over the suitcase of a house guest whom he was about to drive to the airport and when he slipped his football tickets into the inner pocket of someone else's coat.

   But the missing hat routine was new.  It was a sort of beat-up Stetson, Guthrie explained, size 7 5/8, modest but classy.  The staff's best guess was that Chick, being a sort of Baltimore Lunch bon vivant, had probably left his hat in some nearby beanery where good fellows get together to hoist a genial ham-on-rye.

   At 10:32 a.m. the same day Sandy Fincham, one of the department's secretaries, began the first of a long series of inquiring telephone calls which was ultimately to embrace three quick-lunches, a bar, a drug store, a pool hall and a garage.  On the following day, she placed two calls to Forest Lake where Guthrie had twice dined within the week.  No hat.  The long distance calls cost Guthrie 35 cents apiece, an outlay which to some of us, remembering the hat in vivid detail, seemed unjustifiably lavish.

   BY THE third day, Chick's customary joie de vivre was missing.  Despite the fact that we opened each morning conference with sympathetic references to the missing hat, Guthrie sank ever deeper into a morass of self-pity.  He even snarled at printers, abandoning his usual winsome manner, and once became so immersed in gloomy contemplation of his lost chapeau that he forgot to join us in the morning coffee break.

   Chick and I ride together in a car pool.  As the days wore on, he brooded more and more about his hat.  The cooler the weather, the more he seemed to resent my hatted presence in the car.

   "Don't you ever lose your hats?" he snapped one morning.  I told him I never did.  "With a hat like yours," he growled, looking disdainfully my way, "it really wouldn't matter."

THE STAFF was beginning to talk about getting up a hat raffle for Chick when the gladsome news broke.  Chick had found his hat--or at least what looked like his hat--over at Lee's Broiler on Sixth street.  He came into the office one noon, his face wreathed with the old familiar grin.  "If it isn't mine," he crowed, "it's an even better one.  Look, Brad..."

   So now the hat drama moves to its astounding climax.  The hat
that Guthrie recovered, as he shoved it jubilantly beneath my nose, sent little impulses of fond recognition down my spine.

   It was my hat.

   All through those days of Guthrie's unhatted tribulation, I had been wearing Guthrie's hat.

   The hat that he had alternately sneered at and envied on our rides to and from work was his hat.

   In retrospect it was all so simple.  At Lee's Broiler, 10 days before, I had picked up his hat.  Guthrie had walked out hatless, leaving mine to languish on a rack at Lee's.

   Well, the switch has been made.  I am now wearing my own natty 7 5/8 Stetson and Chick is smiling again beneath what passes, at least on dark nights, for a gentleman's headpiece.

   MEANWHILE, the staff is waiting anxiously for Chick's next misadventure.

   Will he fall down a manhole on his way downtown?  Will he burn a dollar-sized hole in his new topcoat?  Will he have four flat tires all in one day?

   Whatever it is, the staff will be warmly sympathetic and full of sage advice.  As certain as tomorrow's sunrise, Guthrie can depend on that.   

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

   

Kid Disc Jockey Spreads Havoc

Martha Raye

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune 

October 8, 1951

   DOROTHY KILGALLEN noted in her column the other day that Martha Raye's daughter was a disc jockey at 6 years of age.  My kid is one at 2 1/2--an accomplished one.

   But I'm not bragging about it.  It moves me to tears as I ponder the folly which was wrought eight months ago.  It was then that we took the old portable phonograph out of mothballs and made it our son's own.

   On that bleak day pandemonium came to our household.  In trooped Quackie the Duck and the Three Little Pigs and Tubby the Tuba.  Bozo the Clown followed, fetching along all the beasts of the circus.  Now we have everything from talking fiddles to laughing hyenas.  Close your eyes at any time of day around the joint and you can imagine yourself in zoo, circus tent, barnyard or frog pond.

   IT ALL STARTED innocently enough.  No expert in the care and raising of children could have quarreled with the theory which brought this soul-shattering Frankenstein into the family circle.  Teach the offspring to go it on his own.  Make him self-assertive.  Ingrain in him the ability to amuse himself. Get him to do something besides suck his thumb.  It was all quite progressive.

   Well, he took to platter-spinning like a born soap salesman.  I fancy he could learn commercials readily had we the stomach to parrot a few in his presence.

   In a matter of hours he had "Old Buttermilk Sky" worn right down to the curds.  "Rumors Are Flying"  then bit the dust, along with "Full Moon and Empty Arms," "Doin' What Comes Naturally" and other tunes which had spun their way out of our adult hearts.

   But our cherub's appetite was insatiable.  Soon we had the choice of letting him finish off the Unfinished Symphony and cracking the Nutcracker Suite or buying him some records of his own.  I chose the latter course, feeling that if I did not he might one day even get his destructive mitts on "Uncle Josh at the Roller Skating Rink."

   SO IT CAME to pass that the jungle and the barnyard engulfed us, that the drama of Goldilocks was to unfold relentlessly, that Mr. McGregor and Peter Rabbit were to bend our ears so incessantly I wished to the good Lord that both would be put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

   This is what distresses me most about it all.  I find a cruel and choleric attitude clouding my view of all things juvenile.  Much as I try to combat it, a mere child is turning me into a churl, steering my ship of life toward cynical, Machiavellian shoals.

   I feel myself taking a jaundiced position toward all drama, music and jingles pointed at the child audience.  Repeatedly I catch myself feeling, as the din envelopes me, that it would be no more than proper to have the Big Bad Wolf eat the Three Little Pigs at a gulp.  Don't wolves have to live?  And why deprive the fox of the Gingerbread Boy?  He outsmarted him, didn't he?

   THIS DRIFT toward depravity I hope to arrest, but it comes hard.  No longer can the mere reading of a story satisfy my son just before bedtime.  I must be Farmer Brown's horse--with sound effects.  And I confess I have learned to whinny in a way that should make Farmer Brown come running with the oats.  My present project is to make like Percy the Penguin.  This is rendered difficult by the fact that I have no grounding whatever in the penguin tongue.

   But these World Series days are providing the ultimate test.  I doubt that sanity will remain.  How could any rabid baseball fan, tuning to the Polo Grounds, be expected to stay composed when he got confused as to whether Yogi Berra or Pedro the Piccolo was at bat?  How be jolly when, with the bases full and two out, an elephant keeps butting in to say "You're just in time to feed me some peanuts?"

   Were it not that I am indulgent as a senile grandfather and as long-suffering as a bell-hop at a convention, I would crack these plastic horrors over my knee and bring sweet silence back to my abode.  But that is easier said than done.  The dern things are unbreakable, cuss it!

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune. 

Uncle Josh at the Roller Skating Rink

You, Too, Can Fill Out a Tax Return

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 31, 1953

   IT IS NICE that Sylvia Porter, the economist, is doing the series on this page explaining how to fill out an income tax form and exhorting the citizenry to do so before the Ides of March, while they still have time to do the required multiplying, subtracting and thinking.

   I find something lacking here, though.  The trouble with most of our tax experts, steeped as they are in fiscal lore, is that they ignore entirely or give but cursory treatment to points they deem simple but which, to the lay mind, are vital and compelling.

   The lay mind is usually none too sharp regarding mortgages, depreciation, accrued interest, dividends and such.  The other day, for example, I heard a fellow inquire if an annuity was when you tipped a bellhop.  In writing about tax matters procedure should be spelled out in rather elementary fashion.  After all, subtracting deductions from gross income, then subtracting exemptions ($600 per each) from that, dividing this by two and taking 22.2% of the amount on line 5 or 8(a), is not something you do in a twinkling, even with your socks off.

   OUR PURPOSE here is to get right down to the shirtsleeve execution of the income tax job, exposing it in the plain and unadorned language of one who gets mental atrophy whenever in the same room with a tax form.

   The first step is to sharpen half a dozen pencils, ferret a durable eraser out of the kitchen drawer and carry these, along with a ream or so of foolscap, to the dining room table.  Incidentally, you already should have inserted the extra table leaf.  You then find yourself with a large enough surface to writhe around on and sufficient paper for doodling purposes.

   Sit down now and open that envelope from the department of internal revenue.  Therein are your instruction sheet and two copies of the long form.  It is advisable to read the instruction sheet before starting work on the form.  The thing is enough to try man's soul but labor through it diligently.  Mired somewhere in the gobbledygook are your guideposts.

   ONE CONCLUSION you can't miss, you are stuck.  Only if you made less than $600 can you avoid payment.  And the fact that you are alive is proof that you must pay.

   Your only real immunity is to be head of a king-size household and to be getting along in years.  If you have eight or nine kids and are 65 and the sole support of Aunt Harriet and Uncle Ernest you are practically tax-proof, especially if you happen to be blind.

   The best reading on the sheet concerns deductions and you may give fleeting thought to pose, belatedly, as a champion of philanthropy.  But do not suddenly make like a financial pillar of the congregation if actually you only tossed two bits into the collection plate on those rare times when the wife dragged you to church.  Life in prison is rather confining.

   Some legitimate dodges, however, will readily strike those of facile mind and thrifty temperament as they sweat to reduce Uncle Samuel's cut.  They will note that a child born late in the year is just as good an exemption as one which arrives in February and will grieve that little Herbert came last week instead of last month.

   Also, the time to get married, income-taxwise, is not in apple blossom time but near the year's end, a December bride spelling as much on the deduction side as a grandmother.

   BUT WE who take the long view see peril in this sort of economic planning and would prefer to leave such matters to chance, expensive though it may be.  Fancy having all our birthings in December!  Not only would it play hob with the Christmas trade but doctors and nurses would go stark mad and the midwife would come back perforce.  And with all weddings confined to the same month the clergy would be engulfed, as would the florist, and rice would vanish from the grocery shelf.  This last, incidentally, would be all right with me.

   And any man who planned marriage with his mind on the department of internal revenue could be no great shakes as a mate and the prospective bride would do well to chuck him and return to her  stenography and Short Form 1040.

   There is the question of whether yourself and spouse should file separate or joint returns.  The wife and I always file jointly, feeling that it is somewhat more chummy.  A little thing, of course, but little things are the very warp and woof of marriage.  It also avoids the agony of making out two returns.

   BY NOW you should have a general idea of procedure.  You arrive at your deductions by scrutinizing your canceled checks, keeping in mind that overdraft charges are nondeductible.  The 1952 budget book may help here, too, although it probably has gathered dust since your vacation last August, when it lost all meaning.

   Persevere with stout heart and soon you will be in my enviable position.  I have dumped the whole mess into the lap of my brother-in-law.  Bless the fellow.  He is an accountant.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Life of Solitude Is Just No Good

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

October 17, 1954

A.B. Guthrie, Sr., C.M. Guthrie, Carol & Chuck Guthrie

   MY FATHER began the long sleep a few weeks ago, and a coldly factual appraisal would indicate that his life hadn't been so good.  He saw a lot of death close at hand and picked up more than one man's share of heartache along the way.

   Normally gentle and tolerant and fast with a quip, he was given to long, sinister silences when gloom was riding him hard.  At such times attempts at conversation were apt to bring explosions.  I used to puzzle over these black moods which cast a pall on the household, and wondered why he had so many.  Now that I've done some living and can appreciate the ache that was bottled up inside him I wonder why he had so few.

   He never had much of worldly goods, which bothered him little.  He had friends and family and set big store in both.  He deemed them the essentials.  And as fate whittled away at these cherished possessions he came to know with emphatic certainty that life's riches carried a high price tag.

   I AM REMINDED of a story by Ben Ames Williams about a fellow who was dad's exact opposite.  This man believed in "traveling light," thus insulating himself against tragedy.  He wanted no excess baggage which might cost him tears.  He lived alone and avoided people, save in a detached sort of way.  He wanted no friends.  Friends could die or get killed and cause one anguish.  This wise man didn't even have a dog.  You could love a dog, too, and dogs had a way of falling victim to disease or dying under automobiles.

   This fellow was tragedy-proof, he figured.  Life moved along on a plane that knew no dips of sorrow or peaks of joy.  But when disaster finally struck, an accident that left him disabled, it hit the jackpot.  There was no wife around to comfort him, no sons, daughters or friends to soften the shock.  All he had was the loneliness he had courted and life became a vast emptiness.

   SOMETIMES, THOUGH, when you take stock of the heartbreak around you and perhaps get brushed by it yourself, you feel that the light traveler has something.  When you see toddlers killed or burned or doomed by disease you ask a lot of bitter, outraged whys.  You wonder if it's all worth the struggle, whether it's smart to have friend and family and affections and exposure to black tomorrows.

   But my father couldn't have gone it alone.  Nobody who pursues happiness can.  Solitude, though it lacks built-in heartache, is intolerable.

   Even a brief experience with it can be difficult.  The family man, when domestic obligations and harassments become particularly galling, may profess to envy the unattached fellow his freedom.  But he doesn't for long.  Let his wife go away for a couple of weeks to visit mother, taking the children with her, and five minutes after they are gone a vague restlessness starts to needle him.

    This is the occasion he has anticipated.  He'll have the boys in for a little game.  He'll have time to catch up on his reading.  He'll come and go as he pleases, with no kids under foot and nobody to tell him that his green tie looks horrible with that blue suit.  He'll have himself a time.

   HE HAS A TIME that is no good whatever.  The house is suddenly big and empty and ominous.  He reads without pleasure, watches television with lackluster eyes.  Having the boys in doesn't seem such a good idea.  He washes down crackers and cheese with coffee and wishes the family were home so he could relax and get on with the bustle of living.

   My father chafed more under such conditions than anyone I ever knew.  And finally, when his children were grown and gone and years and circumstances had left him alone, he took it hard.  Life went out of him before he died because the things he cherished had gone.  But while he had them life, though stern, was good--and he knew it was good. 

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

A Learned Discourse on Moods

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

February 28, 1959

   IT SEEMS ODD that the human animal is so torn, twisted and intoxicated by moods.  There are days when all problems seem trifling and days when they seem insurmountable, days when life is an exhilarating experience and days when you hate to get out of bed to face its stern obligations.

   Why is it that your spirits soar like the eagle on Wednesday and lie wilted and prostrate on Friday?  Being  a creature of sharp ups and downs, I have given years of thought to the question, probing assiduously for reasons.  I have charted my moods on the calendar, seeking a cyclical pattern.  I have tried high protein and low starch meals and even eaten rutabagas, hoping to find a happiness diet.  All has been for naught.

   I HAVE consulted a preacher, a doctor of medicine and a psychologist, asking them what caused these contrasting moods and how, for Pete sake, I could retain an uncurdled outlook for more than a day at a time.

   All gave some credence to the proposition that moods come in cycles.  Often for as long as a week, barring untoward events, you may operate on a smooth, unemotional plateau similar to that enjoyed by a Guernsey.  Then, for no reason you can fathom, you are in the clouds, even though beset by athlete's foot and threatened with eviction.  Suddenly you are a gay and back-slapping extrovert.

   There follows gloom and despair and depression, conviction that life makes no sense, that your being here is a tragic mistake and that the proper course is to surrender yourself to science and be launched into orbit.

   THE DOCTOR, however, was less swayed by the cyclical theory than by physical influences and events.  Your health and what happens to you, he said, largely determine your moods, sometimes without your awareness.

   "Nobody can be cheerful with a bellyache,"he elaborated.  "Neither can optimism survive a salary cut or a dead battery.  On the other hand, gloom can be chased by as small a thing as a woman's smile or by your neighbor returning the snow shovel."

    The preacher said that more gloom was manifest in the world today than ever before, even though   we were neck-deep in material possessions.  Such possessions, he declared, were a major contributing factor, breeding not only greed, but envy, installment debt and a keep-up-with-the-Joneses psychosis.

   "Too many people nowadays," he continued,"have the notion that life owes them a perpetual thrill.  This is patent nonsense.  Since life is as much heartache and disappointment as thrill, they are repeatedly disenchanted.  And, lacking stability and a right sense of values, their only way to combat the blues is to buy something--a new hat or coat or car or house.  Theirs is an endless and unrewarding quest.  If it weren't, the only happy people would be the rich ones."

   THE PSYCHOLOGIST was little impressed with my question.  I thought for a minute he would pat me on the head and tell me to go back to my building blocks.  He gave me a lofty yet benign smile and dredged momentarily for words he deemed sufficiently simple.

   "Since everyone is reasonably human," he said, "everyone has moods.  Many moods perhaps defy rational explanation.  Their sources may be glandular, digestive, emotional or economic.  There also is an association factor.  If thrown with people you enjoy, the chances are you'll be happy.  Conversely, of course, you sometimes must endure promoters, politicians and bores.  Then distress is your portion.  But if you have more low moods than high ones you might as well blame your ancestors as anyone."

   DOCTOR, PREACHER AND PSYCHOLOGIST agreed that the best way to dispel a low mood was not to fight it but to forget it, not to grope for reasons or condemn yourself as a Sad Sack but to dismiss your woe and throw yourself into your job.

   I wasn't at all satisfied.  The formula would never do for me.  I find nothing more depressing than

 work.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.