Easter Joy Is Curdled by Taxes

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

April 1, 1961

   EASTER should be a season of ecstasy, filled with the throb of spring, returning robins and refurbished wardrobes.  But winter clings to my joints and bile saturates my soul.  I am mad at Uncle Sam, mad at his voracious appetite for money.  What was to have gone into new duds has gone into taxes.  I shall march in the Easter parade with naught but a shave, a shine and a dry-cleaning job and look like a fugitive from a rummage sale.

   BECAUSE choler will not let me go and makes me impossible, I have rejected participation in the egg coloring festivities which traditionally gladden our household at Eastertide.

   I can do little but sulk in a corner, wallowing in misery and the memory of finer yesterdays when the movies didn't have prostitutes cluttering up the screen, when women's hats looked better on the head than in a vase, and when Uncle Sam didn't have both hands deep in our pockets.

   ABE LINCOLN said that he owed everything to his mother.  Were he alive today he'd owe everything to the U.S. treasury.  My mood may pass, but at the moment I'm in rebellion against public servants and yearn to tell them off.  All that restrains me is the fact that telling them off would hurt them little but could make me poor indeed.

   Now I appreciate how my late father felt during the war.  He never grew reconciled to gas rationing.  He was convinced it was a nefarious conspiracy against him personally and refused to see any national need for it.  He lived a mile in the country, had to drive to town daily, and thought this entitled him to a "B" card.

   THE RATIONING board thought otherwise and rejected his application.  Whereupon Pop, in high dudgeon, said he'd show 'em.  He'd put the damned car up on blocks and leave it in the garage until the war was over and people got back their senses.

   He didn't carry through his threat, of course, realizing in time that the rationing board would be able to weather the blow but that he would be left afoot.

   However, I sympathize with his reaction and his resentment at the board.  My impulse, as I stew over the tax figures, is to chuck the forms into the alley, head for the hills, live in a hole, let the tax man find me if he could--and shoot him if he did.

   The flaw in this line of action is that going native would make life worse instead of better.  Beating the tax rap, though satisfying, would be insufficient compensation for lack of groceries, plumbing, easy chair, income and TV.

   Return to the primitive, though, looms as a definite possibility.  We of serious mind ponder a future of higher and higher taxes, higher and higher living costs and more and more restrictions--in the name of freedom and security--with definite trepidation.

   WE CANNOT but wonder how long it will be before this freedom and security we prize will be parceled out exclusively by a paternalistic state and humanity will return inexorably to caveman status because--after taxes--a cave is the only shelter we can afford.

   In this season of hope, wonder and awakening, it's a pity that my view is clouded by taxes, the old gray jacket and pants I'm stuck with, and a suspicion that we're headed for the pit even as we reach for the stars.

   I could be wrong and perhaps I am.  A year hence the sun may be shining and I may feel more optimistic.  By then I may have a new suit and be sartorially ready for Easter.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Top Grades Don't Spell Success

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune 

June 16, 1963

IN THE AGE OF COMPLEX technology we suffer under, there's more premium on brains than ever before. The "A" student is the best hope for the country's future.  He is the best bet to make good after graduation, particularly if a science, math or engineering major.  He is the glory boy.  He is sought after by industry and government.  His starting pay may be higher than his dad's ever was.

   Conversely, the prospects of the "C average" Joe, who has specialized in nothing much but horsing around during his stay within the ivied walls, are bordered in black.  There are few flutters in the audience when he gets his diploma.  Not much can be expected of this easy-going lout.

   So runs the general sentiment.  But don't abandon Joe to mediocrity too soon, even though his IQ is run-of -the-mill.  If he is a well-adjusted, congenial extrovert of engaging personality who thinks he's ready for the big run, he may run faster than his scholarly classmate.  This is especially so if the latter is shy and diffident and snarled up with complexes.  Adversity may claim this lad in spite of his brains.

   PERSONALITY CONTRIBUTES as much to success as brains, maybe more.  He who has both is abundantly blessed but many a fellow gets along very well with a two-cylinder think machine while the one who has brains alone needs to be a genius to enjoy success.

   I'll take the well adjusted, aggressive, confident and socially-minded youth as my candidate for the full life.  If he's an "A" student, fine.  But if he's  merely an average one I still favor him over the shy and stand-offish honor graduate.

   Those in our society who are old enough to start wondering about Social Security benefits can, in fact, recall classmates who got through school by outwearing the patience of their instructors; fellows who went to school mainly for fun and spent more time over pool tables than over their books.  But by some miracle of injustice they became bank presidents, heads of law and insurance firms and leaders in business and politics.

   Chiefly what such poor-student-to-top-executive boys have going for them, I think, is abundant self-confidence and unawareness of weakness.  They think they are good and they get others to thinking it.  They can talk with authority even though without substance, answer questions glibly and easily, and be quite convincing.

   They do not look back.  They do not brood.  They are racked by no what-might-have-beens.  They do not toss and turn in bed and wish they had said this or hadn't said that.  They sleep well and have no ulcers.  For them there are no yesterdays, only beckoning tomorrows.

   THEY ARE TO BE ENVIED, and it's too bad they are so few.  Anxiety is close to a universal affliction, and a major one.  It strikes early.  You see it in the faces of small children who have been slighted by playmates.  You see it in the first days of school.  You want to take these little sufferers in your arms and tell them they haven't been slighted, really, and that their worries are small ones and best forgotten.

   But as they reach for happiness, anxiety will be their portion again and yet again and it may thwart their progress.  Triumph and laughter will be tempered by disappointment and pain.

   It would be great if Joe, the extrovert, could show us how to avoid all this but he can't.  It's something in his genes that he can't share.


Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of theStarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

An Open Fire Kindles Memories

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 16, 1960

   ONE OF the good things about winter in the north country is that it gives you an excuse to enjoy the fireplace.  An open fire spells comfort.  It invites you to take off your shoes.  No tranquilizer pill has yet been marketed to rival it as a relaxing agent.

   You can doze and dream by a fire, forget about time and responsibility, and feel no need for talk.  I never spend an evening at the glowing hearth without wondering why I don't do so oftener.

   THE OPEN FIRE has warmed and charmed men for ages, buffalo hunters and trail riders, cowpokes and pioneers moving west, Indians and adventurers.  I gaze into the glow and am one with Kit Carson and Jebediah Smith and the mountain men.  I'm a kid again, camped in the shadow of the continental divide in Montana, patrolling the ridge by day and sitting around the campfire at night swapping yarns with Vern Smith, the smoke-chaser.

   Or I'm in the kitchen of my parental home, thawing out after skating on the slough, seated by the range with my feet in the oven.

   HEAT WAS NOT an impersonal, taken-for-granted boon then.  It meant chopping wood, carrying coal and hauling out ashes.  It was worked for and prized.  And the stove, though a stern taskmaster, was friend and comforter.  Central heat is far more efficient but I've never felt any such kinship with a radiator.

   None of the houses I lived in as a boy had either a fireplace or furnace.  Stoves were spotted in various rooms but it was always chilly around the fringes and in bitter weather, if you wandered eight feet away from the stove, you were cold.

   The range in the kitchen and a pot-bellied, bowlegged monster in the living room were supposed to throw enough heat to warm the dining room, too.  Occasionally they did.

   THE ONLY bedroom boasting a stove was the one off the bath.  This glowed red on Saturday nights and occasionally at other times when the fastidious felt the need of an ablution.

   I recall once pushing my brother into this throbbing heater when we were snapping towels at each other and horsing around after bathing.  The consequences were considerable and the tragedy chilled our relationship for years.

   Of an evening the family would gather in the parlor, open the door to the stove, gaze at the coals, chomp apples and popcorn and know that life could never be better.

   Or someone would wind up the Victrola and John McCormack would give out with "The Sunshine of Your Smile" or dad would read Dickens or Ring Lardner.

   THE YEARS are many and long but those days defy forgetting.  Simple times and simple diversions--a rite of family fusion in the warmth of a fire.

   Memories of boyhood well up strong and poignantly and I wonder, as I sit looking at the fire which represents all those long-dead fires in the kitchen range and the bowlegged stove, whether my own children will be able to look back on occasions comparably enriching.  They've had a great deal more, of course--but also a great deal less.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Pioneer Scouting Days Recalled

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

March 5 1960

   OUR SON, new to Scouting, went on his first overnight last week and I gather it wasn't quite the ball he'd anticipated.  Fatigue was heavy upon him when he returned and he had little to say.  He had a blister from touching a hot pan.  He also had a cold.

   We were disappointed about his silence and his sniffles but, being aware of the boons of Scouting, knew the experience was good for him.  Our older son took to Scouting like a harvest hand to hot biscuits, went to camp several summers, made some of his warmest friendships there, and gained independence faster than otherwise would have been possible.

   SNIFFLES and occasional nights of chill on unyielding bunks are small prices to pay for resourcefulness and the dawning realization that mother can't always be on hand to tuck you in bed and tell you what shirt to wear.

   City boys, I'm sure, need Scouting more than do lads raised on farms or in small towns.  They're further removed from woods and streams and open country.  Hiking, camping and the smell of pine aren't so available.

   Scouting was slow to catch on in my town when I was a boy.  It was in its pioneer phase and the program was comparatively limited.  Also,  many of its chief attractions were old hat to most of us.

   THE ROCKIES were within range of horse and buggy and many families vacationed there, not in plush lodges but in tents.  Later, when the Model T came into glory, my brother and George Jackson and I would chug for the high country without benefit of adult supervision--sleeping in the open, hiking over vast and rugged country, and eating what we ourselves prepared, mostly trout.

   This was Scouting in the grand manner, and when a town preacher organized a troop he was hard put to teach the boys anything except the Scout law, oath and promise.  He made a brave show of woodlore and camping but didn't know as much as did many of his charges.  And his ignorance of an elementary health rule brought him ignominy and suffering.

   IT HAPPENED on his first--and last--"overnight."  These adventures weren't called overnights then, and this one was more than that.  We were to be gone a week, but weren't.  The campsite was on the river some 12 miles east of town.

   We got the tents pitched without incident, ate a supper featuring wieners, beans, fig bars and coffee, and went to sleep after hours of giggling, to the discomfort of Scoutmaster Haley, whose first name escapes me.

   Morning broke chill and misty and we breakfasted in glum and soggy silence, wondering by what harsh fate we had consented to this safari.

   ALL BUT Scoutmaster Haley.  He was as full of phony cheer as a circus barker, whistled a merry tune and exhorted us to rise above the weather like good Scouts.  To our amazement, after he had taken on a hefty store of bacon, eggs and flapjacks, he invited us to join him in a morning dip.  To the great credit of the Scouts, all emphatically declined.

   Undaunted, Scoutmaster Haley peeled off his clothes and, with his undigested breakfast, charged for the river.  One dunking was enough.  In seconds he was back in the cook tent, the epitome of teeth-chattering misery.

   Scoutmaster Haley spent the rest of the day in bed, sick as a dog and sick of Scouting.  Many of us feared for his survival.  He was on his feet next morning, but only because of his great urge to return to town, where providence seemed more divine.  We broke camp and headed homeward.

   That was my last experience as a Boy Scout.  To be a Scout you need a leader, and Scoutmaster Haley had had it.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

One Can Live Without Smoking

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

September 29, 1963

   IT ALL happened one evening when I ran out of cigarettes and decided I'd rather have 30 cents than a smoke.  Next morning I wondered if I could survive until noon without smoking.

   Hour after hour I put off smoking.  That evening, to steel myself against surrender, I told my wife I was through with tobacco.  Next morning I made the announcement at the office.  My associates grinned and a couple of them made bets as to how long before I resumed smoking.  

   It's now been 20 days, 12 hours and 10 minutes since I've smoked and I've gulped no "no smoke" pills, munched few mints, chewed little gum and sniffed no snuff.  I am coming to regard the cigarette habit as untidy, unsanitary, unhealthy, smelly and inexcusable.

   THE SAVING which accrues to those who quit cigarettes is considerable.  The habit has cost me about $125 a year, and for really heavy smokers it runs to $300 or more.  The saving in time is startling, too.  I've done some figuring merely on the incidentals for one year and have come up with this:

   Fueling $1 lighter and otherwise keeping it working 50 per cent of the time--65 minutes; lighting it--one hour; hunting for lighter, matches and ash trays--two hours; borrowing cigarettes-- 45 minutes; brushing ashes off pants--25 minutes; coughing--95 minutes; reassuring wife that you aren't coming down with lung cancer--45 minutes; listening to wife tell how well Bill MacKenzie looks since he's quit smoking--three hours.

   This totals quite a batch of time.  I can't say definitely what I'll now do with the additional hours but will think of some meaningful social contribution unless I get too fat to think.

   ALL THOSE who have quit smoking themselves tell me how much better I feel.  I'm glad to know that my health has improved but really can't say that I feel much better than when flooding the lungs with tar and nicotine.

   I don't sleep any better but my wife says this is because there was no room for improvement.  She declares that I appear more alert when awake, at least, and that I'm sleeping much quieter.  She thinks she might find it endurable to share the same bedroom with me again.

   I haven't quit smoking forever.  In my old age I'll resume it.  It'll be something to do while listening to the ball games.  But quitting isn't actually as difficult as the crusaders against tobacco would have you think.  The "quit smoking" campaigns, I suspect, do as much harm as good by building up the habit to the point of fascination.  Clinics and seminars are held to help addicts break away.  The anti-tobacco powwows catch some of the flavor of revival meetings.

   THEY MAKE renunciation of smoking appear about as easy as quitting dope, and the fellow who goes without cigarettes for a few weeks or months is hailed for Spartan resolve and religious faith.

   It really isn't that difficult to quit.  It's only as difficult as mental attitudes make it.  Keep telling yourself that quitting is easy and maybe it will be.  I know absolutely that I can go without smoking tomorrow.  All I need to do is hold this thought day after day.

   I admit that it makes the future seem a trifle bleak.

Copyright 2015 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Procrastination's Fatal in Planning Yule Cards

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

November 13, 1953

   THE HOLIDAYS have an insidious way of sneaking up on the unwary.  Before you know it, Christmas is next Friday and--if you are a man--you're no more ready for it than during the World Series.

   Some very precise timing is required, since your schedule must include the search for the ornament that goes on the top of the tree and having the neighbors in for fruit cake.  Unless you get the Christmas cards off your neck your ulcers will rebel to such a degree during the last-minute frenzy they'll give you distress until Easter.

   The greeting card routine is the biggest booby-trap of all.  Now is not a bit too early to plan your strategy.  If you want your card to be meaningful you cannot make a mad dash to town on Dec. 22 and come up with anything significant.

   A BRIEF replay of the procedure at my house may prove of value to those who have not yet established a plan of operation.  At least it will point up mistakes to be avoided.

   Circumstances normally dictate that we do the thing the hard way, with me doing most of the sweating.  We start with a snapshot of the family, taken in a last year's snowbank to provide appropriate Yule background.  This, superimposed on a greeting card, would be adequate for a sane family.  For us it is a bare beginning.

   "Why don't you write a poem, too?" my wife suggests, adding a helping of gush concerning my skill in such matters to soften me up.

   So I write a poem.  Composing it is the simplest part of the chore.  My introductory lines go something like this:

Now comes the end of '53

And we are happy as can be.

   With such a fruity beginning it is easy to carry on.  But reaching a stopping point comes hard.  I am inclined to grow so daft over my doggerel that, instead of winding up with a sonnet, I come up with something which compares favorably, in length at least, with Evangeline.

   THE NEXT maneuver is to make out a list, using the cards you received last year as a guide.  This is easy provided you can find last year's cards.  Our custom is to stash them away so carefully that they vanish without a trace.  We are forced to fall back on a document, now yellow with age, listing names we typed shortly after Pearl Harbor.

   For a week memories are dredged for additions to the list, and drawers rifled for the present addresses of the Fluegels and Merritts, who moved some time ago to Dodge City and Cedar Rapids respectively.

   We assume that 75 cards will be adequate, which means that in the final shakedown we pare the list down to 125 names and never are sure until Christmas Eve if 125 cards will be adequate.

   RETURN NOW to the poem.  Making more than 100 copies of this gem on a typewriter is no breeze even for an advanced hunt-and-peck operator.  I never make less than six carbons.  The last two are badly out of focus but we send them along anyway, since we don't have to decipher the things.  Typographical errors must, perforce, be ignored.  Only once did I turn an eraser loose among this jungle of carbons.  The results profaned my sense of tidiness.  

   After the 16-hour typing stint, my mate is ready to address and stuff the envelopes.  There is, however, one additional bit of business.  To her very personal friends she must send more than a picture and a poem.  She must write each a note on the back of the picture.  Her very personal friends number approximately 125.

   She chooses the witching hours of the night to make her contribution to the Yule correspondence, preferring to work in our bedroom so as not to be alone.  I won't mind, of course, since I can sleep in a boiler factory.

   Armed with fountain pen and three or four apples, she takes up the yoke, pausing in her pen scratching and munching now and again to wonder why I don't quit muttering and go to sleep, for Pete sake.

   WHEN everything goes smoothly like this we have our cards in the mail by Dec. 20.  It is best that the deadline be no later than this.  Otherwise you run out of time.  You need at least three days to find out what gift your wife expects and another day to buy it.

   There are then left those precious minutes in which to get the tree decorated and the stockings filled and to get the bicycle for Junior and the doll house for Mary in from the garage and to wrap the family gifts and repair the two strings of lights that just blinked out and fall into bed before the little ones rout you out to start the merry day.

 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.

Bookshelves Inspire a Builder

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

January 19, 1964

   LAST FEBRUARY this correspondent's adult education course in woodworking was ground into the sawdust because of a fall on the ice.  I had paid more than $10 for lumber and fittings and was nicely launched on some bookshelves when I broke an arm and had to give up.  I cannot use power tools with one hand.  Without help, I barely can use them with two.

   But incapacity did not remove the need for more book space.  Books we hadn't seen for years--some of them borrowed, I was to discover--were moldering away in dark corners for lack of display room.  We didn't actually know what books we had.  Some were here, some there.  Inventory was all but impossible.

   FOR 11 MONTHS my 10 bucks worth of pine, the lumber I had planned to convert into a facility for my basement study, lay in the attic.  Then, after the holiday madness was over and the numbness had subsided, I thought of that costly jag of timber and closed in on the stuff.

   Had the work been done under the eye of the woodworking instructor I might not have been given an "A."  Progress was amazingly swift, however, probably because of a certain casualness about measurements and to some extent because my wife kept her distance.

   NORMALLY at the first swing of the hammer she smells trouble and wonders what I'm doing.  This time she wasn't alert to what was going on until near the finish.  I fooled her by using screws rather than nails.  But even the best of us can't avoid occasional pounding.  If hammers weren't needed they wouldn't be made.

   When the time finally came to pound, my wife warned me that the blows were cracking the upstairs plaster.  But subsequent search, just as I suspected, revealed no cracks.  Women automatically subscribe to what the Pentagon terms the strategy of overkill.

   SUBJECT to a few minor refinements, the bookshelves are now finished and hanging from the rafters.  To those who might find esthetic or artistic fault, I can say only this: the installation fulfills its main function.  It holds a heap of books.

   The volumes formerly piled on the desk are in it.  So are the books which had graced a couple of shelves above the desk--shelves originally used for paint, varnish, putty, nails and other do-it-yourself torments.  I'm now assiduously bird-dogging books from attic corners and putting them on the new shelves.

   I'M ALSO thrilled.  Such triumphs are small, of course, to men of broad gauge and accomplishment, but they can give an ordinary life a new destiny and purpose.  I told my son and wife this and they seemed amused.  They smiled.

   I said I was exhilarated to the point where I might buy a full line of power tools and become a sure-enough builder of whatever needed building.

   Dormant skills might flower.  A new craftsman might be born, a sleeping artisan awakened.

   Wife and son kept on smiling.

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.