Running Grocery Store Can Be Fun (Here's the Proof!)

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

September 26, 1953

   HIS NAME is Joseph A. McClellan but few people know it. Everyone calls this little Irishman Mac--from kids to oldsters. And if you live in the neighborhood of Washburn avenue S. And Forty-sixth street and run out of sugar or bread you don't go to "McClellan's" grocery. You go to Mac's.

   The customers don't go there just for groceries, either. They go there to shoot the breeze. Here is one of the top gab centers of south Minneapolis--a throwback to 50 years ago, minus the pot-bellied stove and cracker barrel. Folks smart off and trade jocular insults with the help and revel in the small-town atmosphere.

   IT'S SAFE to assume that Mac and his wife, both of whom have spent most of their lives behind a counter, are the targets of as many shopworn gags as anyone in town.

   "Be a nice place to start a store,"someone will drawl when Mac is out of a requested item. Or they tell him the scales are crooked or accuse him of playing fast and loose with the adding machine when toting up orders. "Yes, sir, that gizmo was the best investment Mac ever made. Means a big profit with a small inventory."

   But Mac, who is 74 and 155 pounds of spryness, is not slow with the badinage himself. "Where are the shoelaces in this gyp joint?" someone will require. "Up on the mezzanine with the buggy whips," Mac will retort.

   Ask him who his chief competitor is and he's apt to say Sears and Roebuck or mention a loop department store.

   He and Mrs. Mac have been "retired" now for some months, which means that neither spends more than six hours a day in the store. "Try and keep them out of the place," laughs their son Ray, who is now one of the official proprietors. The other one is Jimmy Hart, Mac's son-in-law.

   THE MACS have been on the corner for 42 years, first in a little frame building that fronted on Washburn avenue. Six years later they built the present home-store combination, a brick structure with the store on Forty-sixth street. Before they started the present building the area was zoned for residences and signatures of property owners from Beard avenue to Lake Harriet and from Forty-forth to Forty-ninth streets had to be gained before a building permit was issued. During this hassle one customer handed over an unsolicited $300. "Here, Mac," he said, "maybe you can use this." Mac reckoned that he could.

   Mac has been a grocer for 55 years. At 19 he left his farm home five miles south of Waverley to clerk for F.A. Barth & Son at Watertown.

   Later he managed a creamery for the Hutchinson Produce Co. at Hollywood, Minn. Not long afterward he bought the adjoining grocery store. Then he got married. "So I could have someone to run the grocery while I looked after the creamery," he cracked.

   Their first Minneapolis store was on Nicollet avenue. They sold this after a few months and were at Third avenue S. And Thirty-seventh street for three years before moving to their present location.

   SOME SHARP changes have taken place in the grocery business since then. Mac recalls. "We sold flour mostly in 50-pound bags--never smaller than 25. Potatoes? Why, people used to buy spuds 10 to 15 bushels at a time. I'd get their orders for the winter and when the farmer brought in a load we'd go along and parcel 'em out. A 10-pound sale of potatoes was a joke."

   If the customers now we're just "family" the store would do a fair business. The Macs have six children, 32 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

   One of the sons has a brood of 12. This group was featured in a series of advertisements for bread last year. When the mother of the flock leaves Mac's with her groceries one might suspect that she was grubstaking an expedition to the Belgian Congo.

   MRS. MAC is six years younger than her spouse and Mac admits that she looks it. You'd swear she was under 60. And the kids who, on Saturdays and after school are always under foot in quest of suckers, bubble gum and pop, never ruffle her. There are normally a couple of bicycles and two or three dogs outside, too, as an introduction to the informality within.

   "Haven't you ever gotten sick of being tied down all these years?" I asked. Mac's round, impish face broke into a grin. "Well, I can't say as we have."

   Mrs Mac put it better. "We both love store keeping."

   They must. The longest they've been away was five weeks--when they went to California several years ago.

   If there's a moral to be drawn here, it must be that toil doesn't hurt you, particularly if you like the work. And it would seem that the "retired" McClellans like it fine--well enough to keep going indefinitely.

Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

   

   

We Have Too Many Organizations

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial page staff 

Published by the StarTribune
May 23, 1959

   IN THIS country we operate on the premise that organization insures efficiency. In moderation, it does. But when organization becomes an end in itself, efficiency suffers, and innumerable hours are lost that could be spent more profitably in loafing or fertilizing the lawn.

   Over-organization is one of the great time wasters, the great banes, besetting us today. I lack the courage to single out any groups I think we'd be better off without, but duplications are obvious. We are hip-deep in luncheon clubs, lodges, civic, political, social and cultural groups and community welfare enterprises. Besides which, the president is always compounding the agony by appointing committees to look into raising funds for mosquito spraying or the feasibility of a 9 o'clock curfew.

   Anyone who wants to rally to a cause or join a club can do so almost overnight. In fact, if he hasn't learned to say "no" he'll be engulfed in spite of himself and spend all his evenings at meetings.

   MY WIFE and I and some other folks have gathered once a month for years to eat and play cards. Just why we've never organized into the Supper and Shuffle club, drawn up a constitution and by-laws and branched out into some humanitarian endeavor already occupying 50 other groups is a mystery. But if anyone suggests such a step I'll throw in my hand.

   I recently presided over the obsequies of a church group which for years had writhed in the death throes. The fact that it foundered under my hand humbled me slightly. Yet all members, I think, experienced relief, as when death releases some long ill and helpless relative.

   It was simply one church organization too many. It folded because nobody was willing to be an officer for next year. Most members had so served in times past and realized the futility of it all.

   ONE INJUSTICE inherent in our craze for organization is that it embroils a lot of people whose only sin is that they make speeches or play the piccolo or show films of Alaska. They are constantly entreated by program chairmen to do their stuff at the club dinner next month.

   Such a pitch often is hard to refuse. Pick out 10 people at random on the street and the chances are that at least one is a program chairman. And he may be the fellow who loaned you a five spot in your time of need last week, or your wife's uncle's business partner who got you the job at the pickle works. All you can do is consent to make the speech, show the film or play a piccolo solo.

   And, sure enough, in the audience will be another program chairman who has simply loved your performance, and how about appearing before the South Side Spaghetti and Literary Society June 19?

   The only way to get rid off this hook is to be so bad that no program chairman of sound mind could bear to inflict such suffering on his fellows. I know. I made a speech once.

   I'M NOT much of a joiner, and think it little loss either to me or any organization. The sort of club I'd enjoy belonging to apparently doesn't exist. It would be one that had no programs, no serious discussions, no missions and no direction. It would meet once a month--during the noon hour so as not to befoul the evening--and whether you attended or not wouldn't matter. Eating would be the main purpose. Conversation, if any, would be spontaneous and on any subject, preferably trivial, and anyone wanting to make a speech would be thrown out.

   I could go on but must stop. I'm late for a committee meeting.

Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

   

Pets Are No Great Moral Force

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

December 17, 1960

   MANY PARENTS will give their children pets this Christmas on the theory that they'll learn self discipline and responsibility by caring for them. The only thing wrong with this notion is that it's 80 percent cockeyed.

   I should know. I've given it a 26-year test, with the result that my wife and I have parceled out a ton or so of dog food, fed and administered last rites to innumerable goldfish, and helped keep a couple of parakeets in luxurious indolence.

   We've never had a cat, which is one fight I've won, and it's been a long time since we had a dog, but the pooch we had wouldn't have lived for 13 years unless we'd supplemented the irregular care provided by a son and daughter.

   THE PARAKEETS presently in residence are the property of our younger son. Ostensibly they are his responsibility. It is okay with him, however, if father mucks out the cage on Saturday morning when he is otherwise engaged. It's amazing how many important missions he has on Saturday. His conscience is eased, apparently, by his knowledge that I love the birds and am never happier than when playing chambermaid. If there are any parental rewards here I haven't detected them. The birds are eager eaters but too stupid to talk.

   There were three or four dogs in my childhood, several rabbits and a badger, none of which did anything startling toward steeling my moral fiber. The badger even failed to amuse me. It was every bit as sociable as you'd expect a badger to be and when it retreated under the woodshed, never to be seen again, I bore up quite well.

   OLD RED, the dog I best remember, was of humble origin but much admired by the gang because of his fighting ability. He lived to old age on chicken bones, table scraps and gophers, stuff that would kill today's pampered mutts within hours. Feeding the dog was my brother's job and mine, which meant that it was mother's.

   The rabbits were our responsibility exclusively. We got two of opposite sexes and expected their talent for multiplication would make us rich. This talent was arrested by starvation.

   WE ALWAYS had a cow around the place. One of these was a fractious beast that abhorred confinement and was named Pollyanna. She was glad the fence had only five strands of barbed wire.

   One particular bovine provided gave me more sense of responsibility and discipline than any dog ever did. I didn't have to milk the critter but father made it my job to take the cow to pasture a mile away every morning and fetch her back at night. When pop assigned a chore, he expected his progeny to deliver.

   I got quite attached to the cow, in a malevolent sort of way. She was nice to peg rocks at. But I don't suggest that anyone buy his child a Christmas cow. Something smaller is better, for urban living at least.

   THERE'S nothing wrong in buying a child a pet as long as you don't expect it to transform its little master. And I offer this prediction if you do buy him one. About mid-January mother will speak thus to her son: "All right, Jackie, forget to feed Rover once more--just once more--and out he goes. The dog is yours and you're to take care of him. Just remember that."

   So Jackie remembers for a day or two and then forgets again. It's odd, under the circumstances, that so few dogs are homeless--or it would be odd if parents weren't parents.

Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

  

We're Shy of English Teachers

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial/opinion page staff

Published by the StarTribune

April 18, 1965

   I TAKE MY SHARE of liberties with the language and feel that the rules should permit a measure of flexibility, the better to capture the spirit of modernism infecting the land. But I'm a stickler for correct usage by others and believe hanging too good for supposedly educated folk who consistently misuse "lie" and "lay."

   I still believe, despite some contrary contentions, that by the time a lad finishes high school he should know an adverb from a preposition and have certain knowledge of composition and grammar.

   Several weeks ago I wrote a piece expressing amazement at the detail contained in a college English text devoted to teaching freshmen to write themes. Here was elementary information I was sure any college student would dismiss as something he'd suffered through in eighth grade.

   BUT PERHAPS I was wrong. I got a quick response from an English major, a man who a few years before had been pressed into service as a temporary freshman English teacher. 

   Had I read some of the themes he received, he said, I "would realize with a shock how urgently these freshmen needed just the kind of instruction you question."

   He had 56 students. "With only three exceptions they did not know how to spell. The symbols and uses of punctuation were as mysterious to them as some electronic code from outer space. They could not organize words into a simple sentence. They could not even put them together to make sense."

   This response was very disheartening and I looked up an English professor who has done research in the field and asked him if things really were this bad. He didn't think so, but confessed a vast need for improvement.

   "There simply aren't enough competent English teachers," he sighed. "About half such high school teachers don't have college majors in English." He cited a report of the National Council of Teachers of English which said that more than 94 percent of the colleges that prepare elementary teachers do not require systematized study of the history and structure of the English language and that over 61 percent do not require a course in grammar and usage.

   "But don't put all the blame on the teachers," he said. "Parents are even more to blame. Children don't hear enough English spoken at home. Dinner conversation is cursory at best, with no analogies ever drawn and few opinions articulately expressed."


 THERE IS A DEFINITE relation between grammar and reading, he continued, and parents seldom encourage children to read anything of substance. But youngsters with a broad background of reading "invariably do better in English than those who read little."

   Here the urban pupil has an advantage over his country cousin. Books are readily available to him, whereas the small-towner has no library at his elbow and not enough volumes other than anthologies are provided at school.

   The notion has been largely abandoned, the professor said with relief, that writing skills can be sharpened by parsing and diagramming sentences. Writing can be done better, he declared, if such procedures are forgotten.

   "We are searching for new approaches," he concluded. "Teaching a person to use the language, to be specific and articulate, to express thoughts accurately--teaching him to communicate and to write clearly--is one of the most important jobs that confronts us today."

   Who can say that he's wrong?

Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

A Hobby Isn't Something You Can Whip Up Overnight

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

March 12, 1955

   THEY ARE having a state conference on education in May and the committee planning the affair wants the views of us parents on how to improve the schools.

   This is too good a chance to pass up and I am getting in my two-bits worth here and now as I am in the middle of an intolerable situation brought on by present educational shenanigans.

   Instead of sticking to the three R's as they did in my day they are ringing in a hobby show at Robert Fulton school next week. I want to go on record in opposition to hobby shows, especially shows in which my young one is supposed to fetch an exhibit.

   Six-year-olds seldom have hobbies when they are sons of hobbyless papas and my first impulse was to throw up my hands and let him goof the assignment. But my wife says I am duty-bound to go to work with him on a hobby. It was a week ago that we got the glad tidings about the show and we haven't yet turned a wheel. We don't know where to begin.

   Our boy has plenty of interests, such as television cartoons and space men and rockets and cap pistols and books but nothing that's adequate for exhibition purposes. And the hour is a bit late for stamp collecting. It is late, too, for gathering rocks and arrow heads, and out of season besides.

   I SUGGESTED that we color a batch of Easter eggs for the child to display, having noted egg dyes on sale in the shops, but my wife said this would be an obvious phony--and premature to boot. A hobby is something you indulge in the year 'round in your spare time, she said, and you only color eggs once a year.

   She asked why we didn't assemble some of those airplanes that were still in their original containers from birthdays and Christmases past. I asked her how she figured that as a hobby. Was it something the boy did in his spare time all year?  No, she admitted, but there would be a ring of authenticity to it, whereas If we sent him to school with a sack of eggs they'd think we were cracked.

   But the airplane deal repels me. I recall some frustrating attempts at plane assembly undertaken years ago on behalf of our other son. The materials included a bundle of balsa wood shaved into flimsy sheets and toothpick-size sticks. Included also was a tube of glue--and elaborate directions to compound the befuddlement.

   I wasn't up to the job then and am not up to it now, and my wife's assurances that modern planes go together easy leave me cold. They do not go together easy enough.

   I AM NOT out to knock hobbies, however, even though I've been spared most of them. Wood carving, leather work, bead stringing and boat building must be fun for those who care for that sort of thing. I simply do not.

   I can readily spot the robin and the crow, but bird-watching bores me. Carpentry mystifies me, and  photography, requiring light meters, flash guns, dark rooms and the like, seems too complicated.

   I raised a few rabbits as a lad and played ball until they started throwing curves at me. I also did some hunting and fishing but had small aptitude for either and was a fifth wheel on every expedition. My older brother would include me in the party only under stern parental duress. Golf somehow passed me by, also.

   I am no good at gardening, either, owning a withering thumb and an inability to distinguish plantain from petunia. I willingly do the things I'm able, such as lawn mowing and leaf raking, but leave planting and weeding to my betters.

   Anyway I regard gardening, golfing, fishing and hunting more as ways of life than hobbies.  A hobbyist is a fellow who collects Ming China or cigar bands or who refurbishes old furniture or putters around in a basement workshop.

   MY BOY'S no-hobby father is a cross he will have to bear. I am not up to helping him work in clay, collect first editions or dabble in oils.

   But all this reflection is beside the point. The nub of the matter is that due to modern educational methods we must hit on a hobby--and quickly, even if it's no more than putting together a ball of tinfoil or collecting some bottle caps.

   Right now I have a mad impulse to go to work on a bird house with him. We could build a bird house, I think--a bird house that was strictly for the birds.

Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further  republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Code Won't Stop Political Insults

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune

September 9, 1962

   A FAIR campaign practices code has been subscribed to by the national chairmen of both parties. This is supposed to insure high level politics from now until the November election, with all insults being on a lofty moral plane.

   The code is not new nor is it likely to be completely effective, judging by past campaigns. This is as much the fault of the voter as the candidate. Emotional thrusts get more cheers than dispassionate discussion of the issues. Appeals to prejudice are more moving than delineations of our national destiny and responsibility.

   WHAT'S NEEDED, for a campaign code to be effective, is a thoughtful, informed and rational electorate able to distinguish substance from chaff. But people are funny. They are more readily stirred by dog ordinances and daylight saving than by arguments for good government and education.

   Back in our nation's infancy politics was pretty much the monopoly of the aristocrats. It was engaged in, for the most part, by men of culture, wealth and distinction. George Washington set the general tone and the five chief executives who followed after him bore the stamp of gentry.

   THEN the common man began to feel his oats and things changed. Andrew Jackson, that avid protagonist of the spoils system, who would have scorned a fair campaign code as strictly for sissies, got into the White House.

   Jackson was a doughty and forceful president but a rough and tumble scrapper of humble birth and do-it-yourself education. He was impetuous, Ill tempered and unforgiving and carried scars from a couple of duels to prove it. He defeated John Quincy Adams in 1828, gaining revenge for a defeat four years earlier when he thought Adams and Henry Clay had conspired to gyp him out of the big prize.

   He beat Adams by constantly pounding this good man over the head with charges of corruption. This technique was then, and continues to be, quite effective, deplore it though we may as low-down politics.

   Harry Truman, an assiduous student of history, must have picked up a few pointers from Jackson and, though his "give 'em hell" philosophy has grown wearisome, he can hardly be blamed for clinging to it after the miracle of 1948 when he trounced Dewey.

   A CANDIDATE can cut up an opponent quite effectively, however, without coming close to vilification. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a feel for politics unequaled
in our time, could demolish a rival with a deft mixture of wit, sarcasm and humor.

   A mere statement of fact can be telling. Edward J. McCormack Jr., candidate for the Democratic senatorial nomination in Massachusetts, fed Teddy Kennedy some harsh medicine in their first debate when he pointed out that his opponent lacked experience and said his candidacy would be a joke if he weren't the President's brother.

   The fair campaign code is highly motivated and perhaps moderating. The general electorate is more refined and less eager for raw meat than in Andy Jackson's time. But under the campaign heat those involved will lapse into occasional billingsgate and it's probably only charitable to dismiss a slip or two. Just so they don't throw the real issues overboard.

Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Woes of a Yule Correspondent

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff

Published by the StarTribune

December 23, 1962

   THE ONLY MAN I ever heard of who threw himself with complete abandon into Christmas correspondence is me. This year I have been wheeling and dealing on a vaster scale than ever before, squandering time and energy on a binge of Yule verbiage that has pleased my wife and exhausted me.

   I perform under grave handicap, too, being unable to write with a pen at all. What talent I ever had in this direction was crushed by making those crazy loops during grade-school penmanship class in a remote yesterday. An inclination to palsy compounds the difficulty.

   The happy personal thoughts my wife and I consider a necessary adjunct to the out-of-town Christmas card are no problem to her. She can bat them out with assembly line precision. Her pen flies over the cards like lightning--the message neat, legible, precise and meaningful.

   I MUST CRANK CARD into typewriter, an exacting job in itself if the card is not to emerge looking like something snatched from a meat grinder, and give the thing a 10-minute pre-start glare.

   Once under way, I perform with little dispatch. The big reason is that the short but adequate greeting is not in me. I must tell it all, starting with last Jan. 1.

   As I labor I try not to think that I alone among husbands bear this seasonal yoke. After all, it is a burden I carry voluntarily and the task is not barren of reward. I enjoy being a martyr.

   One fellow asked me why in the name of divine providence--if I insisted on telling folks more than they wanted to know--I didn't get the spiel mimeographed. I always think of this practical solution too late but probably wouldn't employ it anyway. I like to send something different to each customer and have done things the hard way for so long it's difficult to break the habit.

   My car pool pal, a fellow with a genius for ducking work, seldom turns a hand at Christmas correspondence. I doubt that he even buys the stamps. Once mowing the lawn and tending the begonias are ruled out, he seldom turns a hand at anything. His wife puts up the storm windows, makes out his income tax return, and does what's necessary to be done pending arrival of the plumber. He boasts that he's never changed a tire. I doubt that his spouse could say as much.

   I UNDERSTAND HIS reluctance to help with Christmas cards, though, and his wife's willingness to have him keep his mitts out of the job. He is a facile fellow with words but his handwriting would confound a pharmacist. And in all his years of newspapering he never has conquered a typewriter. The machine that does not buck, skip and overline under his touch is yet to be manufactured. Should his wife ever be indisposed during the Yuletide, the most considerate thing he could do would be to send out no Christmas cards at all.

   I had planned to write a nostalgic and sentimental Christmas column but all the sentiment I possess has been lavished on the aforementioned greetings to old friends. I hope they appreciate my effort to add joy to their holiday. I also hope that they, and all readers of these choleric lines, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

   Now that the Christmas correspondence is finished and I've bought my wife that ironing board, I've caught the spirit of the season, too.

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.