Teaching a Child Manners Is a Headache

By CHARLES M. GUHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
November 5, 1955


   THERE MUST be a way to teach manners to moppets, since some of them are mannerly, but any success I've had in this line is regrettably sporadic. My only solace is that other parents are similarly frustrated. The pals of my 6-year-old seem as averse to the little niceties as he is.
   I've long wondered why it is so difficult to cajole, browbeat, beg and admonish a youngster into saying "thank you," "please," "excuse me," "you're welcome" or "come again." But day after endless day the training goes on, with few results showing until the offspring is old enough to shave.
   They will interrupt conversations, leave the table with a lunge that would do credit to a man whose  pants were on fire, remain seated when guests arrive and act like characters raised entirely by jungle law.

   I WAS drafted for the trick-or-treat caper with my son the other evening. He said he was old enough to case the area alone but we deemed it best that the old man tag along in the shadows to see that he put a courteous arm on the neighbors and not get a dog sicked on him.

   The tour was amply productive of sweets. But it was long also on parental rhubarb. "Say thank you," I called gently when the first harvest dropped into his sack. "Say thank you," I hissed from behind a tree during the second stop. By the third I was bellowing it loud enough to hasten the fall of autumn leaves.
   By the sixth I was spoiling for a showdown. "If I don't hear you say thank you at this next house," I rasped, "we quit and go home. Do you think these people are putting jelly beans and popcorn balls into that sack for exercise? Do you, by some twisted logic, think they owe you that stuff? What is so tough about saying thank you?"
   "I am saying thank you," he protested.
   "Say it so I can hear it then."
   When the panhandling was finished and he had made inventory of his loot, my wife said to him: "Now say thank you to Pop for going out with you."
   He gave me a devilish grin and filled his lungs. His burst of gratitude rattled the dishes. He had learned well.

   WE HAVE raised a couple of children into quite gracious adulthood and I recall days when we were complimented on their deportment. Certain harassed parents even asked us our secret. But I suspect that the child whose character we are now molding is no worse, and no better, than were his brother and sister. They gave us trouble, too, but time is a great healer.
   The main stumbling block in our present struggle to implant manners, I suspect, is that our son regards me as just one of the boys. His mother is blessed with an adequate supply of brains and judgment but I border, usually, on the knuckle-head. When he is reading and needs help he brushes past me and goes to his mother. When I tell him it's bedtime he gets confirmation from her.
   I am only good for such simple chores as helping him to untie his shoes or find his undershirt. My main role in his cosmos is for horsing around. I am the bad guy and he is the good guy and we fight and he calls me a big lug, an endearing sobriquet I tolerate with good grace.
   This is no way to win respect, I realize, but it is a way to allay any fear of you a child might entertain, even when you occasionally lay one on him. I want no fear of me in my son. I'd rather be a big lug.

   A FEW months ago we called on a couple who had two boys. It was a brief, chaotic interlude. They were unshushable, irrepressible jokers who insisted on hogging the scenes. I yearned to slap them bowlegged. I dislike violence as a general disciplinary tactic but there are times when it's necessary. Hellions who make a travesty of adult conversation should be dealt with summarily.
   The other day I ran into the ideal situation. I was out extending the right hand of fellowship to some new church members and telling them where to sign the pledge card.

   AT ONE place a lad of about 12 opened the door, told me to come in and sit down and passed me a plate of mints. Then, while he went upstairs to rout father from his Sabbath siesta, his 7-year-old sister and I ate mints and talked about school, a discussion that continued in orderly, ungiggling manner after her brother rejoined us and until the father, who had won my admiration before I saw him, appeared.
   We talked for 20 minutes without an interruption, the children listening politely and occasionally participating. They may have been on their company manners but I doubt it. It seemed too natural for an act.
   If it was an act it was a good one. More youngsters  should be taught the lines.

Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Why Put Style Above Comfort?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
December 30, 1962


   I SEE THESE high school lads walking along the street on freezing mornings with warm and woolly stocking caps on the back of their heads, serving them no better than beanies.
   Half the time my own son even rams his into his pocket after leaving the house. I’ve threatened to run outside and pull it down over his ears but he tells me to forget it and quit being old-fashioned. He wonders if I ever was young.
   I don’t ever remember being young enough to enjoy cold ears, cold feet or chattering teeth and never hesitate to forget about style when weather conditions warrant.
   Perhaps it’s because I was so often cold in childhood that I now love so much to be warm. In those benighted days central heat had not yet blessed the town of my boyhood, nobody could even spell insulation, and storm sash had never been heard of. The main heating plant was the kitchen range, augmented by stoves in dining room and parlor. Drafts were accepted as a normal curse and the expression “cold as a barn” was not just a whimsical comparison. I never compared notes with the cow but am sure she kept as warm as I did.

   THUS I NOW APPRECIATE  every comfort-giving facility, and those, including my own flesh and blood, who wish to scoff at my ear-flaps and overshoes are free to do so. My wife, who eschews extra foot gear unless the snow is ankle deep, laughs at me for wearing rubbers in cold weather when the ground is bare. She says I shouldn’t act so old and infirm. Let her laugh. I prefer warm feet to cold ones and would rather be comfortable than young.
   I rate the electric blanket as the greatest thing since the wheel and never turn mine on without gratitude as I hark back to those frosty bedroom yesterdays when everyone huddled under tons of blankets and turning over in bed or sending an exploratory foot downward for the soapstone took real character.
   Ten minutes before hitting the sack I turn the dial up close to the fire mark to insure toasty repose. On getting into bed I either modify the temperature or forget to. I thus sometimes awaken with a sense of being overdone, and it takes a while to simmer down and recapture sleep. However, this is no fault of the blanket and anyway I’d rather be hot than cold.

  I CAN’T UNDERSTAND why so many garments that once blunted the teeth of winter have gone into limbo or nearly so. The raccoon coat, fancied particularly by college boys in the 1920’s, was an admirable thing and deserved enduring popularity. It has gone, however, and the storm coat is almost as dead. To say that such apparel is now anachronistic because of more warm cars and fewer pedestrians is to talk nonsense.
   Like it or not, in fair weather and foul we sometimes have to walk, and winter should not deprive us of this health-giving exercise. Indeed, we should make it a point to take brisk winter hikes regularly.
   But there’s no pleasure or benefit in such a walk if you’re shaking like an aspen, no exhilaration unless you’re warmly dressed.
   Since no trip to Florida is in my immediate future, my regret this Christmas was that my gifts didn’t include a couple of suits of insulated underwear to see me through until spring. This quilted lingerie, I understand, is quite popular with young folks, probably the lads who wear stocking caps perched atop their heads.

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Sad Story of Christmas Savings

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
December 19, 1959
 
   FATE HAS relieved me of the Christmas shopping problem. The service trades are taking my Yule savings. My wife gets a repaired furnace and my son a repaired car. These are not gifts to gladden the heart. They can’t be wrapped prettily and put under the tree. They are stuff of the every day.
   The fact that such mundane purchases had to be made at this particular time is not my fault, but I’m utterly depressed. When I join the family in carols at eventide tears are difficult to hold back and the spirit of the season is dead inside me.
   I didn’t want it so. This was to have been a truly memorable Yule, with elaborate gifts bought and paid for, and rich in the joy that comes with unrestrained giving.
   I’d had big plans. For a year I had cut down on cigarettes, haircuts and malted milks, depositing the money thus saved in a tomato can in the closet. And each time I added a quarter to my hoard I thrilled way down deep.

   BUT THERE is no certainty in this life. Justice being what it is today, the fruits of one’s toil and sacrifice can turn to ashes overnight on the flaming forge of necessity. The first warning that my tomato can cache was insecure came when the car radiator began leaking. A new pressure cap was suggested. This did no good. Inexpensive repairs never do. A new water pump was installed. This also did no good.
   Before the correct diagnosis was made—a new head gasket—the starter quit. Soon after these repairs were effected, for a princely sum, the muffler went out. So did what was left in the tomato can.

   WHILE I still reeled under this blow, the inadequacy of a recent furnace checkup became apparent. A cold snap in late November found the radiators cold at 9:30 p.m. My wife went to bed to get warm, leaving me at the mercies of an electric heater while waiting for help.
   The next three hours weren’t the worst I ever spent but they were far from the best. The heater was more hazard than help. It knocked the lights out four times that harrowing night. And while hunting and losing candles and scrounging for fuses I yearned for those simple days when one could get heat from coal and illumination from kerosene lamps. One was not beholden in those times to technicians who gave out with gobbledygook about compressors, switches, coils and filters.
   The furnace went sour again a few days later, too. It was Sunday, of course. We always hire help at overtime rates. The sewer, for example, never backs up save on the Sabbath.

   BUT SOME good came from the travail. The scrap lumber in the garage was spreading out so far it crowded the car. I burned the stuff in the fireplace—wood that I cannot burn when we have guests. My wife has the silly notion that the presence of old boards and rotten fence posts on the hearth robs the festivities of tone, particularly if nails are protruding.
   My garage is the neighborhood repository for used two-by-fours, railroad ties and shingles. Neighbors turn the stuff over to me with great shows of magnanimity, as if they were giving me their shirts. I lack the nerve to tell them to get rid of their own junk.

   TO SUM UP the glad tidings, my Christmas shopping has come to twice the anticipated cost, with nothing to show for it. The fact that I’ve insured my loved ones transportation and heat—gifts better than fine gold and just as expensive—is small solace.
   There will be a few goodies in the stockings, of course, perhaps a new shirt and belt for my son and a kerchief for malady, but so much less than I had led them to expect.
   I hope they try to understand.

Copyright 2017 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

A Family Reunion Can Be Grim

By Cary D. Shoberg
(Guest columnist for Charles M. Guthrie)
Published by the StarTribune
November 28, 1965

   THE WHOLE GANG was at Grandma and Grandpa’s for Thanksgiving again this year and Gramps said it was my turn to write a column for him and he would give me a dollar.
   I reminded him that was what he also gave my brother Mark and cousin Dave for the job and did he not know about inflation? Well, he hemmed and hawed around and said the job would be easy for me because I was so smart and in the fifth grade, but if one dollar wasn’t enough maybe it would be enough for one of the other kids who wasn’t such a wise guy and I could forget the whole thing. So I caved in.

   WHEN WE ARE ALL together there are 15 of us and quite a racket and I notice every year Gramps doesn’t stand up as good as he did the year before and I spoke that is what getting old does to anybody although Grandma stays about the same one Thanksgiving to the next and is now starting to worry about Gramps.
   “Don’t you feel well, dear?” She asked him when he was yelling at everybody to pipe down while he was carving the turkey. “What is the matter with you?”
   “A lot of things might be the matter,” he growled, “but I know one thing that isn’t the matter. I haven’t got an empty-nest syndrome.” I didn’t know what he was talking about and don’t think he did either.
   We were going to have the Thanksgiving deal at our place in Rhinelander but are building a new house which we have not moved into yet but would have lived in for a couple of months already if things had gone as expected. It looks like another couple of weeks before we get into the place.
   When we do get settled it will be great. We had to move out of our other house in September because it had been rented to another family and had to hole up in a lake cottage while the construction boys take their sweet time about getting the new house finished.
   The lake cottage was quite a ball for us kids in Sept. and Oct. but good and cold in Nov. and everybody getting croup and stuff. Mom said the other day she would loose her mind in another two weeks and Dad is starting to mumble to himself.

   SO IT WAS NICE to be with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Tom and also Uncle Chuck’s family in a warm place with ping pong and pool in the basement and toys for Bobby and Scott even though Gramps was sort of crabby and said if we didn’t pick up the stuff before we left that was scattered from h-ell to breakfast he would ring our necks. Grandma told me he had not been right since the squirrel fell down the chimney into the fireplace and he chased it around the living room.
   The plan now is for everybody to be at our place for Christmas if the carpenters and painters ever get through and Mom can get things straightened up, but Gramps is dragging his feet. “It depends on the weather and the car,” he said. “It’s about 230 miles and if there’s snow or ice we’ll have to pass it up. If the car is acting up we won’t come, either. I am not interested in an ambulance ride or a long walk.”
   Gramps is a nice fellow when you get to know him but a real wet blanket at that.


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It's Time for More Tolerance

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
March 10, 1963 


   EXTREMISTS are detecting subversion and racial bias in everything but the seed catalogs and toothpaste commercials. Robin Hood and his merry men have taken their lumps, the minstrel show is under the gun, Aunt Jemima, the pancake-mix lady, emerges as a female Uncle Tom, and censors are sour on a lot of authors and historians.
   We seem in danger of losing our sense of humor, tolerance and proportion in the fields of human relations and democratic ideology. If rational consideration of disputes and weaknesses is stifled by hysteria and hyper-sensitivity, good fellowship will curdle into hostility and suspicion will stalk the land.

   TAKE the NAACP rumblings against the minstrel show. For years the minstrel show has been a waning institution. Since its heyday early in the century, it seldom has risen above bush league entertainment and is now all but dead.
   Absolute death would come sooner were it not for the promotion provided by periodic and self defeating NAACP protests. Silent disregard would seem a wiser reaction, even though Negroes, still chained to second class citizenship and discrimination, cannot be blamed for regarding minstrel shows as insulting and unfunny.

   TURN NOW to censorship extremes. A member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission has declared that Robin Hood and his comrades were straight followers of the Communist line. This constitutes quite a tortuous accusation. The legendary exploits of the rebel leader of Sherwood Forest predated the Communist manifesto by several hundred years and if Robin Hood and his lads, in robbing the rich and giving to the poor, took their cue from Karl Marx at least they did so unwittingly.
   If we must endure many more such stabs at censorship, Communist infiltration of the schools might well succeed. We cannot combat communism with lunacy.

   NEITHER can we combat it by rewriting history--a favorite Soviet practice--and attempting to show that every phase of this country's development has been ginger-peachy, with Uncle Sam always nobly motivated and the people always prosperous, well fed and uncomplaining.
   Our system is the best yet devised. The proof is in our living standards, freedoms, technological and scientific progress, industrial plants, educational facilities and individual opportunity.
   This, however, doesn't mean that it's faultless or that critics should not be heard. It doesn't mean that Carl Sandburg, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Hammerstein, John Steinbeck and other novelists, lyricists and historians are a baleful influence and that their works should be rooted out of school libraries.

   CRITICISM is good, controversy is good, and so is dissent. When we lack the steam to argue, find fault or seek fresh approaches to old problems, or when we suspect those we don't agree with of subversion and skulduggery, progress will stop and we'll yawn our way into oblivion.


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Views on After-Death Adulation

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
October 15, 1960


   IT IS FITTING to speak well of the departed but too bad that a person has to be dead to be fully appreciated. There is an innate reluctance to dispense compliments, even though the practice enriches both giver and receiver. But when tragedy strikes, flattering words flow--to come into flood with death.
   This is regrettable but probably understandable. If  you go around praising the living it isn't because you're a nice fellow but because you have an angle. You are currying favor with the boss, contemplate running for assessor or becoming president of the PTA. So, not wishing to appear insincere and being loath to be gracious, you keep your mouth shut and don't tell Joe how well Gertrude thinks he dances.

   BUT THE hypocrisy apparent in a lot of post-mortem adulation is both galling and amusing. Certain people, when someone dies, should, to be consistent, keep their eyes dry and their mouths shut. I don't refer to survivors or close friends but to persons who knew the deceased only casually and who seek to impress survivor or friend with displays of sham sorrow.
   Since free speech is a constitutional right even when indulged in behind the back, most of us have done our share of belittling and insulting. "There is nothing to Joe, really," we'll say, "but a thick hide, brass and monumental ego. He'd push his own mother out into the storm for a dollar and wouldn't give you the time of day."
   It comes with poor grace, then, when Joe dies, to dab the eyes and tell everyone what a dear friend you've lost.

   WHEN IT comes to mourning, however, I'm tops among the flops, which may account for the fact that I hold many weepers and lamenters suspect. I can't even manage a tear when honestly grief-stricken.
   This can't be attributed to stoicism, either. I often get dewy-eyed at sticky movies, hymns frequently shatter me, and when the kids were small I sometimes choked up, to their amusement, when reading them touching passages from "The Jungle Book" or "Black Beauty."

   THE FASTEST person I ever knew--male or female--with a funeral tear was the undertaker of years ago in my home town. Old Charley was the salt of the earth and no hypocrite, either. He was quite a jolly man when not engaged in his profession.
   But all aspects of his business saddened him beyond belief. He apparently thought that his tears solaced the survivors. For the fee involved he gave them a package deal. He not only was funeral director but paid mourner, and he mourned with convincing earnestness as part of his job.
   Death was a frequent visitor at our house in those days and though in the years since then we've laughed about old Charley, I remember him fondly. His conduct had some merit, too. He provided a macabre comic relief as he
sniffled about.
   He had this in his favor, too. He never spoke meanly of the living.


Copyright 2017 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.
 

To Enjoy Food Less, Learn More About It

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
April 13, 1969


   THE MAN in the street only knows the essentials about food and is willing to let it go at that. He eats when he's hungry and prefers to eat what he enjoys most.
   It's probably just as well. To study the subject is to court confusion. My wife says I'd live a lot longer if I lost 10 or 15 pounds but she's never convinced me that I could do this without starving, and I'd rather live to be 70 on a full stomach than 80 on an empty one.

   SHE NEARLY won me over the other day, though. She sprung a carbohydrate chart on me. She'd been talking for weeks about getting thin the carbohydrate way. She pretends to be talking to herself but I'm not deceived. The message is for me. She doesn't need to lose weight.
   "Look at this,"she said. "Here's the way to get thin and not feel hungry. If you limit your intake to 50 grams a day you get as lean as a greyhound."
   I took a quick look and shook my head. "Nothing doing. Breakfast alone would put me over the top.  A glass of orange juice, an egg, two slices of toast and a bowl of cereal come to 60 grams, 10 more than allowed. Then what do I do, skip lunch and dinner?"
   "It would be quite a change," my wife admitted, "but you'd be all right if you cut out the breakfast toast. For lunch and dinner you could eat beef, pork, lamb, Swiss cheese, lettuce and dressing."

   THERE COULD be worse fates. I took a less hostile look at the list and was comforted by the knowledge that I could gorge on celery, olives and bouillon.
   The more I read, in fact, the better I liked what I saw. If you stuck pretty much to high protein fare you could keep within 15 to 20 grams of the 50 gram limit and eat like the rich people. Meat, fish and eggs are low in carbohydrates and so is butter, mayonnaise, cream, asparagus, sauerkraut, crackers and peanut butter.
   I'd have to give up pie at noon, though. "A four inch wedge of apple comes to 53 grams," I was warned, "pumpkin is a shade less--and mince is loaded."
   Still the diet didn't seem bad. Life never would be completely gray as long as I had an egg for breakfast and peanut butter and crackers at bedtime.

   THEN HOPE was shattered. My dreams of losing weight while eating well were blasted by a friend who is an authority on nutrition. I was telling him about the diet I was about to adopt. "It has calorie counting beat to death and my only regret is that I didn't learn about it sooner. Now I'll have bacon and eggs for breakfast and pour cream on my cereal instead of that carbohydrate-loaded skim milk. I'll eat the way I want to, except to go light on bread, pastries, fruit and juices. Bananas, grapes and apples are out but I can live without them."

   MY FRIEND shook his head. "It isn't that easy, man. Load up on stuff like bacon and eggs and cream and your veins clog up. Haven't you ever heard of cholesterol?"
   "But people are different," I objected. "Some have a big cholesterol buildup and some don't. There's a difference in body function."
   "Your assumptions are incorrect," said my friend. He mentioned a magazine article based on a heart study. "The piece leaves no doubt that cholesterol is the culprit. Eat as you say you're going to eat and you'll not only get fat as a hog but have an early ride in a hearse."
   So now I've decided to forget about dieting and go back to my carefree ways. It seems the more you know about food the less you enjoy eating.

Copyright 2017 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.