Time for Concern, Not Escape

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
September 18, 1966


   I WAS OUT in the back yard passing a football with Jimmy Tierney, my 11-year-old pal from next door, when J. Adelbert Picklewurst, my know-it-all neighbor, wandered over.
   He watched us a minute and sniffed. "Fine thing," he growled. ""The world is going to pot and you fritter away your time with a football."
   "Well, you can't spend all your time worrying."
   "Quit rationalizing. You can at least show some concern. There is much too little of it. There is too much escapism, too much interest in the Vikings and the Packers and 49ers and not enough thought about Viet Nam. People are more absorbed in the World Series than in the race riots or pollution. We are headed full-speed for the abyss and nobody seems to give a hoot."
   "But," I reminded him, "you've told me several million words about baseball. I thought you were both a fan and an expert."

   PICKLEWURST SUCKED on his pipe. "I am," he said modestly, "but now it's time to put away childish enthusiasms. What difference does it make who wins the National League pennant, with Armageddon at bat? And why should we rend our garments in anguish and ask why the Twins didn't start playing ball until so late? All this doesn't make the slightest difference in the price of pork chops, the wage and price guidelines, or slaughter on the highways. I'm through with sports for the duration."
   "For the duration of what?"
   " Viet Nam, mainly. If things go on as they are we'll get into war with Red China. Then the fat will be in the fire for sure. You newspaper boys are supposed to know everything. Why don't you come up with some solutions instead of so much lofty but tenuous prose? You wail about the threat to democracy. Why not offer a formula for negotiations with Hanoi?"
   "Well," I said defensively, "De Gaulle made a proposal we didn't like because it would involve loss of face."
   "And of course we can't lose face." Picklewurst jabbed me in the chest with his forefinger.
   "Quit throwing that damned football a minute and listen. What's better, loss of a little face or loss of thousands of GIs in an Asian land war that could last into the next century?"
   Not wishing to have him around for the rest of the day, I threw the football back to Jimmy and said nothing.

   "WE COULD USE some solutions, too," said Picklewurst, "to the race question. All Washington can think about is more civil rights legislation."
   "What would you do, ban protest marches, lock up all the bigots, or what?"
   " I'd do more about it than toss a football around or wonder about Sandy Koufax's arthritic elbow or Willie Mays' home-run production. I'd do some heavy thinking--and I am doing some, incidentally--about how to generate more tolerance in the human heart and get the price of beef down to where you didn't have to buy a roast on the installment plan."
   He refueled his pipe and continued. "As a matter of fact, while you squander time, I'm going home now to resume my deliberations and do some serious reading." He looked at his watch. "Heavens!" he exclaimed, "I'm seven minutes late." He hurried off.
   "What he's late for," Jimmy grinned, "is the Pirates and Cardinals. They're on TV today."


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.

Thrilling Experiences Pay Off

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
September 6, 1958


   THE OTHER day I huddled with my literary counselor to sound him out on what path I should take to arrive at another rejection slip.
   He told me that the personal experience article seemed very hot at the moment and that test pilots, athletes, jockeys, reformed drunks, gamblers and drug addicts all were having their day in the magazines.
   "The one big drawback in your case," he continued, "is that you never had any interesting experiences."

   "WHAT DO you mean?" I protested. "I'm right on the verge of writing a piece titled, 'I Was a Forest Service Smoke Chaser.'"
   "Hmm," said my counselor. "This is a facet of your career about which I had not been apprised. When were you a smoke chaser?"
   "Well," I said, perhaps lamely, "back about 1925. give or take a few years."
   "You take them," he said. "And my congratulations on a good memory. Did anything interesting happen, by chance, while you were chasing fires? Did you get a leg burned off or rescue a fair maiden? Is there anything that would be remotely entertaining in this resurrection of ancient history?"
   "Let me think," I parried. "I ate baking powder biscuits for a week straight and fried doughnuts over a campfire."
   "Put it in your memoirs," my counselor yawned,"and file it away in a bureau drawer. It will be something for you heirs to throw away when they're cleaning up the place."

   AT LEAST two elements are vital to the personal experience article, he said. It has to be comparatively recent and it must interest more people than the members of one's family.
   "It should be spectacular, such as climbing Mount Everest or crossing Lake Superior in a washtub. Failing that, it should deal with the author's surrender to temptation and his final triumph.
   "One could not possibly sell a piece titled "Women Are a Waste of Time' or "Why I Never Drink Liquor,'" he said, "because such titles imply neither temptation nor surrender--and thus there is no final victory. But you might find a buyer for "No More Cuties for Me" or "I've Had My Last Hangover.'

   "YOUR trouble," said my counselor, "is that you are colorless and middle-of-the-road. You have no bad habits worth mentioning and are disgustingly healthy. You've never had heart surgery or amnesia. You don't even have hay fever. You aren't impetuous and the only hobby you have is mooching cigarettes. You are normal and consequently uninteresting.
   "If you want to succeed in the personal experience field you have to do more than go for the groceries on Saturday morning. You must do something like going below in an aqua lung and killing sharks with a can-opener. You might even do something crazy, such as living in a tree house or sitting on a flagpole. To the outsider your life roughly parallels that of a Hereford, except that the Hereford's is more exciting. He gets slaughtered."

   MY COUNSELOR is doubtless right. I feel a vast inadequacy. Somehow I have missed the boat. While there is merit in an upright life, in a good credit rating and membership on the ways and means committee, there is no drama here, no hot breath of danger or ache of hunger, no gnawing desire for a slug of Old Cornstalk, no thrill of suspense.
   People dream of fame in sports, medicine, finance, politics and letters. Time and kicks in the teeth often squeeze the juice out of such meditations. But mine continue, in a sporadic and anguished sort of way.
   However, I'm not about to go on a two-year drunk just to have something to write about when I sober up. Neither shall I sit atop any flagpoles or fight any sharks.
   A home-body may not have much to go on but I figure that for his own peace of mind he'd better stay in character.

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.

Spring Isn't Top Season for a Lover of Slumber

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
April 24, 1954


   SPRING is the most welcome of seasons, mainly because it releases us from winter. But nobody, save perhaps a poet or an incurable optimist, can say that spring is all good. There are things about it that try the soul.
   You dream of lovely landscapes in the spring, of velvety lawns, burgeoning rose bushes and apoplectic tomatoes. Then comes summer and bugs and blight and crabgrass. And for those of willowy will like me the dream turns to dust. My good intentions start to flag in late May. By early July my activities are reduced to brief bursts with the lawnmower and sporadic sessions with the garden hose.

   THE LOSING joust with nature, however, is not my chief complaint against spring. The restricted sleep the season imposes is what really galls.
   Dawn breaks early these days, and with light piercing the eyeballs you are hard put to remain unconscious even when it's quiet. And it's never quiet. With us always are the birds, their throats aburst with gladsome songs to salute the new day.
   A colony of sparrows abides in the ivy which frames my bedroom windows and while I am as happy as they that the nights are not six months long I would deem it a favor if they would settle for at least eight hours, thus laying off their infernal rustling and twittering until the sun was up. They arouse the killer in me, an emotion my ulcers can do without.
    I think well of the robin, but his chirp is no lullaby at 5 a.m. If he were struck mute daily until I was rested and on my legs he would win my vote for state bird.

   THE BIRDS are not the only slumber-chasers, though. My 5-year-old is the chief villain. He awakens at dawn these days and his phonograph claims his immediate attention after which he goes to work on his pegboard with a hammer.
   In an attempt to wean him to quieter activity we plied him with color books hoping the pursuit of art would engross him while his parents captured a last precious hour of shut-eye. This proved about as effective as a soapy hand on a doorknob. It brought out the lad's latent vocal ability. While plying his crayons he hummed, not loud--just loud enough to drive us mad. And after finishing each picture he would bounce into our bedroom to exhibit his skill and solicit praise.
   On Easter Sunday morning he had us limping down the bunny trail at 5:45, no sane hour even for Peter Cottontail, let alone a human buttressed by only four hours sleep. For the last two mornings my son has abbreviated my slumber by coming in and exacting a promise that I buy him a pair of wondrous canvas shoes he learned about through television. He reports that they give the wearer a fleetness of foot rivaling the speed of sound. My fondest wish is to lay hold of the composer of this commercial and take him apart.

   THE SENSIBLE course would be to go to bed early and get in your winks before the birds, dogs and children defiled the dawn. Every morning my wife and I vow to "get to bed tonight by 8 o'clock,"
   But we never do. There's too much to claim attention. There's reading to do, television and radio programs to enjoy, PTA meetings to attend, evasions planned to thwart the bill collector.
   Even when you could get a night's rest you don't. The normal routine is to fall into a chair with a book after dinner and konk off to sleep. You awake in an hour, read again, fog up again, and finally give up about 10 o'clock and totter off to bed.
   Then an astonishing thing happens. You are suddenly as alert as a foxhound. You know your finest moments of the day. So you read a couple of hours and then remember that wedge of pie which survived the dinner hour. Once this is eaten a man is conditioned for sleep. But too much of the night has fled, and at 5 a.m., when the sparrows start to frolic in the ivy and the young one opens the morning program with "Bozo and His Rocket Ship," you are more dead than alive.

   In the spring there should be a way to stretch the time from 1 to 5 a.m. from four hours into eight. Then you would not devote the first half hour out of bed to yawning and eye-rubbing and looking blankly into space. You would awaken as the deer--alert and alive. And you could say "good morning" to your wife and mean it.


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.

A House Free of Junk Just Isn't a Home

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
January 15, 1955


   WITH ONLY slight exaggeration, you could call me the tidy type. A place for everything, I say, and everything in its place. I am repelled and saddened at the way many people hang on to junk they can have but nebulous use for but which they save on the dubious premise that it "might come in handy."
   I do not refer to stamp or coin collectors or folks who gather butterflies and leaves and buttons as a hobby. As a lad I collected pictures of ballplayers and found it satisfying.
   I mean the string-savers, the characters who salvage bits of tinfoil and gleefully add them to a mountainous ball, the people who cleave to used nails and rusty bolts and beaten-up doorknobs.

   MY WIFE saves sacks. One cubicle in our kitchen, which might better shelter pans, is devoted exclusively to sacks. When I asked the other day if she intended to put them through a shredder and insulate the house, she said certainly not. You need sacks for school lunches, don't you? She constantly has occasion to use sacks, she said. They were just the ticket for picnics.
   I inquired how many picnics she planned--about four a day from next June to September? She gave me one of those looks, murmured something about what the pot called the kettle, and said we would see right now who the champion scavenger was.

   FROM an upstairs closet she extracted a box in which I keep my personal treasures and made this damning inventory:
   One handful pencil stubs, 51 paper clips, 34 shirt-collar stays, one PTA membership card, one shoe horn, seven old shoe laces, two letters urging participation in the church every member canvass of 1952, nine rejection slips, one unfilled prescription for athlete's foot, seven nails, eight faucet washers, five matchbooks, 10 rubber bands, three fragments of soap, 10 buttons, six safety pins and one cigarette butt.
   There, said my wife, was as nice a milieu of meaningless debris as she had ever beheld, and hereafter, before I smarted off about paper sacks, I might put my own little world in order.

   WELL, like I told her, it beats all how stuff collects. Take the canned rhubarb in the fruit cellar, for instance. We brought the stuff with us when we moved here in the early '40s from Montana. Nobody could stand to eat it, yet it was food--of a sort. We didn't want to throw it away but lacked the courage to offer it to anyone. So there it reposes, in spider-webbed neglect, awaiting the archaeologists. I suspect that by now a couple of gulps of the stuff would set a fellow to yelling "Happy New Year"

   We also have an ever mounting store of bacon grease, which my hillbilly forbears deemed the most fittin' article for frying chicken ever seen. But my wife, a butter girl, scorns it as a frying medium. She is always going to give it to a friend who makes soap--but she never does.

   I WENT to the garage the other day to find an old pair of hockey skates which I planned to trade in on a new pair for our 6-year-old. I figured they were in a steamer trunk , a family heirloom now serving ingloriously as a platform for oil cans, stiff paint brushes and a few of our countless flowerpots. In the trunk were a pair of fenders and a headlight for a bicycle we had given away about the time of the Reichstag fire and four battered wheels that had been on a bug used in the soapbox derby of '46.
   But no skates.
   We shall find them, I am confident, the next time we move. Then, also, will emerge many another inanimate acquaintance of the long ago and we shall stroll back along memory lane to our vanished youth. Forgotten books and picture frames and curtain rods will rise out of the past, and magazines which had "such nice poems and recipes" and now rate as collectors' items.
   When that notable moving day arrives I will build a fire out back and consign to the flames those barnacles which have gathered on out matrimonial ship.
   We won't burn everything, though. You never know when you might need a hunk of old linoleum.


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.
 
 
 

Leave Married Sons and Daughters Alone

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
February 4, 1956


   BEING, by virtue of long exposure, something of an elder statesman in the field of family relations, I am sometimes importuned by distraught parents for advice on how to meet trying situations. What would I do if I were in their shoes? My customary response is, "You've got me!" Or I suggest that they see a psychiatrist or someone else who is half smart.
   You can qualify as an expert, though, merely by advising them to do nothing. Often, if you do nothing, the problem will go away. I urged such a course upon a parent a couple of years ago and counted it one of the greatest favors I ever bestowed.

   THIS distressed lady was feeling neglected by her recently married daughter and son-in-law. It seems that the kids were minding their own business to an acute degree and asking none of the customary favors and handouts. They went their way and wanted the old folks to go theirs. There was little social contact, at least not enough to suit mama. She wondered what could be done about it.
   There was nothing that could be done about it, I said, nothing but to give thanks that the young ones were willing to be on their own, that they were not bumming meals or borrowing money or hinting that refurbishment of wardrobes would be nice proof of parental affection.

   MANY a youth and a maid today has an appallingly light-hearted approach in responsibility, I reminded the "neglected" mother. They buy cars on little but faith and $15 a month, get married without "eating money," and trust that fate will provide. Too often fate turns out to be the old folks. The kids figure that if they get in a jam the elders will bail them out. If the chips really are down, dad and mother also will provide shelter. This is a lousy arrangement. By this time everyone should know it. But it does get the kids in out of the snow.
   It's refreshing to encounter young ones of independent spirit and it would seem sheer folly to attempt to break down such an attitude. However, it's not hard to see why the mother in the case noted here was not moved to cheers and did not accept with good grace my advice to do nothing. She knew that marriage was a picnic--complete with bugs. She didn't want her child to suffer. She wanted her to have things, including advice from mama.

   PARENTS are natural eager beavers where married children are involved and nothing stings them quite as hard as the thought that they're no longer needed. It's difficult for them to do nothing but it's dead easy to meddle--in circumstances that are none of their business. I know what I'm talking about. I do some meddling now and again. Instead of leaving the kids alone, which is how a lot of married young folks prefer it, mom and pop either over-indulge and spoil them or make them resentful.
   There is marked stupidity on all sides. Newlyweds are stupid, not because they get hitched, but because they have not lived long enough to have perspective. Their parents are stupefied by their protective instincts.

   IT MAKES you shudder to think of fumbles made in early marriage. Back when I was a green husband, my wife and I would drive 100 miles into Wisconsin every other weekend to visit her parents. We wanted to be there and assumed that they wanted us. Up to a certain point perhaps they did. But my mother-in-law must have grown weary of the guests-for-dinner chore and wished that we lived a couple of states away. She should have given us the heave but didn't. She was too gracious a woman. Also the indulgence must have given her a satisfaction, a sense of being needed even though it meant extra work.
   When Josephine gets married, it's better that she and her mate take off for remote parts, where they are free of all the foul-ups involving relatives. But if they do live close by and insist on preserving their independence, it would be nice if they did not flaunt said independence to a degree that caused parental suffering.

   THE KIDS should not so well remember that trite warning of a year or so back that "if you're old enough to get married you're old enough to be on your own so don't expect any more help from us."
   This is a statement that on the face of it , makes complete sense. But it doesn't quite work out. Dad and mother live to learn that they did not flaunt said in- that strong.
   Nevertheless, the non-meddling policy is the right one. Do nothing and play for time, I say. Kids want to live their own lives and should, but they don't brush off the old folks permanently. After a while they have a way of "coming home" again.

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.

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.

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.