Lake Living Doesn't Come Cheap

Charles M. Guthrie

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

September 10, 1960

    PROPERTY, someone has said, is a burden.  I've begun to appreciate the impact of this truth since acquiring a lake cabin in a deal I kept telling myself was folly but which I lacked the will to resist.

   The burden includes both labor and money.  The labor I can take in stride, given sufficient help, but the financial burden is fraught with distressing surprises.

The Guthrie burden continued

   Taxes, insurance, utilities and general upkeep, of course, are inevitable and anyone with his wits about him makes the required allowances.  What I hadn't reckoned with was furnishings.  I assumed that the cabin would provide a haven for surpluses we had at home, that we could clear the basement and attic of castoff crockery and sagging chairs which, through the years, accumulate in spite of you.

Kathy (my wife) bulling into it

   MY WIFE crushed this economy summarily, refusing, as she put it, to equate cabin living with slumming.  "If you think we're going to haul a lot of junk up there you're wrong," she declared.  "The cups will match the saucers, we won't eat off pie tins, look at 1959 calendars or otherwise live like sheepherders."

   In line with her concept of gracious country living, we will have more storage space and working surface in the kitchen.  We have a metal cabinet at home which, since our Kentucky days 30 years ago, has been a basement repository for shoe polish and preserves.  I thought that this, along with a loose-legged table to which I am sentimentally attached, would fill our new need and give the cabin a casual, lived-in look.

   But instead we're going to have a pine breakfast bar which also will divide the kitchen and living room.  This, and a built-in cabinet between the stove and sink, may sink me financially but will give the place some class.

   My brother-in-law and his wife inspected the layout the other day and the former furthered my awareness of things that had to be done that cost money.  "Those two dead oaks will have to come down before they blow over on you," he said.  "And you've got a lot of dead stuff in your other trees that should be cut out.  It won't cost over $400."

Bill and Roger: today's Weber and McMurchie

   I'LL SAY it won't.  The fellow doesn't realize my power of persuasion and my ability to project helplessness.  Bill Weber, an old friend who has a place a couple of cabins west of mine, has helped already and promised further assistance, bless him, and I'm cozying up to Lyle McMurchie, my next-door neighbor. Both these boys have strong backs and tender hearts and know how to install docks.

   And if any pointers are needed concerning the dead oaks, a gal named Helen another lake neighbor, can supply them, Weber tells me.  She might even saw them down herself, he says, while I lounge in a lawn chair.

Kevin, Jean and Tom G.

   AS LONG as such a spirit exists we need not despair for our country's future.  Here is brotherhood in action, a heart-warming power that moves mountains--and trees, too, I trust.

   It is such neighborliness that I need and am counting on.  And those who help will not go unrewarded.  My wife promises to serve coffee and sandwiches.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

When You're Young You're Different

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
July 21, 1956


   IN PONDERING my impending vacation, I have fallen to pondering vacations past, comparing former and present attitudes and viewing the gulf between the middle-age that is now and the youth that is done.
   Back in the salad days, my wife and I judged a vacation's merit by the distance traveled.  Far horizons pulled us.  We would head forth in a beaten-up fugitive from the automobile graveyard, with a baby in the back seat and money owed the grocer in my pants, our hearts carefree and our eyes on the far away hills.  I recall once being 100 miles from home on the return trip with a dime as my only negotiable asset.

   WE'LL BE driving little more than 250 miles from home in the vacation coming up--and I'd be happier if it were 50.  Beating the highways mile on endless mile no longer charms me.  The paramount wish is that the distance be short and that I arrive in reasonable health.
   This points to physical slippage, devotion to routine and hardening of arteries and attitudes.  It is surrender to time.  Far off places still lure me some, but I prefer to get there by public carrier, without looking at oncoming headlights or wondering if the road jockey approaching at 80 miles an hour will duck back into line or knock me into a statistic.

Chuck (elder son), a pal (?) and Carol (daughter)

   MY ELDER son would think no more of driving 250 miles than buzzing around the block.  I have known him with a couple of pals, to start out on an ambitious journey with bald-headed tires, a decrepit spare, five gallons of gas and no credit card-- and with barely enough money among the three to finance a round of hot dogs.  Whenever he got stalled, which was often, he would cuss his luck but not his deplorable preparations.
   For the modest junket just ahead I am girded for all conceivable exigencies.  The car is greased, oiled and gassed to the teeth and the tires are tough as a ward-heeler's conscience.  The credit card has been restored to respectability and the motor club alerted.  I will not say we are immune to trouble.  But should calamity befall it won't be because we've invited it, as youth is wont to do.

   YOUTH and age part company in other ways, too.  Kids just married, for instance, have the notion that easy payments are easy.  They will put themselves in installment hock for years without batting an eye, and then wonder why they're always broke.

   The old man is cagier, less inclined to spend it before he has it.  The 1950 bus may begin to rattle, groan and protest but he's reluctant to trade it in on a new job just to keep up with the Joneses.  He'll spend $50 for repairs and drive it another year.  To be less mired in debt he's willing to be less stylish.

   THE OLDSTER is not inclined to violent exercise.  My 7-year-old looks at me strangely whenever I refuse to race him upstairs when it's his bedtime.  When the fatigue of the day's occupation is not too heavy I'll accept his challenge, but these occasions are growing fewer.  It brings a pronounced pounding to the heart and often a cramp to the calf.
   Seven years ago I would play badminton with the kids in the back yard and give them quite a game.  Now the neighbors are doing it and it wearies me to watch them.

   I HEAR about young fathers going on overnight hikes or canoe trips with their young, deals involving portages, long hikes under full pack and nights with the stars overhead and the ground underneath.  I once was a child of nature myself, living in the mountains for three summers, where the only running water was in the river and the bed springs were pine boughs and you had to chop wood and eat smoke and otherwise do it yourself to survive.  My nearest approach to that way of life now is when I am dragooned into a hamburger fry in the back yard, a madness which seems to be catching on in spite of mosquitoes and inconvenience.

   YOUTH is a plunger and youth is impetuous.  He may not know how he'll raise the rent money but is sure he'll have it by the first of the month.  Youth wears the bright face of hope and of faith in tomorrow.  He rides the punches and plans big plans.
   Youth, though often half nuts, is our great national asset.  He fuels the engines of progress and commerce.  I am for him 100 percent.  Just don't ask me to keep up with him.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

There's Nothing Quite Like Fishing!

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
August 30, 1958


   MILLIONS are spent annually for bait, boats, tackle, plugs, boots, nets and other fishing impedimenta.  The sport unquestionably is here to stay, and rightly so.
   It gets the devotee into the fresh air, provides exercise, scenery, and relaxation.  There is something mighty soothing about the idle slap of water against boat.  And when a big one takes the lure, when the line tightens and the rod bends, here is a dream come true, here is rapture complete.

   I AM TOLD, at least, that such is the case.  I never have caught a big one and doubt that I ever shall.  If an outsized northern ever was on one end of the line and I on the other, panic, I suspect, would ensue.
   My thirst for fishing was thoroughly slaked the last week of vacation.  The area was invested with lakes of all sizes, "live bait" signs were as thick as birch trees, and it was taken for granted that all vacationers had come primarily to fish.
   I had come primarily to eat, loaf and sleep, and although I took my spinning red, a few hooks and a couple of plugs along--for appearances and at my son's behest--I was sure he would weary of fishing after a couple of attempts, leaving me to my own devices.
   Weary he did.  So did I, but I continued to fish.  I was pushed into it.  All other husbands at the resort were avid anglers.  They would go out at dawn and just as I was thinking of getting up, return with northerns and bass of appalling size.  What's more--and I found it hard to forgive them for this--they insisted on exhibiting same and gloating.

   I HAD BEEN in camp no more than a day when I was marked as the only adult male who had caught nothing of consequence.  My wife, son and I caught some sunfish but it seemed this was kid stuff and didn't count.  And the resort proprietor, who assumed I was burning with disappointment and who took my ineptitude as a reflection on his layout, kept exhorting me to try again.
   So did my wife.  She said I should buy some minnows and instead of sleeping all morning get out on the lake at 6.  I agreed only to the minnows.  The fish could bite on my time, late morning or early evening, or go take a swim.
   Live bait proved no more effective than my vastly more convenient plugs.  "Just put the minnow on the hook and let him work for you," said one of my advisers.
   The work my minnows did was inconsequential.  They would turn belly up after a cast or two or maneuver into the weeds, there to snag my hook permanently in vegetation.

   IT PROBABLY was just as well, for the sunfish we caught proved more problem than prize.  I was elected, of course, to clean them.  I processed the first mess outside the cabin at dusk and was eaten alive by mosquitoes and flies--both horse and deer.
   To add to my frustration, I had no tools for the job but a couple of dull paring knives and pliers.  And most of my previous fish cleaning had been done on trout, which have the decency not to wear armor plate and spiked fins.  I wondered, as I slapped and perspired, by what ghastly whim of fate I had been elected to spend a vacation thus.

Mom liked fish

   I FIGURED that fish for breakfast was my due and my wife agreed.  I got them--all of them.  Our son quit after a couple of nibbles and milady, who professed her love of sunfish while she was catching them and I was baiting her hook, said they were too "heavy" for breakfast.  "When we have them for dinner just watch me."
   We had them for dinner two nights later.  She ate two.  So, by sheer force of will, did our son.
   The next night we had steak, broiled over charcoal and delicious.  Our pride and joy fell upon his portion with a will, interrupting his chomping only long enough to declare:
   "It's too bad fish doesn't taste like this."

Remembering Names Isn't Easy

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune
April 26, 1960

Hubert Humphrey would have remembered

   REMEMBERING names is a gift politicians supposedly have in abundance.  The most talented can meet and chat with you briefly, meet you again five years later and not only call you by name but inquire about your wife and five kids and ask how long little Jimmie was laid up with the mumps.

   It's never been my pleasure to meet any of these wonder men and I have strong reservations about their existence, despite all the stories I've heard about the incredible abilities of Jim Farley and other students of politics.

   I'VE NEVER met a politician or anyone else who could remember my name for five minutes.  I've been called Guffy, Dudley, Jeffrey, Goothrie, Say and Hello There, with the glad-hander making a brave show of buddy-buddy familiarity even though he doesn't know me from a bale of hay.

   I could pick a dozen elected officials who have met me and would give odds that not three of them, encountering me unexpectedly, could call me by name.  Not that I'd blame them, since I'm shy and retiring, seldom have anything to say that needs saying, and would be flustered no end if singled out in a crowd.

   MY REASON for doubting the stories I've heard about those who never forget names is not only that they all forget mine but because of my own embarrassing limitations along this line.  I forget names as fast as I hear them and even fumble when introducing my sister or brother to the folks next door.

   Once when I was hospitalized four fellows from the office came visiting and everything was jolly until the preacher dropped in and I had to introduce him.  Three of the names came readily to mind but I forgot the fourth--the fellow I ride to work with every day.

   Whenever we have four or five couples in who never before have met I either tell them to introduce themselves or turn the job over to my wife.  She is no wizard, either, but 100 percent better than I.

   THE WHOLE trouble with us easy forgetters is that we lack poise and have a low panic point.  Rather than concentrate on one name at a time when there's a line of people I'm duty-bound to introduce to Aunt Gertrude, I have them all buzzing through my head simultaneously.  Soon I am asking myself who the little bald-headed guy in the gray suit might be, the fellow I must identify after I have presented Sarah Menglekook.  He may be a lad I eat lunch with four times a week and know like a son.

   Fortunately, my wife often spots impending disaster and leaps to my rescue.  The telltale sign, she says, is a look I get which is common to anyone who has just lost a filling.

   THE WAY to remember names, she admonishes, is by association.  Meet a person named Smith who wears whiskers and you associate him with that brand of cough drops.  Perhaps Mr. Gibson is somewhat like good old Joe Gibson of Peoria.  And Mrs. Long is short, Mr. Akers earthy and Mrs. Baker crusty.  Get it?

   I get it, and have tried it, but success has been small.  I once met a man named Pond and thought I had him and his name tied together to the end of time because he had watery eyes.  Later that evening I introduced him to a friend as Mr. Rivers.

   But while the association method has pitfalls, it's probably the best there is, short of wearing the printed name on the lapel.  That is the custom at our church dinners and it works just dandy.

Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Some Thoughts About Gratitude

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 31, 1958

Stan Musial

   RECENTLY Stan Musial, star of the St. Louis Cardinals, gained immortality by making his 3000th major league hit.  The feat had been accomplished by only seven other players before him.
   Close on the heels of this accomplishment came the story of another deed by the same person.  It caused less fanfare and splash of printer's ink--and it didn't come from the modest Musial.  But it sheds additional light on why he's known as "Stan, the Man," and it redounds even more to his credit than did that pinch-hit double against the Chicago Cubs that put him in the select circle.

   FOR IT showed him as a man of character and generosity and great gift of appreciation.  He remembered his debt to Dickie Kerr, the little stout-hearted White Sox pitcher who beat Cincinnati twice in the scandal-scarred 1919 World Series.

Dickie Kerr

   Years later Kerr became manager of the Daytona Beach farm club for the Cardinals.  Among his charges was a skinny youth who aspired to be a pitcher but he showed small talent for it.  This was Stanley Musial, a mediocre southpaw whom Kerr recognized as a natural with a bat.
   Kerr took the sore-armed and discouraged youngster into his home, fed and befriended him and told him he could become a great hitter.
   Great hitter Musial proved to be.  He went on to fame and fortune but he didn't forget Kerr.  And because he didn't forget, the Kerrs now have a new home in Houston, Texas, a white bungalow provided by Musial.

   THE INCIDENT prompts some observations about gratitude.  Some harsh and cynical things have been said of it.  Robert Louis Stevenson termed it "but a lame sentiment," adding that "thanks, when they are expressed, are often more embarrassing than welcome."
   H.L. Mencken, never given to moderate expression, was harsher.  He wrote that to look for gratitude in this world was asinine.  "The truth is," he said, "that the sentiment itself is not human but doggish and the man who demands it in payment for his doings is precisely the sort of man who feels noble and distinguished when a dog licks his hand."
   Maybe Mencken meant it and maybe he was just being funny.  The sage of Baltimore was as much humorist as critic and philosopher and I suspect that Mencken, the humorist, was in command when these caustic lines were penned.

H.L. Mencken

   At least I prefer to go along with Samuel Johnson, who wrote a couple of hundred years ago that "gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people."  And Aesop, who termed gratitude the sign of noble souls.

   THEY TELL US that all actions and urges are motivated by selfishness--love, kindness, generosity and bravery as well as greed, envy, hate, lust, ambition and cowardice.  Selfishness is the driving force.
   I suspect that this is true, but even though it be, I see no reason why this in any way tarnishes humanitarian actions, blights valor or makes a mockery of generosity.  If one makes a sacrifice for a friend, rival, benefactor or maiden aunt he should not stand condemned for experiencing an inner glow.  That is his
 reward, and one rightly earned.

C.M. Guthrie

   Anyway, when I do anyone a favor I expect him to show gratitude.  If he doesn't I feel deprived and outraged.  I may be petty and even doggish.  If so, I'm sure I have company.  The dog, I figure, is the recipient of good deeds who takes them for granted.
   You do not win friends unfailingly by doing favors.  Favors can bring resentment and an unwanted sense of obligation as well as gratitude.  As good a way as any to win a friend is to maneuver someone into doing a favor for you.
   But I refuse to downgrade gratitude.  I'm sure that Dick Kerr is grateful to Musial and that Musial appreciates the fact.  I agree with the New York Times, which said that while the St. Louis star declared that that 3000th hit gave him the greatest thrill of his life, he'd get an even bigger one when he visited the Kerrs in that home he gave them.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.


  

Little Girls Are Quite Special

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
May 17, 1964


   THERE'S THIS to be said about girl friends--the younger they are the easier it is to impress them.  A little girl distributes admiring glances generously.
   Take Ann and Katy.  Both think I'm quite a character.  Both are pre-kindergarten and both are neighbors. We see a good deal of each other, particularly on Saturday when I'm out in the yard and available.
   The sobering fact is, however, that I won't rate high with them permanently--two or three years at the outside.  As they grow older, little girls find my witticisms less hilarious and take me for granted.  By the time a girl I've known all her life is 16, any illusions she ever had about me are gone.  I'm just an over-the-hill yard raker and window washer.

   SMALL BOYS get wise to me , too.  When the brothers of Katy and Ann were moppets, they were faithful weekend helpers, eager to mow my lawn and wash my car.  Now their time is for better things.  They are courteous and pleasant, but the old relaxed camaraderie is gone and the horseplay fading into memory.  That's how it must be.  They are growing up.  Children can be children only a little while, not nearly long enough.

   BUT I thank heaven for little girls.  I'm a pushover for little girls.  So is my wife.  We haven't yet had a granddaughter but once had a little daughter of our own.  When she was small the depression was big and inescapable, but she was gay and unworried.  Her blythe spirit kept life in perspective.
   Now I'm making the best possible use of Katy and Ann and will bask in their favor as long as they let me.  I hope the summer will see more Saturdays like a recent one.  After Ann and Katy had dropped over three or four times to discuss neighborhood affairs and to ask why I was squirting water on the screens, they made a final call at 6 p.m., when we were sitting down to dinner.  They wondered if I could come out and play some more.  This pleased me even more than it amused me.  It was as nice a compliment as I've had in months.  It convinced me that I'd won their acceptance and made the club.
   A couple of weeks ago while raking up some litter, I uncovered an old ball that had molded through the winter in an iris bed.  I tossed it to Ann and told her she could have it.  You'd have thought I'd given her a new doll.  She thanked me not once but repeatedly, and not casually but profusely.

   KATY HAS an dog named Dusty, a nondescript, long-haired little pooch that looks much the same front and rear.  When Katy comes to see me the dog is usually with her.  Why, I don't know, since she pulls his ears, sits on him and makes him miserable.  Dusty has no time for me when Katy isn't around.  To him I'm blood brother of the mailman--a bum and a scoundrel.
   Ann and Katy aren't the only little folks in the neighborhood.  The block is jumping with them, but they happen to be the two I know best.
   As for little boys, there's Danny, who lives next door on the north.  Danny is a comparative newcomer but it won't be long before he's a pal.  He is crazy to do chores and last Saturday gave my son a hand.  If he likes to mow lawns and wash cars as well as Jimmy and Mike used to, I'll be in luck.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Tomorrow Is Father's Day- -If That Means Anything

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 19, 1954

Grandpa (Alfred Bertram Guthrie), Mom and Dad

   FATHER'S DAY is a bush league occasion, as holidays go, and save for the stimulus it gives the shirt and necktie trade there seems small excuse for it.
   The first Father's day, my encyclopedia tells me, was observed in Spokane, Wash., in 1910.  Mother's day predates it by three years.  I suppose that mother then figured it was time the old man had some sort of recognition, too, and tossed him this sop to ease her conscience.
   But Father's day never has worked up more than a tired head of steam and if it weren't for the ads in the papers it probably would blush unseen,.  It lacks the hearts-and-flowers appeal of Mother's day and all efforts to build it up to comparable stature have foundered on the shoals of indifference.
   Fathers are great people and many of them have a streak of sentiment as wide as a barn door but in the popular concept they cannot compare in the tenderness department with mothers.  One does not conjure up pictures of pop tucking the little ones into bed or kissing their tears away.

   MOTHER, bless her heart, already knows that tomorrow is Father's day and has planned accordingly.  Her gift to her soul mate--charged to his account--has been wrapped with pretty ribbon and secreted in the closet.
   But if the kids have gone unbriefed, they will not think about dad until an hour before the stores close, when it is too late to shop with anything but abandon and very little of that.  I have known teenage sons, enmeshed in this web of circumstance, to resort to the dodge of pawning off on pater the horrendous Christmas necktie, received from Aunt Hortense, which they never had the courage to wear.

   WHEN YOU pause to think about it, though, wise shopping for father is well nigh impossible and the catch-as-catch-can procedure is about as good as any.  He never knows what he wants--and he usually wants little.  Mom buys his shirts, socks and cravats.  He even likes to have her with him when he buys a suit, list he fetch home something that would delight a sideshow barker.

Chuck, Mom (Florence), Dad, Tom, Carol 

   And even when a fellow does have a definite desire his progeny is disinclined to believe him.  I once told my daughter that I'd like one of those little two-wheeled contraptions used for spreading grass seed and fertilizer.  She burst into laughter.  That wasn't a gift!  I could buy one of those things myself.  So I am still without a grass seed fertilizer cart, though I want one passing sore.
   I once dropped the hint that some new garden hose would delight father on his day.  My wife bought it, but with reluctance.  She said it was like my buying her a mop.

   THE FATHER'S day gift problem grows tougher by the year because the older pop gets the less he wants.  The youthful sire is far easier to honor than he who is in middle age.  The young dad is clothes conscious and active.  He swims, golfs and plays tennis and fancies himself as a delight to womanhood.  Gay apparel pleases him.  So does anything in the sporting goods line.
   The oldster, mayhap with nostalgic sigh, has put aside his illusions about being a charmer.  He has a spare chin.  His chest has slipped down to his middle, and moulting is well along.  New duds can do little for him.  The only sports he goes in for, save fishing and watching the televised fights and ball games, involve little more than lifting a stack of poker chips and holding a cigar in his jaws.

   I HAVE made an agonizing appraisal of my Father's day wants.  They narrow down to one of those gizmos used for stemming the lawn's invasion of the sidewalk.  This is called an edger, my hardware man tells me.
   But if the shirt and socks fit I will rest content.  And if it should come to pass that the necktie is rerouted to me from Aunt Hortense I shall got grieve.  It's nice to be a father and it's nice to be remembered.  And come Christmas I can give the tie to an in-law.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.