These Are Emotional Times for Baseball-Crazy Fellows

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

September 28, 1954

   THERE'S a tense week ahead for the baseball fan, starting tomorrow with the World Series.  I don"t mean the lucky cuss who can watch a game with the cold, analytical eye of a loan shark, alert for fine strategy and play.  I mean the bleeder, the wretch who follows one particular club and who is lifted to ecstasy or booted into despond by that club's varying fortunes.

   These are the boys who will suffer--the ones who love the Cleveland Indians or the New York Giants. They will hover around the radio or TV sets like June bugs around an arc light, gnaw their fingernails up to the elbow, chain smoke, go into apoplexy with every opposition rally and wish that the torment would end so they could relax and get some sleep.

   THIS ADDICTION to baseball in general and one club in particular makes no sense whatever.  Life goes on regardless of how one game or one series comes out.  Your baseball bug tells himself that every time his team loses --and he keeps right on bleeding.  The disease is incurable.

   It has its roots back in childhood, I think.  Nobody who fails to develop an interest in the game when he is a kid can acquire the suicidal devotion to it in later life that the baseball nut has.  The genuine addict probably played some as a boy and had visions of one day being a big leaguer.  Or he developed a fancy for one player and took that player's club to his bosom, there to hold it unto death.

   I caught the disease from a book, written long ago by Christy Mathewson, immortal New York pitcher.  It was called "Pitching in a Pinch" and it laid hold of me good.  I since have known few care-free summers.  My heart has belonged to the New York Giants.  If I am the soul of amicability of an evening it's because the Giants have won.  If I beat the kids and drive my wife to tears with snide remarks about the stew it's because they've lost.

   MAYBE you think I'm riding high now, since the Giants have won the pennant.  I am, but it's an uneasy ride.  I'm afraid of that low-down Cleveland club, which never has lost a World Series.  If they win this one I shall survive, I suppose.  The Giants have failed me before, and often, and I have muddled through.  But each tragedy has left its scar.

   When the Giants took on Leo Durocher  as manager I felt that I was cured.  He had been manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and I hated both him and the Bums exceedingly.  But it made no difference.  Even though my estimate of Durocher is little changed, the Giants are still my boys.  I would string along with them if Georgi Malenkov were manager.

   Nice guys, somehow don't manage the Giants.  They've had but one who could qualify as such.  He was Mel Ott, a great player but no barn burner as a pilot.  The others, John McGraw, Bill Terry and Durocher, hardly could qualify as charmers.

   Just as managers make no difference in my allegiance, neither does team personnel.  If my current raves, Willie Mays and Johnny Antonelli, were traded to the Pirates my affections would not shift to Pittsburgh.  Willie and Johnny would become enemies.  If the Giants and Cardinals swapped complete teams, Stan Musial would become my ideal.

   I HOPE this week to shift some of the work to a couple of associates who are not baseball crazy.  Then I can watch the games.  In doing so, though, I shall be playing into Cleveland's hands.  Seldom do I see or hear a game that the Giants win.  I jinx them.

   It wasn't Bobby Thomson's homer that decided that playoff game between Brooklyn and New York back in '51.  I was the unsung hero.  I watched this one until the Giants went into the last half of the ninth, trailing by three runs.  By then my suffering had been too much.  I walked away, to mourn alone. A few minutes later the fellows were yelling that New York had won.  I raced back to the television set just in time to catch the final commercial.  But had I remained, Thompson would have been just another out.

   I'm going to watch this series, though.  I have laid up a store of cigarettes and aspirin and my fingernails are a nice length for gnawing.  And I've done what I could to counteract the jinx.  I have a dollar down on Cleveland--and I seldom win bets.  I hope I lose this one.  But if I don't there will be a slight monetary solace for an aching heart.

Addendum--   The Giants swept the Series in four games to win their first championship since 1933, defeating the heavily favored Indians.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express consent of the StarTribune.

Exercise is Something for an Oldster to Shun

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

May 29, 1954

   I WAS with some foolish fellows the other evening who were showing off by standing stiff-legged and bending over to touch their toes.  I don't know what they were trying to prove unless it was imbecility.  For me it would be.  I cannot bend over and even reach my kneecaps and have no desire to try.  It's tough enough lacing my shoes each morning.

   Anyhow I deem the whole business of exercise as silly for anyone past 30 and wish I could escape it entirely.  I wish I didn't have to push a lawnmower or work black dirt into the lawn, or clean up the winter's infestation of debris and junk, and wash windows and put up screens.  Anyone victimized by the spring cleanup who still has a taste for tennis or softball or push-ups is either young or crazy.

   IN A TIME of madness a couple of weeks ago I let myself in for some utterly fruitless exercise.  I purchased a portion of black dirt, a bag of fertilier and a sack of seed.  I resolved to convert my submarginal plot into a showplace--to make a dozen spears of grass flourish where one had languished before.

   The results have been about what I knew in my heart they would be--less than spectacular.  I have done everything but sit up nights with my lawn and can detect little reward for my husbandry.  I have, however, no word of reproach for the black dirt, fertilizer or grass seed, although the price of seed might convince the credulous that the stuff will grow on a tile floor.  The fault is entirely mine.   Grass may survive pestilence, blight or drought.  It cannot survive me.  All I get for such labor is exercise--and exercise I can do without.

   THEY SOUNDED me out the other day about a brand of exertion that is completely abhorrent.  They wanted me to play in a church baseball league.  The mere thought of it gave me a charley horse.

   The fact was brought home to me six years ago that nobody on the far side of 40 should have any truck with baseball besides consuming peanuts and hot dogs and hurling epithets at the umpire.

   At that time I got involved in a game and made a clean hit to centerfield.  I was thrown out trying to stretch it into a single and there has been a distinct tenderness around the right femur ever since.

   I HAD BEEN forewarned several years earlier, while living out west, that exercise was for the birds--but not for one gone flaccid from pecking a typewriter.  I joined the "Y", figuring that the body, once a thing of sinewy and rippling responsiveness needed firming up.

   I swam.  I galloped around the indoor track, hung over the parallel bars and shot baskets.  Then I somehow got entangled in a basketball game with a bunch of kids and aged five years in as many minutes. It was then that I knew the havoc time had wrought.

   When I afterward looked at myself in the locker room mirror I beheld a stranger.  The face was a crimson blob.  The jaw hung slack.  The eyes were those of a man wallowing in a hangover.

   There were no more trips to the muscle factory.  I realized that I was getting on.

   MY WIFE tells me I should take up golf.  But a man has his pride.  I took up golf once, 18 holes of it, and was so bad that even among a bunch of duffers I was a man apart.  If I ever golf again I'll have my wife pack a picnic lunch that I can eat under a tree, remote from the fairway, In the general locality of where I suspect my ball to be.

   If you don't spend 90 per cent of your time hunting the ball, you get in a lot of good walking playing golf, though.  And what is better than walking for the middle-aged?  What, in truth, is left but walking?

   If you take it slow and rest thoroughly afterward it is not overtaxing.  The wonders of nature are all about you--lilacs, pussy willows, lobelia, chicory, wild columbine
 and such.  There are beer cans to kick out of the path.  There is time to read any billboards within sight; time to sit under a tree and gain new strength from the good earth; time to think about those yesterdays when spring meant something.

   The next time my wife says we ought to take a walk around Lake Harriet I'm going to surprise her and go.  I want to see if I'm up to it.  We made the junket once--back in '47--and it was quite a pleasant hike, though a bit tiring.  This time I plan to take my cane.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Small Boy Sizes Up a Vacation

Me

   (In which a travel-weary father reluctantly writes a 10-year-old's version of a vacation)

By TOM GUTHRIE

(son of CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff)

published by the StarTribune

August 1, 1959

   MOM said we had to eat what was in the refrigerator as it would spoil before we got back.  I don't care for scraps.  Neither does Pop, but for four days before we went on our vacation he was choking down cottage cheese, olives, celery, carrots and beans.  You will look a long time before finding a fellow more willing to save a buck.

   The old man never had driven to the east coast before.  He says he is mainly a dirt-road driver and when you ride with him you know it.  We did fine until we hit strange country.  Then Pop began making wrong turns and cussing out the highway department for being so Scotch with road signs.  "You'd think they cost a thousand dollars apiece," he griped.

   THE ONLY evening we holed up early was at Norway, Mich.  We got there about 5 p.m. the first day, after a free lunch on my sister in Rhinelander, Wis.  Pop knew we could get a bargain rate on a cabin, with me sleeping on our cot.  Some sleep!

   Otherwise we kept driving until all the motels were filled up.  As long as Mom sees "vacancy" signs she figures we can drive on a little further, and Pop doesn't like to get reservations ahead.  He says it freezes  your schedule.

   OUR SCHEDULE was thawed out good the second day, when we pulled out of London, Ontario, and drove the wrong way for 25 miles.  Mom, who spent more time looking at road maps and tour books than scenery, said something was rotten in Denmark because we weren't coming to any of the towns we should.  But the old man said he knew what he was doing as the guy said the motel we stayed at was right on the route to Niagara Falls.

   "Maybe we're going in the wrong direction," said Mom.

   "We are not going in the wrong direction," Pop sneered, "but to make you happy I'll stop at the next gas station and inquire."

   WE HAD a late breakfast in London, Ontario.  After 50 miles of driving we had made no gain.  Some breakfast!  Mom and Pop were white with fury.

Me at Niagara Falls

   Niagara Falls made everybody happy again.  "It's a good thing we have the kid along," Pop cracked, "or they'd take us for a couple of honeymooners."  Mom smiled, giving the old man credit for a nice recovery, and everything was fine until we crossed the bridge back into the U.S. and began groping around for the New York thruway, which everybody said we couldn't miss if we followed the signs.

   They said we couldn't miss a lot of places but the old man missed them all.  Finally he said he would strangle the next guy who said "you can't miss it."  To follow the signs, he said, you needed the eyes of a falcon and the nose of a bloodhound and also should be a mind reader.  He would give his eye teeth, he said, to be driving down a country lane that was garnished with horse manure.

   ON THE turnpikes things were better.  There was only one way to go.  They were even simpler than Choteau, Mont., Pop said, and he often let Mom drive on them.  The only thing she didn't like was passing big trucks on curves, even though there was no chance of getting smeared if she kept in the passing lane, as the old man kept yapping at her.

Pop and me looking at the Mayflower

   We stopped at Boston before going to Cape Cod for a week and Pop said they should tear the place down and start over, sparing only the historic spots.  He said Boston obviously was laid out by a guy with delirium tremens and if he spent a week there he'd die of claustrophobia and frustration. 

   We took a sightseeing bus you could fry an egg on but it was worth the price to watch the driver thread the thing through dinky one-way streets and miss barber poles and store fronts by inches.  He also had to yack about Paul Revere and Bunker Hill.  The guy deserves a raise.

   IT RAINED most of the time on Cape Cod.  We spent one lively morning looking at old tombstones.  One inscription said "Death Is Gain."  Pop said the fellow must have driven in Boston.  We also saw Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrim monument in Provincetown and a hermit crab.

Me and Mom at Plymouth Rock

   In New York we took a boat ride around Manhattan and saw the Statue of Liberty and a lot of bridges and tall buildings and Pop bought me a hot dog in a burst of generosity.

   On the way home we stopped at Gettysburg and in a museum they had a map of the battlefield with blue and red lights that flashed on and off while a fellow explained how the Confederates got smeared.  Near Gettysburg we stopped at a place where cokes were only a nickel.  It was all quite historic.

   BACK ON the turnpike Mom looked at the map and said we were close to Wheeling and she'd like to slip down and see Helen Gregory.

   "For your information," Pop declared, "we are not slipping down anywhere to see anybody.  We already have slipped around for 3,500 miles.  I'm ready to slip home."

   That's what we did.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Trials of a Parakeet Owner

Pierrot and Tom

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

Aug 3, 1957

   IF YOU'RE willing to overlook assorted turtles and goldfish--and to discount a couple of white mice which still may be loose in the garage--I can say without fear of contradiction that the family never has lost a pet save through natural death or by design.

Dad at the Great Falls Tribune

   Our Boston terrier was with us for 14 years and full of beans until her demise.  A bunny purchased for a long-ago Easter grew into giant maturity despite dogs, cats and finally owner indifference.  The kids "sold" it to a rabbit farmer for a dollar.  The dollar had been slipped to the man by my wife.

   A horned toad bought in early summer was turned loose weeks ago because of the feeding problem. Live insects, which seem plentiful enough, come suddenly into short supply when sought as feed.  But the toad hangs around.  We see it a couple of times a week in the flower beds.  It will hole up in the rock garden come winter, no doubt, and reappear, stolid and imperturbable, next May.

   BUT LATE last Saturday afternoon the roof fell in.  Pierrot, the parakeet, than which there is none cuter or smarter, swooped through the momentarily open porch door and into the blue.

   Six months ago I'd have said that any adult who mourned the loss of a parakeet wasn't quite grown up.  If this is true I admit adolescence.  We combed the neighborgood, scanned the trees with binoculars, whistled and called, put the cage outside with the door open, hoping that hunger would draw our wanderer home.  We all were sick deep inside.  Our son cried himself to sleep.  We felt like joining him.

   "But we haven't lost a pet yet," my wife said feebly, "and I think our luck will hold."

   She was whistling in the dark.  Next morning there was nothing near the cage but sparrows and nobody we contacted had seen a  parakeet.

   AFTER a solemn Sunday, I put and ad in the paper.  The move was a ten-strike.  The ad appeared Tuesday and the phone began ringing.  It seemed that the city was swarming with blue parakeets on the loose.  We heard that one had been rescued from Lake Calhoun.  We saw one that had been taken from Lake Harriet.

   Our hopes high, we began running down the leads.  But as bird after bird proved a stranger, I finally was ready to claim anything other than a bald eagle.  Succumbing at last to the urge to fetch home a parakeet, we bought a feathered vagabond from a woman and took it home.

   But it wasn't our perky, perpetual-motion chatterbox.  Plump, stodgy and silent, it would only eat and  roost.  To my son's objection, I dubbed it Pokey, the Blue Goose, and my wife vowed that if we didn't find our bird within 24 hours she'd roam the pet shops for his double.

Ricky and Snowy

Skeeter and Elvis

   BY WEDNESDAY but one parakeet finder remained to be contacted.  After work that day, with Brad Morison, a colleague, I started out.  Brad left instructions that if his wife called the office she should be told that he would be late for dinner, being engaged in a silly parakeet safari.

   I had small hopes.  The address was miles from our home, far out of parakeet range, I figured.  When we arrived I told Brad to wait in the car, I'd be right out.

   He waited for some time, while two other people and I tried to catch a bird flying around in a large room, a bird in no mood, after four days of adventures, to have another one.  Capture required 20 minutes.

   I DROVE home in wild elation, with Brad holding Pierrot in a cardboard box and making snide remarks about chaperoning a parakeet and wondering why I was so sure the bird was really mine.  Morison is a tropical fish man.

   But my wife and child welcomed the prodigal with an ecstacy unseen in the old hut since Christmas. We were even ready to accept the Blue Goose as a permanent resident, despite Pierrot's initial hostility.

   We didn't have to do so, however.  A couple of hours later we got a phone call from the neighborhood where we'd obtained the bird.  The caller proved to be the owner.  She took Pokey away.

   Now everyone's happy.  But our son wants another parakeet as a companion for Pierrot--one we can name Pierrette, naturally.

Pippin (parrotlet)

Piedemont (parrotlet)

(P.S. Pierette has arrived)


Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

    

Black Bug is 'Freed' after These 20 Years

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

Of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune

December 3, 1967

   WE TOOK Big Joe out of the garage a while back.  He had been hanging in the rafters for 20 years and must have been pleased to get into the light and savor the prospect of some action.

   There had been action aplenty back about 1947 after my older son had painstakingly put Big Joe together and readied him for the Soap Box Derby.  The black bug won one heat and thereafter was retired, but not before it had given me the type of thrill associated with ski-jumping or Russian roulette.

   My son had a paper route in those days and his Sunday burden was such that my conscience goaded me into assisting him.  We used a wagon of inadequate size to haul the bundles from the station to where we spotted them.

   ON THIS particular Sunday the lad said that since we had the big bug we might as well use it instead of the little wagon, so we wheeled Big Joe a couple of blocks to an intersection from which point it was down-grade to the station.

   Before getting aboard, I mentioned with some trepidation that we had to go through a couple of intersections and since Big Joe had no brakes whatever we might get creamed by an automobile.  The chance of this was remote, my son said, since it was barely 5 a.m.  So off we started, hitting the first intersection at about 30 m.p.h., going faster through the next one, but suffering damage only to my nervous system.

   Shortly thereafter I consigned Big Joe to the garage rafters.  He was too hot an item for the boys in the neighborhood.  I told my son that if he ever had a compelling reason for getting the thing out of mothballs he was free to do so.

   HE NEVER DID.  He finished school, got married and moved away.  A second son came along but the cut of his jib was different.  He noticed Big Joe and would reach up and give its wheels an occasional spin but he never asked to ride the thing.  Neither did his playmates, although the Tierney kids next door gave it some longing looks and Katie could have talked me into getting it down had she turned on the charm.

   Then, on a Sunday afternoon this fall, my son and his family checked in for dinner.  Big Joe came into the conversation and there was much begging from the grandsons.  We went into the garage and lifted it from the rafters.

   WITH ITS WHEELS back on the ground and layers of dust removed, the bug seemed as shiny and sturdy as ever and won admiring glances from the assembled smallfry.  We maneuvered it into my son's station wagon and when the family drove off the curtain came down on some history.

   Through the mist of years I could see my son mooring an electric motor to the work bench and using it to spin and break in the special wheels he'd bought.  The wheels spun for days and he periodically applied lubricants and abrasives.

   Then there were Big Joe and his pilot high on the ramp and poised for the race--not long afterward, defeat.

   The word now is that Big Joe has fallen apart.  It's just as well.  His new surroundings were hilly and dangerous, and I'm glad he collapsed before anyone got hurt.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune

 

Travel Arrangements Can Kill You

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

June 25, 1960

   TRAVEL is a staunch ally of enlightenment--and enlightenment enriches living.  And yet I gravitate more and more to inertia.  This drift toward immobility is never more pronounced than during preparations for a vacation.  I find travel arrangements about as stimulating as Brussels sprouts or a letter from Uncle Ernest.

   It's not travel per se that's galling.  There's a thrill in heading for faraway places, shedding the familiar and becoming a vagabond.  It's implementing the venture that kills me--the details, the scheduling, the road maps and reservations, the writing to Joe and Vera that we're coming and isn't it wonderful!

   

   THE FULL impact of the labor involved in this annual flap hit me the other day when I came upon a "vacation checklist" in a trade magazine.  Its aim was to help but all I got out of the thing was frustration, rebellion and fatigue.  The whole awesome parade of preparation was therein contained--from putting a stop order on the milk to making out a will.

   What a fool I'd been to assume in past years that an oil change and grease job had readied the car for the test.  Sixteen checks should be made on the car, everything from tail-pipe to radiator.  I blushed in shame to recall having once transported my loved ones over 4,000 miles of vacation trail with questionable tires and no jack.  I found the jack in the garage on our return and was visibly shaken.

   BUT GETTING the car ready is only a starter.  There's the house to consider.  You can't simply lock it and leave it.  You must give some trustworthy neighbor a key and have him or her--usually her--take in the mail, water the plants, turn a light on at night to give the appearance of occupancy, and check for gas leaks and fires.

   If the neighbor is a real pushover she also will spray the roses and make her kids mow the lawn.  It's particularly important that the yard be cared for.  Returning to knee-high grass and sagging petunias reduces the thrill of homecoming and also your standing in the neighborhood.

   THE LONGER I studied this vacation treatise the more convinced I became that it was a committee job, with each member feeling compelled to make a contribution.  One suggestion, tossed out by a demon for detail, called for listing all items in each suitcase and fastening the list inside the lid.

   Such silliness would make our vacation a tragic farce.  It might reduce the risk of loss but would represent an expenditure of time and energy far too great for the picayune reward.  Better to leave your toothbrush in Tucson, I say, than drive yourself batty taking inventory.  When scheduled to be in Yellowstone ogling Old Faithful, my wife and I would be mired down in South Dakota pursuing a pair of socks.

   THERE IS a far easier way to prevent loss than this.  When you have everything rammed in the suitcases and are ready for the next leg of the journey, simply make a final inspection of your lodging.  If nothing is found under the bed, on or inside the dresser, in the clothes closet or bathroom, the only sane conclusion you can reach is that nothing's been forgotten.

   The plan isn't infallible.  You occasionally leave swimming suits hanging from trees or fishing rods leaning against cabins.  But you do get away early and frequently without loss of temper.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

   

The Trial of Meeting Old Friends

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune

March 7, 1959

   PERIODICALLY you cross paths with someone you haven't seen for from 15 to 50 years.  This is supposed to be thrilling.  For many it is.  For me it isn't.  All I get out of it is new inferiority.  My old friends are so blessed with abundance that I feel like a shoe-shine boy.

   I used to dream of bumping into a former comrade selling pencils on the corner so I could pop a coin into his hat and feel superior.  The dream has turned to dust.  I'm always the guy selling the pencils.  

   These old friends of mine smoke 50 cent cigars, drive cars 40 feet long, eat as casually in swank restaurants as I eat in drug stores, and are always vacationing in Bermuda.  They have been everywhere, can talk about anything, and what they don't know is inconsequential.

   WHENEVER they come to town and phone I'm immediately apprehensive.  I lie, parry and stall, hoping to steer them from my humble refuge.  But my hard-to-impress wife, who considers friendship above crass materialism, wonders why I never ask them home to dinner.

   She says their prosperity probably is phony and if they weren't on expense accounts they'd starve.  If a friend is a friend, she says, he appreciates your hospitality and I should get over my silly complex.

   But my complex is disgustingly durable.  It applies even to relatives.  I blanch at the thought of encountering a certain cousin I haven't seen since the last war was the Spanish-American.  I recall her as a pretty girl with black curls--the great love of my childhood.

   I heard from her a while back.  She apparently has the notion that all newspaper folk are characters and she'd like to see me again.  The desire is mutual, but when we meet she'll see a tired man wearing a tired blue serge and a tired smile.  But she will be beautiful still, beautiful and radiant and charming.  My lot is to suffer invariably by comparison.

   FRIENDS who traffic in soft soap sometimes tell me they know someone who is eager to meet me and they are going to arrange it.  How about dinner two weeks from Friday?  Anyone else might feel flattered.  I feel a chill.

   Whenever such a confrontation occurs I'm at my worst.  My worst is very bad, bordering on imbecility.  Billed as the life of the party, as one who spouts witticisms like a slot machine disgorging quarters, I state the obvious about the weather and then stand mute, letting my wife carry on from there.

   If the hostess suggests bridge, and she always does, I cast a wild eye for the nearest exit.  I know my partner will be that person who wanted to meet the newspaper chap.  The next 30 minutes will seem like years to us both.

   WHILE the thought is repugnant, perhaps the "character" pose is the best defense.  It might be smart to grow sideburns three inches long, or wear a full beard and a dirty shirt, both flecked with cigar ashes, and assume an attitude of boorish indifference.

   In such a getup one could be an eccentric instead of a wet blanket, a tyrant instead of a washout.  Let someone propose bridge and you could roar, "To hell with it!  Bridge is for morons!"  This sounds autocratic enough to chill and impress even a sophisticate.

   If you had nothing to say you wouldn't have to say it.  You could take shelter in a huff or feign meditation.  Bieng a character, this would be part of your act.  If asked for an opinion--which I seldom have--you could sneer loftily and say the question was academic.

   But I'm dreaming again.  I couldn't bring it off.  I was reared in the country and the country is with me still.  I can be only myself.  It isn't enough, but it will have to do.

Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.