Hating Is Easy But Devitalizing

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
January 7, 1961


   DESPITE all our attacks on sin and our prayers for tolerance and peace, we seem just as sinful and intolerant as ever--and peace is just as elusive.
   It's all the fault of the Communist conspiracy. If the Russians and Red Chinese would see the light and abandon their evil designs everything would be dandy. The millennium would be at hand and the lion would snuggle up to the lamb.
   This is just too cozy a rationalization. The threat of world war would diminish, of course, if the Communists became agreeable. But since man is imperfect even under a democratic govermnent the little office, church and neighborhood wars would continue and backbiting would not cease.

   WE HAVE just been through a season which emphasizes the virtue of goodwill and brotherhood. But its message too often is forgotten, scorned or submerged by prejudice. We all know that hate is a monstrous and self-consuming thing, but we keep on hating regardless, usually for picayune reasons.
   We hate someone's looks or his tone of voice. We hate him because he's too aggressive or too patronizing. If he's aloof it's not because he's shy but because he's conceited. If he has a ready laugh he's not an affable fellow but a phony.

   I'VE ACQUIRED an imposing list of hates in my time but am not as good a hater as formerly. I lack the strength for it. It's robbed me of sleep, composure and rational thought. And as I ponder the list, it shames me to realize that most of my hates have sprung from envy.
   A lot of people throw themselves into hate with missionary zeal and abandon. They cling to suspicion, gossip and grudges as though they were meat and drink. They are constantly being slighted, constantly having their feelings hurt and constantly plotting revenge.

   THOSE WHO have immunity to hatred are as rare as sand hill cranes, and the irony of it all is that we so often hate without reason. You sometimes meet a person you dislike on sight and whose faults you magnify in subsequent encounters to bolster your nonsensical notion that you are "a good judge of character."
   Then this social misfit does something that opens your eyes. By act or word he reveals himself as a solid citizen and may even become a bosom companion.

   YOU CANNOT honestly hate anyone unless you know him. And if you know him you seldom hate him. There are some genuine jerks in the world but the good guys far outnumber the bad. For every one who would hold your head under water there are thousands who would pull you to shore. Despite his faults, his frequent ill humor and his parsimony, the other fellow is basically decent. Anyone who doesn't think so either has a persecution complex or is letting hate destroy him.
   If I had the capacity to keep a New Year resolution I'd make this one: "Be charitable, compassionate and patient. Avoid snap judgments.

Be good to those you hate. If you find this too tall an order, avoid and forget them."

   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

Peanut-Butter Addict Tells All

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
October 28, 1961


   IF YOUNG enough to go trick-or-treating, I'd count it a good evening's work if I got nothing more than a slice of bread plastered with butter and peanut butter. This combination, washed down with milk, has served me well as long as I can remember. If eaten just before bedtime, it gets one through very nicely until breakfast.
   My youngest is a peanut butter fiend, too, and so were his older brother and sister. But I always was more the purist than they. Whereas they defiled peanut butter with jelly for sandwiches, I've never even cared much for plain peanut butter when it was imprisoned between two pieces of bread. I want it spread thick and I want it straight up.

   HOWEVER, I don't like peanut butter all the time. It is repugnant in the morning. Some odd balls enjoy it on toast at the start of the day. None of my brood ever had this revolting habit and I'm humbly grateful. The odor of it at that hour rocks me.
   Also, unless plagued by starvation, I can walk away from a platter of peanut-butter cookies without effort. The same goes for peanut butter candy. I hope to be spared any such goodies during the holidays.
   But if forced to limit my intake to a dozen items of food from now until the finish, I'd include peanut butter. I couldn't live comfortably without it, particularly before going to bed. Ordinarily I spread it on bread but for really fast refueling eat it direct from the jar.

   I WAS an even greater addict years ago, before the food processors got in their licks and made peanut butter smooth and creamy so it would spread prettily for television. Slaves of modernity claim that this has improved it. I say it hasn't and deplore the fact that today's small-fry is largely unaware of just how good peanut butter can be when left alone and not put through the homogenizer.
   There's little current demand for old-fashioned, pre-Madison avenue peanut butter but in my estimate the spread popular today compares about as favorably with the original article as cultured buttermilk does to the kind we used to get from the churn.

   FOR YEARS I've implored my wife--for Pere sake--to buy some peanut butter with a quarter of an inch of oil on top. Supported by my son, who rates my tastes as Neanderthal, she's resisted, saying our grocer had more brains than to stock it and that if she did get some she'd have to throw it away when it was half gone because it would get dry and hard as a rock.
   I admit that the oil has to be worked in with practically every using, whereas the homogenized article will remain pliant until the next presidential election. But must even our salivary glands be sacrificed on the altar of convenience and easy spreading?

IN a small-town store the other day I chanced upon a jar of old-style peanut butter. It was comparable to seeing a barrel of pickles, a round of cheese and a bunch of bananas hanging from a rope.
   I pounced on it with a glad cry, took my treasure home and, at the first opportunity, plastered a generous potion on a slab of bread, poured a beaker of milk, and went to work.
   Here was big-league eating. Here was time flung backward. Here was the unglamorous, unrefined article. As I intermittently ate and cleared the roof of my mouth, I recaptured a flash of childhood. I was a boy again, sitting beside the kitchen range or stretched under the old cottonwood out back, having a snack in a blissful yesterday.


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 Be Happy, Forget to Regret

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
October 24, 1959



   NOBODY can be perpetually happy. This is perhaps just as well. It might get monotonous. Still, happiness is a boon, and those who enjoy a greater portion of it than the rest of us aren't just lucky even though they may be healthier and naturally more optimistic. Whether or not they realize it, they also have a happiness formula.
   Pursuit of happiness is a constitutional right but many of us chase it with less verve than do others. Those who chase it hardest appear to be happy even when stretched on a hospital bed or playing canasta. From all visible manifestations they are gloom-proof.
   They are not gloom-proof. Nobody is. But they have more-than-average happiness because they've learned to shrug off misfortunes and not relive embarrassing scenes. They can forget financial blows, flubbed bridge hands and loss of possessions.

   WHY, after the initial shock, should a husband be rankled by the fact that his wife blew $30 for a pair of shoes or a purse? Stern admonishment is permissible as a hedge against future folly. But what purpose is served in repeatedly asking what will be used for money to pay for the stuff? This only makes for bad blood.
   Or if you lose the grocery money playing poker, you only compound your misery by wishing you hadn't. The boys won't return your money and you might as well charge it all off to experience, resolve not to let it happen again, and dismiss the loss from your mind--if your wife and the grocer will let you.

   THE PEOPLE  of little happiness are those who wish they could do it all over---and do it differently. They grieve about the jobs they should have taken and didn't, or the jobs they took and shouldn't; the stocks they bought or didn't buy, the wrong cars they purchased and the accidents they shouldn't have had. They suffocate in a slough of it-might-have-beens.
   Weeping and repining never took the wrinkles out of a fender or undid a mistake. Mistakes are water over the dam. They serve only as guides to the future. And the loss of a watch, ring, jacket, glove or scarf is not vital enough to curdle the future.

  I WRITE from bitter experience. The whole subject is close to my heart. Regret is with me almost constantly and new hats only fleetingly. I have a talent for losing toppers that borders on genius. And because I used to mourn such losses exceedingly and wallowed so much in self-condemnation, it was difficult to find happiness until I adopted the mental attitude that happy folks have. Now the "forget it" formula is working for me, too.

   After going without a hat all summer, I was driven by the autumn chill to the hat box on the closet shelf. Removal of the lid established the dismaying fact that no hat was there. It hadn't been there, apparently, since early summer.
   I made half a dozen unrewarding phone calls and then said to heck with it. There were other hats. But often at night, before sleep came, I lay in bed and suffered, trying vainly to retrace the comings and goings of months ago when I thought I was wearing a hat.
   It was the best hat I ever owned, but its loss will worry me no more. It's probably hanging in quiet, neglected dignity in some roadside cafe. I hope though, that this is not so. I am not little. I hope it's being worn and giving comfort and satisfaction to some lucky stiff whose right to it is questionable. I'm as happy as if I still had it--or never had it.
   It was gray with a black band. It was size 7 5/8 and had my initials inside. If it doesn't fit you, I'd appreciate a call.


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.
 
 

Home's the Place for Christmas

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
December 20, 1958


   I'LL BE HOME for Christmas--and glad to be there. None of this honking down the pike to Aunt Mary's for me , risking my neck in holiday traffic and wearing myself out driving. Aunt Mary lives too far away, and her mince pie isn't good enough to lure me from the fireside.
   Christmas is a home day and Christmas Eve a home evening. I have children and grandchildren I'd love to be with but don't hanker to see them and don't want them to come and see me.

   THIS sounds heartless and demands explaining. Had my wife and I only ourselves to consider we might be induced to hit the road for the holidays. But we have a 10-year-old who associates Christmas with home. He would kick like a mule if he had to be away.
   Our grandchildren are of similar mind. They love us dearly, I assume, but our home is not their home. They want the thrill of being tucked into their own beds. They want to imagine the reindeer on their own roof. They want Santa to come down their chimney. They want to gather at their own tree next morning and observe their own Christmas customs.

   CHILDREN get too much jouncing around at all seasons. I have yet to see one with much tolerance for long travel, irregular and unfamiliar meals and strange beds. And Christmas gets such a big and early buildup now that young ones are half sick from excitement by the time the day arrives. To be pushed and pulled through pre-Christmas crowds is no boon to their health, either.
   There is always the chance, too, that a moppet will go south with too hefty a piece of fruitcake on the big day and suffer sharp and insistent misery in the midriff. If he's going to be sick, he's better off being sick at home.

NOT  NORMAL FOR CHRISTMAS

   TO ME the ideal Christmas Day is leisurely and undemanding. At our place breakfast is an uncertain, catch-as-catch-can, serve yourself affair. That's how we prefer it. It usually comes about 10 a.m. after the gifts are opened.
   We set no store in bountiful Christmas dinners. Unless guests are coming and expect them, we don't emphasize big feeds. A big feed means work, and kitchen slavery is particularly onerous on Christmas Day, even when the slave is your wife.
   After all that shopping, gift wrapping, stamp licking, cookie making, decorating and double-checking to be sure that a card has been sent to the Greens at their new address, a wife shouldn't have to wrestle a turkey or mash potatoes. She shouldn't that is, unless so inclined. Some women think it their bounden duty to knock themselves out on special days. Those so inclined are beyond help.

CARROMS

CROKINOLE 

   YOU SHOULD allow time to play those new Christmas games with your child. We played a lot of crockinole and carroms on Christmas when I was a boy and my father enjoyed it all as much as we did.
   Such pastimes would be laughed out of the living room today, I suppose, as would primitive wind-up trains and automobiles. I spent considerable time last Christmas playing Monopoly with my son, however, and think crokinole would have been preferable. Crokinole doesn't demand much thought.
   Dad also read aloud from our new Christmas books. That sort of thing isn't done much now.

   BUT EXCEPT for the greater advance blare, Christmas hasn't changed fundamentally and won't. There's still the humble beauty of its divine origin, still the promise of peace on earth and universal goodwill.
   I think it should be kept simple and uncluttered, undefined by raucous celebration or frantic scurrying about. There should be time for meditation and appreciation of family. There should be some singing around the piano, some harking back to Christmases past.
   You can do all this only in one place--home. That's why I'm glad I'll be there.

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

Why the Friendship Barriers?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune

December 30, 1961

   I HAVE in mind a few dozen couples I wish my wife and I knew better. If, during the year ahead, we could get them on our social circuit we'd be well pleased. We're on jovial terms with folks we like very much, nearby residents and people we meet in church, at PTA meetings and parties.
   But the chance of enlarging the area of close friendship during the next 12 months isn't particularly bright. We'll doubtless remain in the same familiar groove and run with the same old crowd.

   WE'RE TOO busy and preoccupied to do otherwise. So is everybody else who's lived in one place long. It's convenient and enjoyable, a custom less taxing than extending invitations to persons who have never been inside the house. But time is more the villain than habit.
   To know the Whites better, you must invite them over to dinner or an evening of bridge and dessert. But if this cultivation of new friends isn't kept within bounds something has to give. There aren't enough evenings to go around, unless you jettison your old buddies.
   Social climbers, in their struggles to attain eminence, don't hesitate to do this. But they are a sparse breed, praise be, and confined almost entirely to ambitious young sprouts eager to know the right people and who haven't yet attained a true sense of values.

   STILL, though old friends are beyond price, it's nice to enlarge the scope--and too bad that the process is so time-consuming and shackled by form. Back in a far yesterday you could invite the Whites over on the spur of the minute for nothing more sophisticated than coffee and conversation. You could even pay them an unannounced call. You can't now. This informal technique can even estrange close companions.
   You invite the Whites over a couple of weeks in advance, being very specific about arrival time so they won't catch you vacuuming the carpet. You plan decor, food and diversion with all the care of a general mapping battle strategy.
   Since you can't do this often without killing yourself, you seldom do it at all. The result is that many potential friendships never flower and strangers have a tough time putting down roots. If they could drop in for cheese and crackers they'd have it made.

   IV'E DONE my share of yapping about church but am not blind to church benefits, one of which is sociability. Those who dismiss the church as "the poor man's country club," impress me only slightly.
   The criticism is partially true, if it qualifies as criticism, but just what's wrong with church being a social center? If that isn't one of its functions then I've missed the message. I've found many of my best friends in a "poor man's country club." So have thousands of others.

   THE ONLY contact my wife and I have with a lot of people we're fond of comes on Sunday in church. I have some misgivings about the destiny of my soul but none about such contacts.
   If "having folks in" had not become such a protocol-encrusted flap, a lot of people we'd like to have as close friends would become just that. If you're one of those we'd like to know better, if cheese and crackers aren't beneath you and you don't mind a place with a "lived in" look, drop around and give friendship a chance.


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


 

(Thanksgiving) Reunions Call for Preparation

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
November 21, 1959


   IT'S BEEN a year since we've had the whole tribe under the roof, but, barring blizzard or illness, our kids and their spouses and kids will be with us this Thanksgiving. Anticipation is so high that if anything happens to spoil the plan we'll send back the turkey and cry in our cornmeal mush.
   I'm thinking of kidnapping some one's little daughter for the day to give the gentle sex better representation. We now number 13, with only three females, all adults. Our six grandchildren are all boys. I'd given up hope that either my daughter or daughter-in-law will ever mother anything but sons.
   Any chance of a granddaughter is 10 to 15 years away. My youngest son is that far from marriage, I trust. And if he should sire a daughter it may be a little late, with only Memorial day rites reminding her of grandpa. The clock is running out on me.

   WE FIND grandsons quite exciting, though. We fatigue visitors with snapshots of them, parrot their cute sayings pridefully and know they all are gifted beyond their years.
   We've instituted a series of family councils preparatory to their coming so the soirée will not be marred by broken legs or cracked skulls. The safety factor calls for particular attention because of 10-year-old Uncle Tom, who is regarded by his nephews as the epitome of masculine perfection. His every move must be copied. His every word is a howl.
   He does have a way, though, of leaving basement doors open and otherwise unwittingly setting booby traps for his juniors. However, we've lectured him sternly on the importance of caution when the little ones are here and I'm confident he'll be at least as safe as a color-blind deer hunter.
   "We simply must get everything out of reach," I admonished. "We'll have crawlers as well as runners and fallers. There must be no marbles, jacks or crayons on the floor, no cigarette butts where they can be eaten, no vases on the coffee table, no knives within reach in the kitchen, no parakeets flitting around. Nobody must be allowed to pull the cuckoo clock off the wall, knock over lamps, throw blocks at the TV or fall downstairs."
   "And remember," my wife put in with a stern look at her son, "if anybody gets hurt we'll be to blame. We want to have a happy time and will--if we're all careful."
   "Also," Uncle Tom grinned, deeming it time to get in a word, "we don't want anyone getting chickenpox." He had recently been afflicted and was talking to his mother, who'd never had the disease.
   "Don't worry about my getting chickenpox," she laughed. "People my age are immune."

   SHE DISCOVERED next day she was wrong. People her age do get it occasionally, a nurse told her, and in such cases the malady is invariably severe. This cheerful soul even remarked that an 80-year-old woman she knew recently had succumbed to measles, "so you never can tell."
   Now we're worried. Chickenpox, they say, comes about two weeks after exposure. If milady gets it--and if our luck runs true she will--she'll break out in a few days and the holiday festival will be shot.
   If this happens I won't even eat mush come Thanksgiving. I'll drown myself in the stuff.

                                                                    Mike Guthrie

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

 

Era Ends as Old House Is Sold

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
November 17, 1962


IT HAD to happen sometime--and it's happened. The old house close by the river that's been the clan's unofficial headquarters for a quarter of a century has been sold and it makes us sad. When the last lingering resident reluctantly took his leave and the "For Sale"sign went up, it meant the end of an era.
  A good era it was, too, an era of reunions, laughs, picnics on a lawn that stretched generously out back. Children frolicked there, as their children did years later. There were baseball, croquet and badminton games--and contentment of soul.

   BUT THE PLACE became too big, as houses do when children grow up and depart and the old die or become enfeebled. No matter what the sentimental pull, a two-story house with three spacious bedrooms is an unrelenting taskmaster, too much for a fellow with gimpy heart and poor eyesight.
   So old Jack has taken his leave. His three daughters came to divide the furniture and keep, discard or give away the myriad things a house has a way of gathering unto itself through the years.
   Then, old Jack, resolutely not looking back, rode off to Milwaukee to begin the final chapter.

   WE'D SEEN it coming for two years, ever since Blanche, the gracious lady of the manor, died. More than anyone else in the family, she gave the place character, serenity and spontaneous, unfailing hospitality. She could always be depended on--and she was depended on too much. She knew little leisure and little luxury, this sister-in-law of mine, but she gave unstintingly, readily and gladly and was quick with kindness and appreciation.
   "Let's drive over to see Blanche and Jack," I would say--or my wife would say--a couple of tines a week. We knew their greeting could be no warmer had we not seen them for six months, that coffee would be put on, that we'd have a few rubbers of bridge, and wind up the evening with cake and ice cream while Jack and I talked baseball.

   ONE IS fortunate to have such relatives and this truth knifes us increasingly now. When Jack was still around the old house, we subconsciously felt Blanche's rewarding presence, too, and were soothed by echoes and memories of days when we were younger and had more than we knew.
   I hated to see old Jack leave town. It was downright comforting to be around him. I've always felt that he was on my side, even though he's often told me we should feel no bond of kinship.
   "We really aren't related, you know," he'd grin. "You actually aren't my brother-in-law. We merely married sisters."

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