Not That You Asked (9780307822215) Read online

  I don’t think we’ll ever know, because baseball is more willing to take a chance on Giamatti than Yale would be to try Billy Martin. I personally know several Yale graduates who wouldn’t want Martin at Yale but I don’t know any ex–baseball players who mind having Giamatti … or who’d ever heard of him, for that matter.

  The idea of people changing jobs is a good one, though. More of us should do it. Too many people get stuck doing the same dull thing all their lives without ever finding out whether they have the ability to do something else.

  Most of us don’t dare change jobs. We’re chicken. If we’re making an OK living so we’re able to pay the mortgage or the rent, the car loan, the insurance premiums and the grocery bills and have good enough credit to borrow for a vacation, we don’t want to rock the boat.

  Most of us are trapped by the pension system, too. People stick at a job for no other reason than that they’ve already been at it for eighteen years.

  “Three more years, Andy,” a friend said to me the other day. “Just three more years and I’m getting out of here. I can’t wait.”

  Someone ought to do him a favor and fire him so he won’t waste three years of his life working at a job he doesn’t like.

  Dr. Giamatti says that he’s dreamed of being in big-league baseball all his life. It’s nice that he’s realized his dream. I’ve known half a dozen people who have dreamed of being concert pianists, famous actors or best-selling authors but never made it. I have one good friend who is clever with his voice and writes funny material but he sticks at a nine-to-five job because he doesn’t quite dare quit and try to make it as a comedian.

  I’m not certain he could make it, either. The trouble is there aren’t many openings for comedians, concert pianists or acting stars. If you are the 27,000th best insurance salesman, you can make a very good living but there isn’t much market for your talent if you’re the 27,000th best violinist in the world. And no television network is going to pay a lot of money to even the 270th funniest comedian. My friend may be funnier than 229 million Americans but that isn’t good enough.

  Other people stick at dull jobs because that’s what they do. Work is a nervous habit. They never think of trying to do anything else. They get up in the morning and their routine is so established they never give changing it a thought.

  I say, “Hurray for A. Bartlett Giamatti,” but his friends at Yale may be quoting his hero John Milton:

  But oh the heavy change, now thou art gone,

  Now thou art gone and never must return!

  Tod Wing’s Hardware Store

  On vacation, when it’s too early to have a drink and I’m tired of doing everything else, I drive the thirty miles into town and stop by Tod Wing’s hardware store.

  If you think hardware stores aren’t what they used to be, you haven’t been to R. B. Wing’s in Albany, New York. R. B. Wing’s is just like it used to be. It’s a hardware museum, except most of the stock is where you can’t see it.

  There are no pots, no pans and no fancy displays. There are three wooden floors and most of what they have is hidden away in bins or on upstairs shelves. Tod’s got things in stock that his grandfather put in. They’ll sell someday. Tod doesn’t worry about it.

  If I were rich, I’d like to buy the whole store and just go there and play every day, like a little girl plays with her dollhouse. It might be a good way for me to lose weight because I like a good hardware store better than I like to eat. It could never happen, of course. It’s Tod’s dollhouse and it’s not for sale at any price.

  You know that anyone who’s stuck at one thing for as long as Tod has must have some stubborn qualities. Tod’s got them. I like his store but I’m glad I don’t work for him. He’s one of those bosses who comes in early, eats a quick lunch across the street, stays late and is always watching.

  It’s hot in the store these days. After I’ve talked to Tod in his little office, I wander out into the store and always have the same joke with the rest of the guys who are digging into the dark corners to make up the orders.

  “Tod says he’s going to air-condition the place next week,” I tell them.

  They nod and smile as if to say, “Oh, sure he is.”

  He never will, of course. Tod’s attitude is that if the place needed air-conditioning, his great-grandfather would have had it done when he opened the store down by the Hudson River in 1845. Tod’s father had another chance when they moved into the new store in 1915. The guys are lucky to have electricity. The lights aren’t very bright but it must have been a big day for the store when Tod’s father decided to put electric lights in at all.

  As much as I admire Tod for holding his ship to the wind, when I buy a tool, I often buy it somewhere else because he doesn’t have what I want.

  You can’t get a Makita drill or a Bosch sander in his place. He won’t have anything in his store that isn’t made in America. The Japanese, the Germans and the English all make better tools than we make in America but Tod doesn’t carry any of them.

  “Our business is here,” Tod says, speaking of America. “We buy here.”

  Some of the heavier woodworking tools made in America are still good. I bought a big Powermatic table saw made in Tennessee from Tod two years ago, and it’s a beauty, but I had to go somewhere else to buy the Freud carbide-tipped blades made in Spain. They’re the best but he won’t give them shelf space.

  The store does so much business with heavy hardware users like contractors and schools that they aren’t looking for the Saturday-morning crowd like me anyway.

  “They come in looking for a pound of nails,” Tod says. “What are you gonna do? We accommodate ’em.”

  The store sells a lot of tools to local schools too, and many of them are compelled by law to Buy American. Tod wouldn’t do it any differently if they weren’t. He wouldn’t stock a Japanese chisel or a Swedish handsaw if it meant staying in business.

  It doesn’t look as though R. B. Wing will be going out of business any time soon, either.

  The future looks good for R. B. Wing. Tod’s son Charles and his grandson Steven are both there now.

  Mail Call

  The bad news is, it’s going to cost you a quarter to mail a letter from now on.

  The good news is, you won’t be getting as much junk mail.

  I called a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service and he said businesses that use junk mail to sell us stuff will be using it less because of the rate increase. The third-class mail rate was raised 25 percent. It still costs a lot less than first class, though, and I may try sending out some of my letters third class and see what happens. I think you have to leave them unsealed.

  I’ve always wanted to make a deal with some of the businesses that send me their catalogs and advertising material year after year even though I never buy anything from them. If they simply sent me the cash for half what they spend on mailing stuff to me that I throw out, we’d both come out ahead.

  The best mail is the letter from a friend or relative. It arrives with good little tidbits of information and a few words in conclusion that reconfirm a relationship with an expression of warmth, respect or love. Sad to say, only 6 percent of all the mail is that kind. The Postal Service people think the old “Dear Mom” letter has been replaced by the weekly “Hi, Mom” phone call. Too bad. A phone call is not nearly so satisfactory as a letter. Who ever heard of putting a phone call in a box and keeping it in the attic for forty years?

  The Postal Service is a government agency but it’s supposed to operate like a business. It doesn’t get tax money so it has to pay for itself. Last year it lost $223 million, but in the last ten years it has made more than it has lost by $560 million.

  It seems to most of us that the Postal Service has had more than its share of raises in the past ten years. Every so often I buy a few hundred prestamped penny postcards, thinking I’ll answer a lot of mail, but the rate always goes up and makes the postcards obsolete before I use them. I still call them “penny” po
stcards because that’s how much they cost until 1952.

  In 1978 they cost 10 cents each. In 1981 they went up twice, first to 12 cents and then to 13 cents. In 1985 they went to 14 cents and now a postcard or a Christmas card you don’t put in an envelope will cost 15 cents. Hallmark hates it.

  Big-city post offices are places you don’t go unless you have to. The people who work there are often rude, no one knows anything and you have to stand in line to find out that what you want isn’t available.

  Small-town post offices are great. Everyone is pleasant and helpful.

  One clear reason for the national decline in affection for the post office is that in 1900 there were seventy-seven thousand of them. Today, with three times as many Americans, there are only forty thousand post offices. You can bet the thirty-seven thousand they closed were all good, small ones.

  It might be a better country if we didn’t have mail delivery at all. One of the healthiest things for any community is a post office where everyone comes to pick up the mail. When people have to go get their mail every day, it’s not only good for people, it’s good for the community.

  We still pick up our mail in the little community where we live in the summer. Even the fact of having to do it is good for you: “I gotta go get the mail,” you say, and no one contests that. It takes precedence over any dirty job you’re doing. If you gotta get the mail, you can get out of anything.

  If you didn’t have to go get the mail in our community, you might never know why the fire siren rang at 3:45 A.M. You might not know that the old Peabody house has been sold to two men from New York who are going to live there. You wouldn’t know why Ed Wright isn’t speaking to Paul Webberly. Going to the post office is a good thing to do even when you don’t get anything but a boxful of junk.

  Do Only Women “Wed”?

  Pamela Bankert, a third-year law student at Rutgers University, and Rupert Brandt, a carpenter, were married the other day, according to The New York Times. The little headline read PAMELA BANKERT WEDS.

  No men ever get wed in the Times, just women. It doesn’t say a thing in the headline about Rupert getting hitched too. Most society pages in newspapers put more emphasis on women than men. You don’t see pictures of the men all dressed up in wedding clothes. It’s always the picture of the woman in her wedding dress. I resent this. Men get married just as often as women and, when they do, it’s just as important. I don’t know why society editors think it’s more important to tell people a woman got married.

  The short story of Pamela Bankert’s wedding leaves a lot of unanswered questions. How does a third-year law student get to know a carpenter? Can a lawyer find happiness with a carpenter and, if so, can a carpenter find happiness with a lawyer?

  One thing Pamela is sure to find when the phone begins ringing off the hook in their house is that lawyers are a dime a dozen, but everyone is trying to find a carpenter.

  The most interesting part of this wedding story is the last line. “The couple,” the story ends, “will use the surname Bankert.”

  Why, do you suppose? Is Rupert just an easygoing guy who went along with the suggestion they use her family name instead of his? Are there class overtones in this? Is Pam’s family reluctant to have her take the name of a carpenter? I don’t envy Rupert the rest of his life. From now on people will ask him, “What was your name before you were married?” Is there an equivalent to the phrase maiden name for a man?

  Mr. Brandt’s parents apparently are divorced, because the story says he’s the son of “Harvey Brandt of Somerville, N.J., and Pauline Perkins of Brockton, Mass.”

  We don’t know from the item whether his mother, Pauline, reassumed her maiden name or got remarried to someone named Perkins. I think the Times owed us quite a bit more or quite a bit less on this story.

  The idea of a man taking a woman’s name is new to me. I’d probably be a male chauvinist pig in Gloria Steinem’s pretty blue eyes to oppose the idea, but if the practice becomes popular it’s going to cause a lot of confusion. Having the woman assume the man’s name may be unfair to women, but it is the established way of doing things, and to change is going to play havoc with public records.

  When Pam and Rupert’s children grow up and apply for a passport years from now, what are officials going to think when they come to the question MOTHER’S MAIDEN NAME? and see BANKERT written in the little box? They’re going to think the Bankert children made a careless mistake.

  A great many progressive women continue to use their maiden names in business. This is understandable. Most of them officially adopt their husband’s name for the purpose of signing legal documents and Christmas cards. This makes good sense.

  Still other couples decide to join their two names with a hyphen to create a third name. If Pamela and Rupert had chosen this course, they now would be Pamela and Rupert Bankert-Brandt. This may seem like a solution, but it’s a shortsighted one. It causes trouble down the line. Say, for example, that Pamela and Rupert Bankert-Brandt have a child named Darcy Bankert-Brandt. Darcy grows up and falls in love with a young man whose parents also had hyphenated their names. The young man’s name is Peter Palmer-Williams. If Darcy insists she and her husband share their two names, their names become Mr. and Mrs. Bankert-Brandt-Palmer-Williams.

  If, God forbid, Pam and Rupert’s marriage doesn’t work out, I wonder if Rupert will retain his married name.

  Educated—to a Degree

  My college education ended after my junior year because I was drafted into the army. After World War II I never returned to school so I never had a graduation of my own. I got an education in four years in the army that no college could match in a hundred years but, nonetheless, I’ve always felt cheated and just a little bit uneducated without a diploma.

  Now I’ve been to quite a few commencements. I’ve seen my own children graduate and I’ve served as a speaker. I enjoy the events even though I’m envious of the young people getting diplomas.

  It’s the air about a college campus on commencement day that’s so good. You don’t go to a graduation ceremony for the oratory. The speeches, including my own, range from not very good to terrible. There’s something about the event that attracts clichés. Speeches are invariably too long and often boring. They have a certain form and language expected of them that seem to limit how good they can be. Speakers feel obliged to give a lot of fatuous and unrealistic advice.

  The valedictorian makes his or her speech and it’s a duplicate copy of every valedictory ever given, filled with platitudes that give no indication that this is the smartest kid in the class speaking.

  The only really good commencement speech I ever heard was given by a judge whose speech blew away in a strong wind before he could read it. I have no idea what he had on those fifteen or twenty pieces of paper but he shrugged and took off without any notes and was brief and excellent.

  Getting their diplomas gives the graduates a feeling of success at having achieved their goal of four years as well as a sense of relief. They’re wildly excited with anticipation of a future free of the artificial deadlines and work loads that school has imposed on them all their lives. It’s fun to be with them on that day because their enthusiasm is infectious.

  I’ve been to two graduations where the students should have been spanked instead of graduated. They turned what should have been a joyous, civilized event into a near-riot, yelling and screaming at inappropriate times, intruding on tradition and being generally badly behaved. They drank from whiskey bottles hidden beneath their black robes, sprayed champagne on everyone, threw bottles, seat cushions and parts of their clothing. I don’t know why they wanted to ruin so important a day in their lives for themselves and for everyone else and I don’t think the college administration should have stood for it.

  One year I sat for two hours in cap and gown in a steady rain on the raised platform behind President James English as he handed out 516 diplomas and shook 516 wet hands at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

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sp; You might think it was a dreary experience but it was a wonderful one. Every face that came forward was a life about to be lived. I found myself guessing who’d be successful, who not, who happily married, who un. Why did this sweet young girl choose to come forward barefoot, this one in high-heeled black pumps?

  Each graduate bounded forward with delight and enthusiasm to reach for the symbolic piece of paper. Yells and cheers came from the crowd as some of their classmates crossed the little stage. One big, awkward blond boy waved his diploma triumphantly and his classmates hooted. You just knew he was the one who almost didn’t make it.

  It wasn’t always clear what evoked the shouts. The person onstage had been involved in some incident memorable only to the shouters. In their minds, the person made their class special—even though every class that ever graduated had one just like him.

  Graduation ceremonies aren’t what’s wrong with the world.

  How to Turn Inventions Off

  The administration is asking Congress for $6 billion to build a fifty-two-mile tunnel in which to shoot atoms at each other. Two atoms (this is how I understand it) would be started from opposite ends of the tunnel. When they collided somewhere in the middle, the atoms would break apart and scientists would be able to find out what’s inside. It seems like a lot of money to spend to break something.

  The secretary of energy said the invention and construction of the world’s largest research machine would be as scientifically significant as the manned landing on the moon in 1969. This would be damning a project with faint praise to a lot of Americans who can’t remember exactly what practical results came from man’s walk on the moon.

  I’m reluctant to say this $6 billion project is a mistake because I don’t understand its implications, but you always have to be suspicious of the people who are coming up with new things. The fact of the matter is, scientists and inventors invent a lot of things the world would be just as well off without and a better machine with which to break atoms might be one of them. For my own amusement, I’ve been making a list of unnecessary inventions that I’ve seen in my lifetime: