Not That You Asked (9780307822215) Read online

  When I was ten, I made the first money I ever had that wasn’t given to me by my father. I delivered the paper to thirty-seven homes, or in the bushes near those homes, over a ten-block area in Albany.

  One summer during my college years, I worked briefly in the newsroom of The Knick as a copyboy. While the job itself wasn’t much, it was on the strength of an overstated line in a résumé regarding the importance of my work there that I was whisked out of the Seventeenth Field Artillery Battalion on maneuvers in Land’s End, England, and assigned to the army newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, in London.

  I have yellowing clippings from The Knick containing my name that Margie and my mother cut from it during World War II: ALBANY BOY FLIES BOMBERS OVER GERMANY.

  And for the past eight years my column has appeared in The Knickerbocker News three days a week. How could I be anything but sad on the day of the death of an institution that has been so much a part of my life?

  On reading of the demise of any newspaper, newspapermen and -women everywhere hear the faint, faraway toll of Hemingway’s bell. There’s a newspaper disease that’s killing a lot of afternoon papers. No one is certain what causes it, what to do for the patients that have it or how to keep the healthy afternoon papers from getting it. In 1970 there were 1,429 daily afternoon newspapers published in the United States. By 1986 there were only 1,188. In 1987 23 more afternoon papers ceased publication and the number was down to 1,165. The Knickerbocker News is part of the statistic for 1988.

  If The Knick were human someone would certainly say now, on the occasion of its demise, “It’s a blessing.” The poor Knick was old and desperately ill. It had suffered terribly. It had the best care there is in the business, but there wasn’t much the newspaper doctors could do. Even though it had no chance for survival, no one wanted to unplug the support systems that kept it alive. Everyone kept doing what they could for it even though they’d known for several years it was hopeless.

  Those who knew The Knick when it was younger and healthy, would hardly have recognized it in its last, dying days. There’s something sad and wrong about being left with the memory of someone you’ve loved as he or she looked and acted toward the very end of a good, long life. We should all be remembered, by those who survive us, for how we were at our very best. It seldom happens that way, and a dying newspaper is hardly at its best in its waning months. Giving reporters time to dig for information is expensive and not always productive. Editors on a tight budget have to go for the sure things.

  If you believe that information, knowledge and decisions made by people who have all the facts is the best chance the human race has for prosperous survival, you have to mourn the closing of any source of those things. That’s what The Knickerbocker News was.

  Going Feet First

  You look at your body for signs of deterioration. Most men notice a change when they get out of competitive contact sports at the age of about twenty-three. They have the sad feeling they’ve peaked already and will never be in such good shape again. A general deterioration becomes noticeable at thirty.

  When I make a casual checklist of body parts, I start at the top and work down. Right now I think my feet are going first. When I was thirty-five I noticed a slight thinning of my hair, but there hasn’t been much change. I’m still a long way from being bald. My hair turned gray, but I don’t mind gray.

  I just spent two sessions with my dentist. He says my teeth are generally in good shape. I like an optimistic doctor of any kind, even if he lies a little. I don’t like a dentist who looks in my mouth, shakes his head and says, “Oh, oh.”

  My dentist finds good things to say. Last time he was drilling away and he said, “Boy, you really have hard teeth.”

  I stand pain better when he flatters me.

  My face looks a little weather-beaten but it’s got a lot of good years left in it. My eyes are fine. I wear glasses for reading and writing, but I can still read without glasses if I have to. My ears are as good as new. I guess your ears don’t deteriorate the way your eyes do. Almost everyone over forty needs glasses, but only 3 million Americans wear hearing aids. To tell the truth, most of us hear better than is absolutely necessary. Most of the sounds we’re exposed to every day are so loud that we could hear them just as well with half our hearing ability. If my ears were adjustable, I’d have the sound turned down most of the time.

  You never know about your heart. My doctor says my heart is OK, but, of course, a lot of people who die of heart attacks have just been reassured by their doctors that they’re in great shape.

  After that recent announcement about aspirin being good for potential heart-attack victims, I’ve been taking an aspirin a lot of nights before I go to bed. I don’t know what it’s doing for my heart, but my feet hurt less when I get into bed.

  My lungs must be in good shape because I can run on the tennis court without being winded. With the exception of one year when I got hooked on how much fun a pipe was, I’ve never smoked. I worried about my tongue with a pipe, not my lungs.

  My legs are clearly in better shape than my feet, which seems unfair. My hands and arms are actually stronger than they were when I was younger because of all the woodworking I’ve been doing. Sometimes I think I’d be better off standing on my hands half the time and on my feet the other half.

  There have been so many reports about people who start getting Alzheimer’s disease when they reach the age of sixty that I worry about my brain. Every time there’s a name I can’t remember, I think I may have it. The only thing that saves me from real worry is that I can remember I never remembered anyone’s name when I was twenty, either. As far as I can tell, my brain works as well as it ever did. I realize, of course, that statement makes me vulnerable to some smart remarks.

  If it weren’t for my feet, I’d be in great shape. Feet are poorly designed to stand up for a lifetime. I don’t have any complaints with the basic construction of any other part of my body, but feet are not well made. They’re fragile and funny-looking. What in the world are all those toes for? Does anyone use his or her toes separately, as we would use our fingers? Toes are leftovers from the time we hung from trees.

  Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year I’ve been walking, running and banging my two hundred pounds down on these poor little old size 8½ EEEs of mine. They’re sick and tired of it and they’re not going to take it anymore.

  A Nun’s Tale

  Sister Mary Rose came to see me the other day. She understands my position in regard to nuns but she won’t be discouraged and I admire her for that.

  I first met Sister Mary Rose Christy in Arizona when I was making a film there in 1968. At that time she was trying to save the Indians. Sister Mary Rose is always trying to save someone, whether they need it or not. On the occasions she’s written to me, she never fails to end the letter by asking God’s blessing for me. She wants to save me.

  The results of these blessings are not all in, but naturally I have high expectations. A request from a nun would carry more weight than if I’d asked for God’s blessing myself.

  At the present time Sister Mary Rose is busy saving the homeless in San Francisco and they’re lucky to have her on their side. She rejects my contention that she could use a little saving herself. For one thing, she’s eating better than is absolutely necessary. She’s a wonderfully good-hearted person, though, and I suspect she thinks of herself last.

  Anyway, as you can tell, I like Sister Mary Rose a lot, and that’s why I’m so upset with a recent trend in her life-style. In the past few years she’s started doing something I can’t excuse her for. She’s stopped wearing her nun’s habit. When she comes to my office now she’s dressed like anyone else looking for work. That means she doesn’t look like a nun. It would be fair to say she’s gotten out of the habit.

  If you’re going to be a nun, you ought to look like a nun and act like a nun. I’ve told Sister Mary Rose this. I’ve told her that if she doesn’t wear that black c
ostume, I’m not going to call her “Sister” anymore. I’m just going to call her Mary Rose … or possibly even just Mary. Pope John Paul II has laid down the law to Catholics in so many ways that I wish he’d come up with a pronunciamento on dress for priests and nuns. I’m sure it’s an area in which the Pope and I agree. You certainly aren’t going to find Pope John Paul II wearing blue jeans or a sports coat and I’ll bet he expects proper dress among his workers in the vineyard where the grapes of wrath are stored.

  I like to see a nun or a priest here and there. They are black and white dots in a colorful but otherwise anonymous crowd. You can identify them for what they are. If a salesman, a doctor or a Russian spy goes by, you never know because they look like everyone else. When a properly attired nun goes by, you know who she is. You can divert yourself with whatever thought you usually have about nuns. I called the Catholic archdiocese in town and the man in their communications office just laughed when I asked if priests and nuns were wearing their official clothes less frequently.

  “Oh, my, yes … ever since the Second Vatican Council,” he said. I recognized, by the tone of his voice, that “the Second Vatican Council” was a phrase that held great meaning for him, so I didn’t display my ignorance by asking how it bore on nuns’ habits. He said “Second Vatican Council” the same way a Secretary of State might say “Ever since Geneva,” or “Ever since FDR, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta.”

  Why have nuns dropped their habits? Aren’t they as proud of being nuns as they once were? Do they think they can be more effective wearing civilian clothes? Why, for that matter, do so many priests go out wearing regular shirts and ties when we expect something more of them? Men of the cloth ought to wear their regular cloth. Priests, ministers and nuns ought to be as identifiable as policemen in case we need one in an emergency.

  Don’t come back, except in black, Sister Mary Rose.

  Let the Salesman Beware

  Recently I got that urge most men try so unsuccessfully to resist every few years. I went in to look at a new car. I know buying a new car is silly when the old one is running perfectly well, but we all know how to overcome good sense when it comes to thinking about a new car. We say, for instance, “I don’t want to have to start spending a lot of money on an old car. It’ll be cheaper in the long run to turn it in now.”

  It won’t be cheaper but that’s what we say when we’re talking ourselves into buying a new car.

  I like dealing with car salesmen. (I have never dealt with a car saleswoman.) For one thing, I don’t feel the usual compulsion to be absolutely honest. There is an unwritten understanding between car buyers and car salesmen, who are otherwise perfectly decent people, that anything goes. It’s a poker game. Buyers don’t know what the dealer is holding. We know there’s a profit margin he can cut into to give us a better deal but we aren’t sure how much he has to play with or how deep he’s willing to cut into it to make a sale.

  Years ago I went to a Ford showroom looking for a station wagon. I saw one I liked and started dickering over the price. Finally, in a desperate attempt to push me over the brink, the salesman said, “It’s the last car like this on the whole East Coast. If you want it, you better grab it because it’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  This was a challenge to me. I don’t like to be browbeaten by a car salesman.

  “Oh, gosh,” I said. “That’s really too bad. I have a good friend and we always buy identical cars. I was looking for two of these, one for him and one for me. If you only have one, it’s no deal.”

  “Listen,” the car salesman said, “that’s what someone told me. Just let me go in the office and check to make sure.”

  Sure enough, of course, he found one at another Ford dealer in the next town. Just lucky, he said.

  I didn’t buy the two wagons.

  The big news I got from car dealers I spoke to last week was that the hot color is red. They can’t get enough red cars.

  Next to black, red is the last color I’d want. The pigment in red paint doesn’t seem to hold up as well as other colors, and while a red car might look attractive and catchy when it’s new, there is nothing so old and tired-looking as a two-year-old red car.

  The car I drive most is white, and if I get a new one, it’ll be white too. A white car doesn’t seem to get as dirty as other colors and in the summer it reflects the heat of the sun’s rays. I hope everyone doesn’t decide to buy a white car some year, though. I enjoy the variety of colors of cars on the road. No color dominates, and that’s the way it should be.

  The best cars I’ve ever owned smelled good. We all know a new car smells good, but the best cars have a way of smelling good all their lives. My 1977 wagon still smells good.

  I fight cars with a lot of gadgets on them but it’s a losing battle. My other car has a panel with little buttons that are supposed to light up when there’s trouble. If the brake is left on or the engine oil is low, a red light goes on indicating “brake” or “oil,” for instance.

  Last week the little light indicating trouble in the “cooling system” came on. I brought the car in and there was nothing wrong with the cooling system but with the wiring in the indicator panel. In four years, the only time the trouble-indicating lights have gone on has been when there was some trouble in the indicator board itself. So much for gadgets.

  The one thing I’m happy you can still get in most cars as an option is manual shift. Automatic shift burns more gas and doesn’t give a driver the same control over a car as the driver has with stick shift. Shifting the gears of a car is one of life’s satisfying little jobs. I like to shift for myself.

  NUISANCES

  Getting Rid of Leftovers

  Has there been a study done at Harvard or Stanford on leftovers?

  Congress is working on the tax bill and the President is concerned over what to do about South Africa, but is anyone giving any attention to a major element in all our lives … what to do with what’s left that we can’t use but is too good to throw away?

  The storage shelves in our house are filled with all sorts of good leftovers that aren’t good for anything.

  I can spot useless junk everywhere in someone else’s house. It’s difficult to find any in my own. Maybe what we need in this country is some kind of neighborly mutual-help program. It’s a lot easier to throw away someone else’s leftovers than it is your own. We might work out some exchange program whereby a friend or neighbor comes to our house while we go to theirs. Each would set aside sentimentality and clean the other’s house of leftovers.

  The most conspicuous and persistent leftovers, of course, go in the refrigerator in little plastic boxes. At any given time, there are eight to ten lumps of leftovers aging on the shelves of our refrigerator. Just last night I put what amounted to about half a serving of squash in a container that was big enough to hold ten times that much. I know perfectly well what the future holds for this pitiful little morsel. It will sit there for a week, gradually finding its way to the back of the refrigerator, where a jar of pickles sits. The pickles were opened six weeks ago. I hope the jar of pickles and the summer squash can find something in common because they’re going to spend a lot of time together. Then, some day down the road, I’ll be rooting around back there looking for the mayonnaise, and wonder what’s in the plastic box. I’ll open it up and detect a strange odor emanating from the lump of yellow in the bottom.

  “Yuck,” I’ll say to myself and scrape it into the garbage.

  When something you’ve cooked is fresh and your palate is reminding your memory of how good it was, it’s difficult to discard it. When that same dish is tired and stale and nothing more than a space-taker in the refrigerator, it becomes a pleasure to cast out.

  The trick to getting rid of leftovers is to anticipate how you’re going to feel about those items in two weeks.

  And it isn’t just the refrigerator. There are leftovers in life no matter what we’re doing. Every time I buy an electrical appliance, there are parts in the box it co
mes in that I don’t use and can’t throw away. As soon as a month later, when I come across them in a drawer, I can’t figure out what they’re for.

  I bought a small antenna for the television set upstairs. It helps the reception, but in the little plastic bag of parts that came with it there are three bolts, a bracket and some kind of insulator left over. These things are all brand new and it would be a crime to throw them away, but the kitchen drawer set aside for miscellaneous items is filled with leftover hardware.

  Paint makes a miserable leftover. It’s almost impossible to plan a job in such a way that you buy just the right amount of paint and finish with none left over. A quart of paint is so expensive that there aren’t many of us who can throw out what remains in the can even though we rarely use it. There’s a gallon can in the basement representing what was left over after I painted the twins’ bedroom blue fourteen years ago. So much paint dripped down the sides of the can that I am no longer able to read the label. I don’t even know for sure whether it’s oil- or water-based paint. I doubt if it would make a noise if I shook it. There it is, though. If I ever need it, I know just where to find it.

  It’s a good thing you don’t have to keep paint in the refrigerator.

  A Plug for New Electrical Outlets

  They’re building dams and nuclear power plants and scientists are talking about harnessing the sun’s energy to produce electrical power but they aren’t doing a thing about the rat’s nest of electric cords, outlets and homemade lash-ups around our television sets, behind our living-room couches and under our beds.

  Every time I want to plug something in, I have to crawl under a table, move a chair or go down in the basement to find an extension cord or some kind of converter. Something’s wrong with electrical outlets in America.