A true story about last Tuesday

I am feeling good about myself today, if you can believe that. I come from simple peasant stock in the middle of Minnesota (not the end of the world but you can see it from there) and I’ve lived my life with a severe sense of inferiority. My parents never praised me lest it lead to arrogance, and teachers didn’t praise us: if you got a good grade, you were simply working up to your ability, and our preachers didn’t tell us that God loves us, though Scripture says He does, but emphasized our abject iniquity. And so, though I’ve written a couple dozen books and done hundreds of radio shows, I never came away from one with a feeling of elation and if someone said, “That was terrific” (or “awesome” or even “rather good”) I shook my head and said, “I don’t think so,” which, as my wife said, was rude — when someone praises you, you should say “Thank you,” but I honestly felt that everything I did fell short. Until today.

It was a gorgeous October day in New York. I took a cab to an appointment at the podiatrist’s and got out of the cab and a moment later, as he pulled away up West 72nd Street, I realized that I didn’t have my billfold. I had had it in the back seat of the cab and I didn’t have it anymore. He was about thirty yards ahead of me and I did something I haven’t done in years — I broke into a run. I’m eighty years old, I had heart surgery two months ago, but the thought of having to replace credit cards and driver’s license and insurance cards was too awful to contemplate. At this age, one doesn’t have time to waste on the unnecessary. And I dreaded going home and saying, “I left my billfold in a cab,” which might lead to my beloved putting me under guardianship and hiring a walker to accompany me. All of this flashed in my mind, the tedium of replacement, the suspicion of dementia, and so I ran.

Sitting in the sixth pew, brooding on things

My grandpa Denham grew up in the tenements of Glasgow back when the residents leaned out the window and shouted, “Comin’ oot!” and threw the contents of the chamber pot into the street. Grandpa got sick of being dumped on and brought his brood to Minneapolis and he never looked back. He wasn’t nostalgic about his origins. He was happy to be here.

I thought of him when I took the train to Washington last week, a city he wanted to see and never did. I go to Washington to remind myself what a beautiful city it is despite the contempt brought upon it by so many elected officials, many of whom are emptying their chamber pots in the form of campaign advertising. The Jefferson and Lincoln memorials are stunning but you look at the dome of the Capitol and remember the mob that stormed it in the name of a miserable lie that is being repeated this election year and how do you explain this? The mob went to the same schools we did, learned about Jefferson and Lincoln, and yet they are fascinated by fascism and long for a dictator.

Less is more: repeat ten times daily

I am noticing a good many books and articles about masculinity in crisis these days, and am faithfully avoiding reading them, since I’m not in crisis myself and I’m on a campaign of clearing out clutter in my life. I have just cleared off the top of my desk and am feeling good about myself, even though some of the flotsam got stuffed into the desk. I am now going to rid myself of books I’ll never read and clothes I never wear.

Sometimes I sit in the evening drinking ginger tea and watching baseball on TV with the sound off, two teams I don’t care about and so it’s not about winning, it’s about the art of baseball, the sharp reflexes of infielders and the unique windup of each pitcher, the occasional incredible full-tilt leaping outfield catch that kills the rally and the fielder casually tosses the ball into the stands. It’s such a cool move. Home runs mean nothing to me but that beautiful high-speed intersection of outstretched glove and ball and there’s no victory dance, just cool disdain. Tough luck. The fielder heads for the dugout, the ball goes to a kid in the grandstand. The commentary of the announcers is worthless; it’s all about the beauty of youth and agility and discipline. In another ten years, that fielder will be a civilian like you and me.

A lesson for the wise as winter approaches

Here in the northern latitudes, it appears we’ve come to the end of the golden October days and soon gray November will descend and then some snow flurries followed by an arctic air mass. The next morning you awaken to find the driveway drifted in, schools are closed, a Snow Emergency is declared, but your inner Dad says, “You think you’re staying home from work, you got another think coming” and you climb in your car and head for Amalgamated Federated. Abandoned cars in the ditches of the Interstate, which is glare ice, but you make it downtown and find a parking spot and ignore the “No Parking” sign — a man makes his own rules in a blizzard — and you arrive at Amalgamated and go to your tiny cubicle on the sixth floor.

The company execs have spaces in the heated underground garage but they were Ubered or Lyfted to work by drivers named Abdullah and Mohammed from East Africa, and when they see you in your tiny cubicle, your heavy parka and thermal vest and ski pants and insulated boots, suddenly the social order is turned upside down. You’re a hero and the privileged are exposed as moral weaklings. The president of Amalgamated decided to “work from home” and the stigma sticks to him. Winter is warfare and deserters are disdained. His secretary sneers at him and types his letters changing his verbs from indicative to subjunctive and earnings go down.

So Moses said to God, “Let me get this straight”

My friend Larry Josephson died in July in New York at the age of 83 and I miss him because he was one of the last people I knew who would run into me and tell me a joke. He had a good career in radio at WBAI but I was too busy doing my own show to listen to his but in later years I used his studio on 89th Street to record at and when I walked in, Larry’d say hello and then he’d say, “So Moses was talking to God and he said, ‘Let me get this straight. They get all the oil deposits and we have to cut the tips off our WHAT?’”

I used to know guys who told jokes, Arnie and Roland and Marty and Al, and it was part of normal male repartee, and sometimes one joke would lead to others. “Moses came down from the Mount with the tablets in his hand and he told the Israelites, ‘Okay, I managed to talk him down to ten, but I’m afraid adultery is still in there.’”

Lighten up, he says and he means it

The picture sticks in the mind, the mobile home park after the hurricane went through, the boxes scattered, the tide of flotsam and wreckage, trees blown down by 145 mph winds, a former paradise become a moonscape of destruction, and how will they ever put it all back together? It’ll take years. And many of the occupants were elderly. Do they now go back north to live with their children? Has the loss put them in a funk for the next three years? What can be done?

I recall my dad’s love of his Florida mobile home after he fell off a barn roof in Minnesota and fractured his skull and got bad sinus problems that made winter unbearable, he took Mother to Florida to live in a trailer. They had a canopy over a little terrace where they sat in the shade and ate supper. He read about Minnesota blizzards with some satisfaction and I don’t recall him worrying about hurricanes. Both of them are gone now but I look at the pictures and imagine flying down to Florida to rescue my parents.

It’s a good October and it’s only begun

It was delightful and a big relief to see Aaron Judge hit No. 62 this week and break Roger Maris’s record and see Roger Maris Jr. hugging Aaron’s mom in the stands. Judge is a great ballplayer and a decent understated guy and the country needed this beautiful moment. And if he’d failed, we’d be reading turgid commentary about the trauma of eminence and high expectation and instead we can admire the guy’s beautiful swing. He’s 6’7” with a strike zone the size of a wardrobe trunk and he’s batting over .300 and he’s graceful and well-spoken and whatever they’re paying him, it’s worth it to have him as an example to youth.

It was also good to see Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis shaking hands in south Florida after the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast and talking about government coming to the aid of the victims. Florida always was a paradise for people of modest means to live cheaply in pleasant weather and the state sometimes lucks out with hurricanes and now you look at the wreckage of mobile home parks and it’s heartbreaking. Most homeowners don’t have flood insurance. A conservative could argue that insurance is your personal responsibility and if you skip it, that’s your problem, but a conservative up for reelection can’t argue that, so the prez and the gov form a compact to work together.

A new day dawns and we rise cheerfully to meet it

There is a magnificent Presbyterian church in New York being hassled by its neighbors who’re tired of the scaffolding that’s been standing for fifteen years. The scaffolding is there because the building is falling apart, and the little congregation is dwindling and can’t afford the repairs. They’d like to sell the property and let the buyers demolish the church and put up a 19-story condo tower. But the Landmark Commission doesn’t want this building, a landmarked 1890 Romanesque Revival masterpiece, to be replaced by a filing cabinet. Meanwhile attendance is fading because who wants to go to church and be struck by a fifty-pound chunk of sandstone?

I favor demolition. There is nothing holy about a building, the Holy Spirit moves freely in and out of buildings, people can feel God’s grace wherever they happen to be. If the building were preserved and sold to Pizza Hut and ovens placed where the altar used to be and the organ automated to play Metallica and Black Sabbath, how does this serve the common good?

I am an orphan and an officeless man

I miss having an office to go to. I had friendly colleagues and employees, and we were in the entertainment biz so we got to work with a lot of lulus and lunatics and we kept flexible hours and laughed a lot. I liked that we were in the business of making serious people split a gut. I also liked getting dressed up for work in a suit and tie, which you need to do when you’re involved with frivolity. Now I go to work in my pajamas at the dining room table. I don’t know if “clothes make the man” but I know that pajamas do not make the man. They make me feel like going back to bed.

I loved walking in the front door in the morning at 9 a.m., the way the receptionist straightened up and smiled, the electric anticipation among the minions that the captain was on deck, the ship was about to sail. I don’t sense that same excitement in my wife when I walk into the kitchen in my pajamas. She says, “Your hair is standing up like a rooster’s and I think you should check your left nostril.”

Suddenly it’s clear why I wanted to be old

I love this September chill in the air. I love sweaters. They hide the age wrinkles on my inner upper arms. A stocking cap means I don’t have to comb my hair. Delicate souls are yearning for Florida and maybe catch a temp job as a consumer influence consultant, enough to pay for a condo with a pool, but not me, I’m not into influence and Florida brings out the bad taste in people and nobody wants to see an old man in a thong bikini. So here I am. I like the coffee here. I’ve figured out how the shower works and no longer stand under scalding water because I turned the wrong knob; I don’t want to go to Florida and stay in a motel with a crank for a shower knob and be burned alive while naked. So I’ll stay up North. Here I take a shower, wrap a towel around me, walk into the bedroom and sing, “O my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch.” In Florida, I’d go to the ER.