Beyond the Call

Pete Baez died this winter in a care facility in Reston, Virginia. I met Baez several times and had some long-distance business dealings with him during my years in the U.S. Forest Service.

Baez’ passing might seem a matter of little consequence to some, but thanks to Bill Hamilton, retired head of publishing for the Forest Service, we have enough details of our colleague’s life to know he was an outstanding member of “The Greatest Generation.”

Baez was born in Puebla, Mexico, in 1921. He grew up in Brooklyn, and later earned a liberal arts degree nearby at Drew University in New Jersey. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and flew “The Hump” with the Air Transport Command in India during World War II. After the war, Baez returned to school to gain a bachelors degree at Cornell University and a masters at the University of Minnesota, both in soil science.

He started his civilian government employment as a soil scientist in the West with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and then the Corps of Engineers. Later, Baez became a professional working with the language he had mastered in an editorial position with the U.S. Navy. He moved to the Department of Agriculture in 1964 and spent the last 25 years as an editor for the Forest Service, retiring in 1994.

That history is mildly intriguing, to be sure. What came later is absolutely amazing. Baez followed up his half-century of federal service by continuing to work in the Forest Service national office, as an editor and in other jobs, throughout most of the 15 years after he retired until he died at age 88. He worked as a volunteer for no pay. In his spare time, Baez also volunteered as a tutor for children learning English in the DC area.

Incidentally, the first time I met Baez, in 1970, I unwittingly asked the obvious question. Was he related to Joan Baez, the prominent folk singer who was then making a name in anti-establishment circles? Baez muttered, “Yeah, I’m her uncle,” and promptly changed the subject. Coworkers told me he considered his niece’s public activities an affront to the family’s conservatism, and he disliked talking about her.

I worked with many fine people in the Forest Service who gave back much more to America than it gave to them. One scientist, Walt Mueggler, stayed on for more than 15 years after he retired, and contributed more than 40,000 hours of his time to research work in the Intermountain West. I know of dozens of others who made large contributions of their personal time, and sometimes even their personal resources, while they were regular employees or retirees.

Next time you hear some idiot bad-mouthing government workers, think about Baez and Mueggler. Ask yourself how many people retired from General Electric or any other company you can think of and stayed with the organization as unpaid volunteers for another 15 years. Name two.

Official Confirmation

We’ve often contended that Utah has a higher birth rate than Bangladesh. The Beehive State income tax form I just filled out seems to confirm that.

Most forms seeking tax status information provide one box for the filer, one for the filer’s spouse, and two to four extra individual boxes for dependent children. Utah’s has a double box for dependents, allowing one to declare 10 or more kids with no fuss.

No, the Utah box for a spouse does not also automatically accommodate double-digit entries! That’s an urban myth.

We Now Pronounce You . . .

Over nearly 60 years, I’ve applied for and been granted several dozen driver's licenses. My qualifications earned permits in Wisconsin, Idaho, Utah, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Army. Sandy also was a successful applicant in many places. We always negotiated the process rather easily. That is, we did until we encountered those helpful guardians of the public driving trust in the local office of the Michigan Secretary of State (SOS seems an appropriate acronym).

The SOS website displays a giant chart showing all the types of documents needed to acquire a Michigan license. We found we could register our car in the same office with a few more documents, which brought our document total to seven.

Being an experienced bureaucrat, I loaded up a whole briefcase full of documents “just in case.” Off we went to Allegan, the county seat, which is a 26-mile roundtrip from our home. Together, we stood before a clerk in the SOS office after only a brief wait.

My temporary drivers license was issued after a routine check of a selection of our documents proved that I was a now a Michigander and a vision check revealed that I could see most things. The car registration also was completed efficiently. Sandy’s license was another matter.

The clerk said Sandy’s documentation was insufficient. “Don’t you have a marriage license?” she asked.

“Not with us,” Sandy said. “What does that have to do with it? I gave you my Utah license and even showed you my social security card and passport. Passports are issued by the federal government. Mine has gotten me across borders in several parts of the world.”

“Michigan his stricter standards than the feds,” the clerk said. “We’re worried about illegals coming across the border.” Sandy asked what proving you were married had to do with crossing borders. I muttered something about wondering whether or not my new Michigan license would get me across the Indiana border.

I pointed out that the SOS website said two bills for services in Michigan showing the name of the applicant was sufficient documentation to establish residency. We had given the clerk a bill to both of us from the local power company, and also had produced a letter from our auto insurance company saying we both were now covered in Michigan and the letter would serve as our bill. The clerk said the power bill was fine, but the letter was not. “You have to have the actual policy.”

Sandy was beginning to make a few decidedly unfriendly comments and turning a shade of what I knew was going to become bright red. I suggested we leave quietly, drive home, get a copy of our marriage license, and return. Sandy’s parting shot was, “Will Michigan pay for our gas?” You know the answer to that.

We got one of the two signed marriage license duplicates that was handed to us after the ceremony several decades ago. Luckily, I decided to also grab a copy of our voluminous auto insurance policy. We returned to Allegan where we were allowed to join a line of other returnees who could go to the counter ahead of all first-time visitors.

I handed over the marriage license to the same clerk we had seen earlier. “Oh, I don’t think that will be acceptable,” she said. “It doesn’t have a seal on it. And this one says it’s the groom’s copy. You’re going to need to contact the courthouse to get a stamped copy of the original.”

“But the courthouse is in Wisconsin,” I said. “Anyway, this is an original. It was handed to me right after the ceremony. Sandy also got one, and I assume God has a third one.” That brought some laughter from the other clerks and applicants, but didn’t produce a driver’s license for Sandy.

As the clerk started for the supervisor’s office with our marriage license to get a ruling, I told her I also had our insurance policy, which clearly showed both our names. “Oh,” the clerk said, ‘then we can go ahead.” Several minutes later, Sandy had her temporary permit.

While we were in the office, we noticed that almost every applicant for anything who appeared before the other two clerks was being told to come back later with one or more missing documents.

The Governor of Michigan recently announced a serious program to cut State expenses. Maybe if the licensing rules were streamlined a bit the Secretary of State staff could be cut in half because residents would need to visit only once to do a piece of business rather than two or three times. That also might be viewed as a gas conservation measure.

And why does Michigan worry about the residency of people who can prove they are U.S. citizens and want to hand over 25 bucks for a State driver’s license? I thought my newly adopted State was hard up for cash. Maybe if we advertised “quickie” driver’s licenses ala the instant marriages and divorces available in Nevada we’d raise enough cash to balance the budget.

Listen to the Rumble

A pleasant phone call from old high school friend Jim Shea caused me to reflect once again on how dramatically computers have changed the way information is processed and exchanged in our world. Shea was a co-worker on what was to be my very first job in publishing. The contrast to my most recent contact with the publishing industry is remarkable.

Several months ago, designer Arik Thuesen and I put together a 300-page book during a series of sessions in his electronic studio. We seldom had to move from our two chairs in front of his multi-screened computer display. When we were satisfied with the outcome, Thuesen merely pressed the “send” button. Our document was on the way from Utah to New York. “It’ll take them a while to download that,” he said.

In less than 10 minutes, a message popped onto our screen: “You are published.” Although not a single page had been printed, the book was just as available as though thousands of copies were stacked in a warehouse. When someone ordered one, a finished copy could be generated from the electronic version in a matter of minutes.

Sixty years ago, anyone who said this would one day be possible would have been laughed out of town. Type for publications was produced by ponderous linotype machines, or put together letter-by-letter by hand. Big, slow presses generated the pages, and workers had to assemble and bind the pages to finalize the document.

Jim Shea and I were among the workers who assembled a new edition of the telephone book for the City of Medford, Wisconsin, in about 1950. The others were Jim’s brother, Danny, and Charlie Bebeau. The age gap in the temporary workforce was noteworthy. Jim, Danny, and I were young teenagers. Bebeau was a Spanish-American War veteran (the only one I ever met) and one of the oldest residents of Tomahawk. The publishers of the Tomahawk Leader had won the directory printing contract and hired us to work a few hours daily after school to assemble the pages. We worked on the project for about a week for 50 cents an hour.

The printed phone book pages were arrayed in some 20 piles along a wooden bench in the bindery section of the Leader printing plant. The Shea brothers and I continually walked down the line picking up individual pages. When we had a set, we placed it neatly in a stack next to Bebeau, who ran a machine called a saddle-stitcher that put two staples in each directory as he manipulated the stack of pages into just the right places.

My recollection is that we put together 2,000 directories. Whenever a substantial number had been stitched, Loren Osborne, one of the brothers who owned the publishing company, appeared to trim the books on a paper cutter. The machine weighed several tons, and its knife could have removed a finger or a hand as easily as it could slice through a stack of phone books. Osborne was a careful man.

Osborne also was a man of few words. He said very little, and his few pronouncements almost always were delivered quietly. So it was a somewhat startling spectacle to watch him in action on the day the Leader was printed. Osborne perched atop a big flatbed press as he fed large sheets of paper into the extremely noisy machine. The back part of the building shook when the press was running. When Osborne hit the button that got the press rolling, he launched into a song at the top of his voice. He almost seemed to be engaged in a contest to see if he or the press could generate the most volume.

Osborne’s song was appropriate. The chorus of “The Wabash Cannonball” opens with the words, “Listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar. . .”

Shhhh . . . They’re Secret

Amid complaints that security at President Obama’s inauguration was on the lax side, a Secret Service spokesman was quoted as saying, “The agency’s security measures are not always visible.” Surprise!

During my government service, I encountered the secret agents twice. My observations were (1) the real surprise is how public Secret Service operatives actually can be; and (2) those guys are very good at their jobs.

During my time at the Intermountain Research Station, the Station Director dispatched me and two other staff members to Washington, DC for a week to take a training course given by the Juran Institute, a consulting group reputed to be leading experts in the “Management by Objectives” system that was the current fad among government and private industry gurus. My teammates were Gordon Booth, the Station Biometrician, and Maureen Stettler, a rising star in the Operations Group. Our job was to learn all we could about MBO and come back with recommendations as to whether the Station should adopt all, some, or none of the ideas.

The class met in a hotel several doors down the street from the Soviet Embassy. Room rates in that hotel were too high for Forest Service types, so we lodged about six blocks away in a Holiday Inn. An early continental breakfast was included in the course benefits, and the three of us made an early morning hike every day to take advantage of that. Only a few classmates rose early enough for the breakfast hour.

One man was there every morning before we arrived. He bore a remarkable resemblance to actor Stacey Keach, and was the only classmate who always wore a dark suit and tie. He also was the only one with a slight bulge in his jacket near his left shoulder, which all of us concluded meant his was packing “heat.” A name tag he always wore confirmed that possibility. It clearly read: Secret Service.

After saying hello on the first morning, we started to share a table with the agent every morning. He told us he had been a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, and described his work with the Secret Service in detail. He left one thing out; he obviously was there guarding someone, but he never revealed who that was by word or action. We learned later that the Postmaster General of the U.S. was among our classmates, and so was a Marine Corps general, but we never noticed the agent going near either man.

Of course, it didn’t take long for us to observe that an agent wearing a Secret Service name tag wasn’t very secret. And the cold war was pretty warm at the time, and the Russians were just down the street. Our agent shrugged that off. “They know who we are, and we know who they are. Most of us don’t work under cover. But some do, and they’re around at the right times.”

There were no reports of anyone being attacked on embassy row the week we were there, so it seems fair to conclude that our public agent friend and his secret buddies did their jobs well.

About a year later, the annual national meeting of Forest Service information directors was held in a hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. By then, smoking had been banned in meeting rooms, so I stepped out into the hallway at intervals to have a puff. One day at mid-morning a man dressed in a dark suit was standing on a stairway next to my adopted smoking area. He asked what my business was in the hotel, and when I told him he said he too worked for the Federal Government--as a Secret Service agent!

“The First Lady is coming to give a talk at a luncheon for Republican leaders,” he said. “Mrs. Bush will be coming right by here and going into that room. We scouted everything out yesterday.” The room was directly across the hallway from our meeting room. “If you come back about 11:30, you’ll get to see her,” the agent said.

I ventured the opinion it seemed unlikely that anyone was going to attack the extremely popular Barbara Bush. “Not so,” the agent said. “She is a grand lady, but there are lots of crazies out there, and we take no chances.”

Impressed by a Secret Service assessment that I wasn’t a crazy, I showed up shortly before 11:30. It was a good feeling to know the agent trusted me. But he proved he didn’t trust anybody. “You can stand over there,” he said. “Keep your hands out of your pockets. You can clap when she goes by if you want to, but that’s it. Don’t make any moves to go toward her.”

Mrs. Bush arrived on schedule in the middle of an entourage. I noticed several men in dark suits ahead and behind the group. When the doors opened and the assembled luncheon crowd cheered, I added a bit to the applause for her. I didn’t make any other moves.

Michael Contezac occupied an office next to mine when I started my Forest Service career at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison. Contezac had worked in the White House before transferring to FPL. He characterized his job in Washington as “pretty much of an errand boy.” Frequently, people in the communications office handed news releases to Contezac and he was charged with delivering them without delay to a duplicating and mailing operation in another part of the building.

Contezac’s favorite story about White House duty attested to Secret Service efficiency. He said he was trotting down a hallway with a news release one day when he turned a corner and bumped into a tall man. The next thing he knew he was flat on his back on the floor. When he looked up, a .45 was pointed squarely at his eye. “Son, you should take it a little easy around here,” the tall man said.

The tall man was Lyndon Johnson. The gunman, of course, was a Secret Service agent. They take no chances.

Are There Still Differences?

Many people, and I was becoming one of them, think Americans have become so mobile that regional differences within the U. S. have nearly disappeared. Employment changes have become routine, children are sent to schools far away from the nest, and nearly everyone has traveled extensively in the country. We all have Walmart, those golden arches, and other “institutions” in common. Thus, the popular wisdom holds, we have blended together into a homogenous nation, even losing those delightful southern and New England accents in the process.

Perhaps the popular wisdom is wrong in some respects.

Twenty-six years ago we bought a home on a public golf course in the Interior West. A month ago we bought a home on a public golf course in the Midwest.

Sandy and I attended homeowner functions in our Utah neighborhood without fail, served in various capacities with the homeowner association, and often walked the loop road through the neighborhood, stopping to visit with fellow residents. We became acquainted with just about everybody. About half the residents were golfers. A majority had lived in the area for all, or most, of their lives.

I marveled at the fact that an entire winter and most of the following spring passed, and no one had asked me to buy a membership in the golf club or play in the men’s association. In 26 years, no one ever did! Well into my first summer, one long-time golfer and homeowner in a clubhouse bar conversation somewhat belligerently demanded to know why I didn’t play in the men’s association. When I rather timidly ventured that no one had ever asked me to, he snorted for all to hear something like, “Hey this guy thinks he rates an invitation.”

Last night, I was one of about 30 people who enjoyed a Super Bowl party at the home next to our son’s place in Michigan. We had met the host couple (Bud and Chris Jensen) once, and had not previously met a single one of the others invited to the shindig. Sandy was under the weather and couldn’t attend, which was unfortunate because the people were very friendly. Casual conversations revealed that most of the party goers had lived in the area for many years, and many, but not all, were golfers.

Seven or eight of the men present (make that eight or nine; Bud had done so earlier) invited me to join a group of senior golfers who play together at least twice a week. Two offered to sponsor me as a member of the association. One told me exactly how to obtain a fact sheet describing all the local golf events scheduled for the coming season. A half dozen of the women asked whether Sandy played golf, and offered to sign her up in a group they belong to.

Seems like newcomers still “rate an invitation” in Southwestern Michigan.

Let It Snow

Christmas eve traditionally softens the hearts of employers toward their charges, and the word goes out that it's OK to leave the workplace early with the organization's best wishes for a happy holiday. No so in the cold-hearted world of government contracting in the 1960s. My workday at the McCoy Job Corps Center, as most were, was scheduled to run from 8 a.m to 5 p.m. as usual.

Karl Wagner, a former public school system superintendent who held a PhD in education, was the newly appointed center director as my second holiday season at McCoy approached. Wagner blithely let it be known to those in the headquarters building that he intended to release all personnel who were not needed for security reasons or to supervise residential living at noon on the day before Christmas.

The word got to Al Groncki the morning of the 24th. Groncki was on loan from the U.S. Forest Service to the anti-poverty agency that administered the Job Corps program. His job was to see that RCA, our employer, observed the letter of the law in meeting the provisions of its contract to operate the McCoy Center. He took his job very seriously.

"Not so fast," Groncki said. "The contract calls for all employees to work a full day on December 24. Dr. Wagner, you have no authority to release the workers early."

Wagner had an attorney and two contract specialists on his staff. He summoned them to his office and told them to find a way he could get around the contract provision. They couldn't find a thing, except one small clause that allowed the director to send employees home if a natural disaster put them in jeopardy.

Wagner looked out his office window and observed a few snowflakes falling. "Tell Groncki I'm declaring a snow emergency, and tell the department heads to send all employees who don't live at the center home immediately before this blizzard makes the roads impassable."

I just saw some snowflakes. Please, take the rest of the day off. And, Merry Christmas!

(A New) Home for the Holidays

Suddenly, a buyer for our long-time Utah home appeared, and he wanted to buy immediately. So, we packed up, drove through blizzards, fog, and icy roads, and will buy a new place tomorrow and become official Michiganders.

Despite a depressed economy and an almost equally depressing winter storm that arrived last night, the hardy folks who inhabit these parts seem to be in good spirits. The first fellow transplant who commented on our arrival said:

"God smiled on those who were born in Michigan. The rest of us did our best to get here as soon as we could."

Sounds like something a Texan would have dreamed up, but we're hoping it truly applies to our new home.

Revising Identities

The latest change at our best-known big-box store seems to have elicited a rising tide of apathy. Wal-Mart removed the hyphen (or the star that occupied the same space in many places) several weeks ago. I still am straining to hear the cheers for Walmart.

In these tough times, however, it might be worth taking a moment to ponder the costs of changes like this. Think of the signs, letterheads, labels, painted truck panels, and numerous other items that will have to be altered. Walmart is so big that costs in the millions are easy to visualize, and customers will pay them as the hyphen-less and star-less merchandiser subtly includes them in price increases.

Although in this case the alterations easily could be phased in to hold costs down, keep an eye on our leading discounter and see if its intrepid execs don’t start to champ at the bit and order quicker revisions than necessary to “get the project completed.” They recently were running an expensive advertising campaign just to tell us about it. And who cares? The company’s own home page showed the name all three ways just a few days ago. The star in the middle was replaced with something at the end best described as an orange doodad, making the revised name into a logo that fails to signify much of anything. One would think corporate leaders could find more important things to meddle with.

In the case of Walmart, Wal-Mart, or Wal¶Mart, it’s hard to think of a reason for the changes. The company has been making money hand over fist, and is expected to make even more as people look for places to buy cheap stuff to help cope with economic distress.

Sometimes, more than a hyphen or star is involved and there may be fairly good reasons to upgrade a corporate identity. About a year before I went to work at Allis-Chalmers in the public relations department the corporate wizards there decided they needed to create a more modern image by renaming the company and following that with the introduction of a new logo. Most of us thought they were right. The old moniker—Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company—was not inspiring. They fixed that by just knocking off the last two words, and it was a good fix.

The A-C logo was a stodgy affair that did not lend itself to a quick fix. So the image makers scrapped it and commissioned a high-priced advertising agency to develop a completely new symbol. Veteran PR men told me numerous new designs were proposed and rejected over many months before a logo finally was approved by the CEO. Although no one knew the exact costs of developing and changing to the new symbol, my associates estimated very conservatively that the total was about $250,000. In the mid-1960s, a quarter of a million was considered more than just walking around money, even in a big company.

The name change was nice, but it did little to reverse the downward spiral of the Allis-Chalmers corporate fortunes. The logo change became an embarrassment. Just a short time after the sleek new symbol had been plastered, painted, and printed all over the place, someone encountered an Associated Grocers logo, an emblem which had been around for years. It was nearly identical in color and form to the “unique” Allis-Chalmers creation that cost so much to design and adopt.

Geezer A-Go-Go

With my long-running garage improvement project (see Nov. 13 post, “Timely Inaction”) completed, the way is clear for us to sell our Utah home and zip off to Michigan. Of course, real estate conditions being what they are this could take a while.

We’re claiming the reason for the move is to be near our son Lee and his fianceé Karen, who live near Kalamazoo. The real reason is a yearning to be where people don’t say, “We gotta remember we need the moisture,” when digging out from under two feet of winter snow or bailing gallons of threatening water after springtime mini-floods.

There’s something in this for everybody. Some will be delighted to know we are leaving. Some may be a bit sad, but pleased to know we're doing what's best for us. For both groups, we hope the news contributes to a Happy Thanksgiving. And best holiday wishes as well to the many who couldn’t care less.

Seeking a Timely Solution

Deals involving acquisition of acreage by the federal government through purchase or trade can be complex, requiring specialized knowledge and careful negotiations. Forest Service retiree George Campbell served for years on lands staffs in the Eastern and Intermountain Regions, and those who worked with him said he did his job very well.

Despite indications that Campbell could manipulate high-tech gadgets with no trouble, he is not fond of some of them. He chooses not to use a home computer. His recent pronouncements on the subject indicate he fully intends to maintain his distance from PCs.

Just after daylight savings time reverted to the regular brand, Campbell appeared at a Wednesday coffee assembly and asked in a voice filled with frustration if anybody knew how to reset a digital watch, because he was having no luck with his. I told him not to feel lonesome, because neither Sandy nor I had been able to get my fairly new watch properly calibrated. We reset the hours and minutes correctly, which was a bit better than Campbell had done, but we couldn’t get the gadget to acknowledge that it was Wednesday, not Sunday.

After some contemplation of the resetting problem, Campbell announced he had the solution. He was going to buy a duplicate watch. He would have one set for standard time and the other for daylight time. He simply would trade watches twice a year. Someone in the group that heard the “Campbell solution” observed that those who traveled often through several time zones would need quite a few watches.

I mentioned the idea to Sandy, who thought it had some merit. She, however, believed I probably could muddle through. She pointed out that I didn’t do much of anything most days, so carrying around a constant reminder of what day it was probably was not vital.

The next time we met, I asked Campbell how he was coming with his watch problem. He said by working at it for about 30 minutes he figured out the process and had everything reset to the correct numbers. Meanwhile, Sandy and I had downloaded pages of instructions from the manufacturer of my watch, and when they failed to work, obtained another instruction sheet from Walmart, where we bought the gadget. Those directions didn’t work, either.

I was nearly ready to apply the “Campbell solution’ and go with at least two watches. Sandy saved the day. She told me to leave my watch in her care when I was heading off to a meeting and she would make one last try at adjusting the date display. When I got back, the timepiece was functioning correctly.

Sandy had made a 20-mile roundtrip to another Walmart store where clerks gave her a copy of the right instructions. She then restored order in our high-tech world, at least until spring when I try to remember where we put the reset instructions.

Who Dunnit?

This "letter," sent around by old neighbor Dick "Snuffy" Hufschmid, caused a chuckle:

Dear Sir /Madam:

In view of current developments in the banking market, if one of my checks is returned marked "insufficient funds," does that refer to me or you?

Timely Inaction

Was anyone surprised when our newly elected leaders informed us that much of the change we’ve been promised will take time? Had the other guys won, would those mavericks have said the same thing? You betcha.

Some big projects simply take time. It is true that Rome and other major works were not completed in a day.

Last week I made a final shelf adjustment and added a bit of paint to a wall section to finish my garage improvement project begun the week we moved into our home—we arrived 26 years ago. You just can’t rush into some things.

Election Math That Didn’t Compute

Shortly before settling in to absorb a bunch of voting returns on election night I ran across a website that made the whole thing simple. The author presented a vast array of charts and numbers, with razzle-dazzle analyses, that purported to predict accurately who would be the next President of the United States of America based on just a few early ballots. It was impressive, and no flaws in the presentation were apparent. If you wanted a quick answer, all the number crunching boiled it down to this:

If the race was close in Indiana, and Obama won Virginia, there was a 100 percent chance that Obama would be our next President. If those two things didn’t happen, we were in for a close race and a long night.

The polls closed very early in both states, so I figured I could learn what was going to happen in not more than an hour after dinner. Maybe I could even win a few last-minute bets (we lost a dinner bet when Obama eventually won). Early results showed a close race in Indiana. The trouble was those unpredictable voters in Virginia just kept standing in line for several hours. About the time CNN was willing to call Virginia for Obama, Obama clearly had won the entire election. Following the wizard’s advice didn’t help me learn a darn thing any quicker than anybody else did.

It wasn’t the first time a flaw in human performance caused frustration when I was trying to follow the guidance of a statistical genius at election time. When I worked in public relations for Allis-Chalmers in the 1960s, our supervisor “volunteered” himself and several of us to work for the Associated Press on election nights. Supposedly, we were doing a civic duty by helping tabulate incoming election returns. Actually, we were trying to butter up the news people at AP. We knew it, and they knew it, but they needed help and we were available.

At that time, the Associated Press was the principal news organization that took it upon itself to declare winners in elections. They used a fairly sophisticated statistical program that incorporated samples from key parts of a state to predict winners. In Wisconsin, where we helped out, the samples were mostly from the heavily populated areas in the southeast, but also included a county or two in the northern rural areas.

On the night of my frustration, we added up totals from report after report, but our leaders refused to declare a winner in the most important contest. Midnight passed; still no call was made. We finally had added up nearly 90 percent of the precincts in the state, and started clamoring for a call. We were told that the statistical formula absolutely required returns from one small county in the north, and it hadn’t reported.

About 2 a.m. somebody got somebody in the northern county out of bed and demanded to know what was going on. Our contact had merely forgotten about the AP commitment and retired for the night hours earlier!

This very unhappy camper got home around 4 a.m. that election night, just about in time to get ready to go to work at my day job. I should have learned right then not to get mixed up with political predictions, but Tuesday night I did it once again.

Should They Speak Out?

Despite occasional disagreement about the practice among journalists, some 400 daily newspapers across the land endorse presidential candidates in their editorial columns. In 2004, they were nearly equally divided between recommending John Kerry or George W. Bush. Interesting--that’s about how the election turned out.

Should the print media presume to tell us who they think can best guide our County? And when they do, should you and I pay attention to what they say? Yes and yes.

My experience is that newspaper editors come to know a lot about politicians because they constantly are exposed to their messages, and also monitor their actions. The newspaper people are skeptical by nature. With few exceptions, the editorials that appear in daily papers are developed by an editorial board. Debates can be sharp, because some effort usually is made to appoint board members with divergent viewpoints. What emerge are better analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates than individuals can possibly make by themselves.

My local paper doesn’t endorse presidential aspirants, but a few years back it decided to make recommendations about local candidates and referenda. I find this very useful in helping me make up my mind about how to vote on things that matter in my life. I wish the Ogden paper’s editorial board would say who it favors for president. That alone wouldn’t sway my vote, but I’d like to see the argument.

Endorsements by newspapers are useful because they always are accompanied by the reasons for the recommendation. Editorial boards tend to address the issues, not the “attack dog” junk. Calling Senator Obama an “inexperienced socialist” or Senator McCain an “over-aged warmonger” is stupid and useless. With very few exceptions, the editorial boards don’t engage in the reprehensible character assassination that has been far too prevalent in the current campaign.

Should we slavishly follow the advice of the press? No. We should make up our own minds, but the arguments that accompany newspaper recommendations should be considered. They offer some of the best information available.

Of course, like anything else, endorsements can be reduced to absurdity. Next week cartoonists Garry Trudeau (a liberal) and Carl Moore (a conservative) are going to endorse someone for president in their daily doodlings. I intend to pay no attention whatever to this kind of nonsense, and hope you also will ignore these shenanigans.

Should geezers who write blog posts endorse candidates? No. They have no special knowledge that would be helpful.

Ghastly Gein Pops Up Again

Ed Gein died of cancer in a mental institution two decades ago, but writers concocting stories about horrible events for the Halloween season continue to resurrect him. People who lived in Wisconsin 50 years ago, as I did, would prefer the world forget about Gein.

Younger generations may not have heard of the killer, grave robber, and mutilator of bodies who lived in a farmhouse he decorated with human remains near the small community of Plainfield, Wisconsin. But they can get the idea from a series of fictitious monsters patterned after him. Gein’s story was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock”s famous thriller, “Psycho.” He also was the model for Leatherface in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Leatherface wore clothes made from human skin; so did Gein. More recently, Gein inspired the terrifying “Buffalo Bill” character in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Gein admitted, without a trace of remorse or concern, to two murders and exhuming more that a dozen bodies from the local graveyard. He made lampshades, bowls, a shirt, and other items from the cadavers. The local sheriff investigating the disappearance of a woman found her in Gein’s farmhouse. Her beheaded and disemboweled body was hanging upside down from a ceiling beam. The discovery was made in November 1957, the year I graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

I never encountered Gein, nor did I help those who burned his farmhouse to the ground shortly after he was arrested. But I unknowingly passed too close to him for comfort many times over a four-year period. Perhaps I exaggerate the proximity, but nevertheless the annual resurrection of this creature scares hell out of me.

Plainfield is about the halfway point between Madison and my hometown. I, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends, drove through the area whenever a trip was made to or from home by auto. One time, three of us stopped in a Plainfield bar for a beer. Two men who stopped in a Plainfield bar a few years earlier never were heard from again. Although he was known to favor dispatching or mutilating women, Gein was suspected of doing the men in. He never admitted guilt regarding the missing men. There were several other mysterious disappearances in the area over several years.

Thank God I never hitchhiked home from school. That probably was due more to circumstance than common sense. Thumbing a ride was an acceptable way to travel in those days. Neither we youngsters nor our parents thought much about the danger involved. Nowadays, parents worry much more, and hitchhiking is rare. Teenage travel may be less adventurous, but it surely is safer.

If you are among those planning a pilgrimage to look for spooks where Gein’s farmhouse stood, or in the Plainfield cemetery where he is buried near many of his victims, please do us all a favor this Halloween. Stay away, and let Ed stay dead.

Help Is On the Way

An Associated Press headline today said, “Iraqis have money, but lack know-how in spending it.”

There’s a nonproblem if ever there was one. As soon as we vote a whole lot of incumbent senators and congressmen out of office week after next, we’ll send them over to act as advisors. This should be a bipartisan group. Plenty of blame for our current financial problems is available to shower on both parties.

When President Bush becomes available in January, he can assume command of the crew. It won’t take long for that bunch to show our Arab friends how to go from riches to rags.

Playing Around Comes Around

In the wake of huge drops in value of many shares on the stock exchanges this month, I feel sorry for three groups.

People who are in their sixties, entrusted their savings to the markets, and were planning to retire soon may have to postpone their entry into the golden years, and quite a few may have to work until they drop. This group doesn’t have ten or more years to wait for the markets to recover.

Younger guys and gals who were saving to help their kids with college education costs or to get a down-payment on a home also took a big hit if they listened to the sweet music of brokers and “financial advisors” who said putting their cash into the market rather than into more conservative savings plans was the only thing to do. The race no longer went to the steady; to be “with it” you had to be among the swift, nimble, and clever. You could charge or borrow for just about anything, and the big returns you would earn in the market would pay off your balances at some vague time in the future. The arguments were persuasive, but they were hogwash.

Some middle-aged workers also deserve sympathy. After their employers canceled or refused to finance any new company-funded retirement plans, they had little choice but to bet on the stock market through 401K’s as a way to accumulate wealth they would need in the future. Some tales are told of employers actually telling workers it was to their advantage to get out of company-funded retirement plans in favor of “personal choice” arrangements.

The people I couldn’t care less about are in the big group that smugly told solid citizens for years that they were outdated and stupid for putting their nest eggs into safe investments, such as long-term certificates of deposit or tax-exempt municipal bonds, because the returns just didn’t match the rich rewards available in the market. These jerks deserve what they got. They should have paid more attention to the words in some common descriptive phrases:

We play the ponies.

We play the tables.

We play the slots.

We play the stock market.

When you choose to gamble, you ought to be prepared to take the consequences without a lot of whining. Calling a gambler an investor doesn’t change the odds a whole lot.

Disclosure: The Gabbygeezer has no position in the stock market.

Slightly Provincial

The nice lady on the phone several days ago was a true voice from the past. Betty Rowe Baker was a close friend of my sister and the daughter of one of my heroes (see Nov. 2, 2007 post, “My Hero, Dr. Rowe Baker”). I hadn’t talked with Betty Rowe for at least 50 years.

We did a lot of reminiscing about days in the old hometown. My caller mentioned that she subscribed to the Tomahawk Leader, although most of the names in the news no longer were people she knew. That observation got us onto the topic of something that was unknown to many of us when we were kids in a small town. We seldom knew the street names, or if we did, we were hazy about where they were.

We found houses because they were “across the street from Nick’s, next door to Schmidt’s, “ or “right where the road turns north in Jersey City.” I knew where Wisconsin Avenue was because we lived on it. And Fourth Street was familiar, because beyond it, when walking “downtown,” Wisconsin Avenue was known as “Main Street.” Other than that, my knowledge of the location of streets was limited.

We thought we were pretty sophisticated in Tomahawk, Wisconsin. After all, a passenger train stopped beside the depot at the end of Main Street every day. It disgorged travelers from such grand places as Chicago and Milwaukee. We even had a famous eatery. Jim’s Logging Camp, a steakhouse a few miles up the highway, modestly advertised itself as “The Antoine’s of the North,” assuming that we and tourists who came to our city were acquainted with New Orleans’ restaurants. We thought we were pretty worldly in many ways, but in fact we could be very provincial.

One night at our dinner table Mom started a conversation about a “man from Illinois” who lived in our immediate neighborhood. After a while, my sister asked just who this man was. When Mom revealed his name, we learned that the immigrant has lived across the street from our family home for 27 years!

Apparently, it took a little time to become recognized as a fully integrated citizen of my hometown.

Bring the Sheriff Back to Town

A whole lot of us thought deregulation was the way to go when our hero Ronald Reagan made it a pillar of his campaign in 1980. After all, wasn’t free enterprise the American way, something to be taken literally? And with less government interference, business people would just naturally be freer to lead us to prosperity, and wouldn’t that be wonderful?

So we ran roughshod over what we saw as a misguided regulator crowd. Laws were changed. Officials were admonished to be kinder and gentler to the very guys they were supposed to be watching, because, after all, American business leaders could be trusted. And, of course, private enterprise does everything better than government. It can even regulate itself, we were told.

Well, American business leaders can be trusted. Their job is to operate efficiently and maximize profits for their shareholders. They can be trusted to work hard to make their operations successful. There is nothing wrong with that. Without guidelines about what is permissible, though, financiers and business people face too much pressure to produce large short-term profits, and do it quarter after quarter. That was part of the problem when we went overboard with deregulation. Caution became a dirty word. Many individuals crossed the line and committed fraud. Others had no ethics to begin with, and gleefully took advantage of the new deregulated situation.

Somewhere along the line, we forgot the lessons of the not-so-distant past. Government programs that did work in combating effects of the Great Depression included considerable regulation of our financial institutions. That inspired confidence, which along with wartime spending, lifted us out of economic disaster. In the late 1980s we should have learned the lesson again when relaxed regulation of Savings and Loans created an expensive bailout crisis. We quickly forgot about that and went on our merry deregulation way.

We ignored two very fundamental things about human nature. First, like it or not, greed is a major motivator of Homo sapiens. Second, many of us like to think we are considerably smarter than we really are.

Let’s face it; most of us simply do not understand the complexities of high finance. We haven’t a clue about what’s going on with derivatives, hedge funds, credit-default swaps, and exotic mortgage-backed securities. Hedge fund managers don’t even reveal how they are investing the money entrusted to them! Investors are supposed to just have faith.

Ignorance about high-level money matters is not confined to the middle and lower classes. The wealthy often don’t understand sophisticated financial deals, either. They, however, can hire accountants, lawyers, and other expensive advisors to protect their interests and make big profits for them. We common folks simply are unable to do that. We have neither the money nor the contacts.

We are the minnows in the financial pond. It should come as no surprise that the big fish just ate a whole lot of us little fish. They almost always do. This time, we suffered the additional indignity of being forced to pay the costs of the meal.

We must empower our government to closely monitor and regulate our financial institutions simply because we cannot protect ourselves from greedy executives and the predators who are ever-ready to pick our pockets to benefit themselves or their clients.

We need to get the sheriff and a whole lot of deputies back into our financial community right now. We need to back them up by restoring many old regulations and creating some stiff new ones, and we need to cheer them on as they round up the wrongdoers and hang them high. We need enterprise that is both free and fair.