Strauss, You Were in Tune

In Days with the Dads, I implied that Johann Strauss II may have been spending too much time in Viennese wine taverns when he created his classic waltz. We crossed the famous “blue” Danube twice two years ago, and it definitely was green.

This spring, as we headed north from Vienna along the Danube, we observed the same phenomenon several times. The river was green. It was green when we stopped for the evening at a bed and breakfast in Regensburg on a bluff overlooking the stream. The day had been sunny and bright, as had all others when we had observed the famous river.

The sky was overcast when we rose early the next morning. The Danube was deep blue! It stayed that way as we turned west and drove through the upper river basin, an area not often visited by international tourists. At Walhalla, a temple built on a hill by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to honor distinguished Germans, excellent views of the river were part of the attraction.

A bust of Strauss is among the 130 on display in Walhalla. He can look down on a beautiful Blue Danube, and marvel at the ignorance of American tourists who don’t understand that it’s when and where you look at things, as well as how, that matters.

Health Food

Constantly seek the truth, and you shall find it. The author of the “Flat Belly Diet” recommends olives as containing monounsaturated fatty acids, iron, vitamin E, copper, and fiber. The fiber helps control blood sugar and cholesterol levels. Eating only a few at a time is suggested, because olives have mega calories.

I subscribe to this great wisdom. At regular intervals, I surround two small olives with several ounces of cheap gin and a dash of expensive vermouth. The drink should be stirred, not shaken. (Agent 007 may have been a 10 with women, but as a connoisseur of martinis he was a zero.) After sipping the drink until it is depleted, make another and ingest it.

Four olives consumed in this manner invariably make me happy as well as healthy.

Grading Off the Curve

As a land grant institution financed mainly by legislative appropriations, the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s was committed to enrolling just about anyone who applied on time after graduating from a high school within the State. The faculty often seemed equally committed to flunking out all who failed to meet rigorous standards.

“Standards” were very much in the mind of the applier in those days in Madison. There were great differences between requirements for passing some “snap” courses and successfully negotiating many tough required courses.

Freshman English was a requirement. It was taught by grad students in small, workshop-like classes with emphasis on creative writing and all sorts of demerits for grammatical and format errors in the compositions. The mere thought of freshman English frightened some wannabe engineers, who could be great number crunchers but woefully inadequate wordsmiths.

English 1a and 1b were pretty easy going for me. In 1a, the presiding grad student bestowed an A on every one of my papers and test results. But when my final grade arrived, it was a B!

I sought an audience. “I don’t understand your complaint,” the instructor said. “You should be proud. I only gave three B’s in my three sections. You would have to master English to get an A. No college freshmen ever could be on that level. I’ve never given an A for the course.”

No wonder some of the engineers were terrified.

Elsewhere, “standards” apparently could be negotiable. History was among my loves, but the lecturer for one course on Americana was totally boring and so was the textbook. I took to cutting the classes and leaving the book on a shelf a bit too much--so much that the big point counter on an essay question exam called for a description of a phase of history totally unfamiliar to me. Desperately, I filled most of the blue book with a contrived answer to the question, hoping good penmanship would count for something.

The blue book came back with a passing grade and a note beside the contrived answer: “Obviously, you skipped two lectures about this and didn’t bother to read Chapter 10. But I was intrigued by how you dreamed up a totally fictional part of American history. So I gave you a B for creativity on this one.”

And then there was the long-running student joke that surfaced every semester at registration time. “Don’t take basket weaving. I heard four Navajos signed up. They’ll raise the curve out of sight.”

A Miracle Worker?

President Obama’s appointment of Utah Governor John Huntsman, Jr. as ambassador to China seemed a good idea when it was announced. Huntsman speaks Mandarin Chinese, a skill acquired and used during a two-year stay among the inscrutable ones as a Mormon missionary.

After recently learning some details about Huntsman’s negotiating skills, I think the appointment rating should be ratcheted up several notches from “good” to at least “excellent.”

Huntsman actually convinced the Mormon Church to let the legislature change several of the stranger provisions of the State’s liquor laws. On May 12, the “Zion Curtain” was lifted in restaurants. This quirky regulation required bartenders to prepare drinks behind a partition so patrons could not see them concocting the sinful mixtures. On July 1, looser regulations will permit establishment of the State’s first distillery since the 1920s. It will operate in Southern Utah. Also in July, the private club system will end. For decades, imbibers had to buy a membership to drink in a bar, or enter as a guest of a member.

These changes are revolutionary in the Beehive State, and the word is that Huntsman was the driving force behind them. Perhaps we moved from Utah too soon. However, abolishing the private club requirement has a negative side for snobbish drinkers. In the good old days, one could buy an annual club membership for $10 or $12, and the club repaid the fee with a free birthday dinner or some such ploy. So membership really was a freebie, and there was a certain aura of intrigue about presenting a card at the door of a local hot spot—something like entering a speakeasy during prohibition, I suppose.

The other nifty thing about the club system was that people on the lower end of the economic scale could pretend they were among the wealthy. At one time, we belonged to three or four clubs in Ogden. It was fun to say things like, “I’ll meet you in the lobby of the Ben Lomond Hotel, and we can go up to my club.” Or, “We could hold the party at one of my clubs. Just pick the place.” To similarly impress people in Michigan, I would have to pay real dollars, and quite a few of them, for club memberships. Oh well, it is said that freedom has its price.

It is amazing that Huntsman was able to twist enough Mormon arms to remove some of Utah’s restrictive liquor laws. He may be just the man to talk the Chinese into allowing a little personal freedom in their repressive society.

A Flash of Stupidity

It would be unfair to say that Chrysler management always has been stupid. After all, the founders outperformed many domestic auto competitors to become one of the “Big Three.” And, when things went awry in the 1970s, Lee Iacocca rode in on his white horse to save the day with timely product redesigns, “straight talk” advertising featuring himself, and the ability to persuade federal authorities to guarantee massive loans.

Since then, however, Chrysler leaders have committed more errors than a Little League team in its first practice game. Perhaps the residents of the executive suites were too busy counting their multi-million-dollar compensation packages to make a fumbling attempt at good management.

When I worked at The West Bend Company in 1964 as Sales Promotion Manager for the Direct Sales Division, I was privy to enough details of a Chrysler business decision to be confident that someone in the automaker’s top management had a flash of stupidity similar to some of the recent blunders.

West Bend was prosperous at the time. It was the world’s leading manufacturer of coffee makers, and near the top in various other types of cookware and small kitchen appliances. The company also was among the top five outboard motor manufacturers in the U.S. West Bend outboards were not well known because most were made for Sears and sold under the Sears name. West Bend didn’t emphasize sales under its own brand in the U.S., but sold small outboards successfully in other countries, especially Canada.

Unfortunately for West Bend, Sears’ execs decided the company had to have big outboards. Despite spirited resistance, West Bend was forced to retool its Hartford plant at heavy expense to get 80- and 100-horsepower outboards rolling off the assembly line or lose its largest customer. The deal allowed West Bend to sell the big motors under its own name, but they did not sell well. They did not sell well under the Sears name, either.

West Bend was stuck with an expensive, unprofitable plant. Company leaders started quietly looking around for a buyer for the outboard motor division. Chances of it continuing as a viable business were very low. Potential buyers expressed little interest, until Chrysler suddenly came forward.

As a department head, although mine was a very small department, I sat in on monthly marketing meetings conducted by Vice President Bob Lockman. Lockman was a tyrant when it came to meetings. He started exactly at the scheduled time. He once told a manager to get out and shut the door behind him after the unfortunate fellow arrived at 10:01 for one of the 10 a.m. marketing meetings.

Thus, it was surprising when Lockman was not at the podium at 10 a.m. on a monthly meeting day. We all waited, of course, and the wait extended to about 20 minutes. Then Lockman breezed in smiling broadly between puffs on a giant cigar.

“Guess what guys,” he said. “A Chrysler vice president just phoned and threatened me. He said if we wouldn’t sell them our outboard motor division, they were going to build their own plant and drive us out of the business.”

After a long drag on the cigar, Lockman chuckled. “I told him the offer was highway robbery, but since Chrysler had put our backs to the wall we had no choice but to accept.”

Lockman emerged from another cloud of cigar smoke with a laugh. “That Chrysler exec really was a tough negotiator. He forced us to take about double what our division is worth.”

Waltz into Wien

The Geezer avoids endorsing services and products (except for his own books!), but the situation in Vienna cries out for a recommendation. The historic city describes itself as “the capital that looks like a capital,” and it does. Cathedrals, palaces, theaters, museums, government buildings, and parks were designed and built on a grand scale in the days the city was a center of empire and the arts.

Unfortunately, Viennese prices are equally grand. You can skimp and put you and your spouse, lover, or good friend into a modest hotel room for a night for 150 Euros ($198) or treat yourselves to more upscale lodgings for a mere 400 or so Euros ($529 or so). Be sure parking comes with your room, because spaces are hard to find in the central city and carry a hefty price tag (up to 40 Euros for a long day). Some guidebooks suggest lodging costs are mitigated because tourists can take a walking tour from downtown hotels to the major attractions in a single day. Hogwash. Olympic sprinters might make it, tourists never would.

You can, however, get a good overview of Vienna in one day and cover all the important places in three days, and have a few Euros left in your pocket for several glasses of the acclaimed local wines. Do that, or have coffee or tea if you prefer, because Vienna’s sidewalk cafes are great places to people-watch. Just be a visitor who does not stay. Stay in Baden.

Specifically, stay at Pension Elfy, at No. 11 Karlsgasse (www.tiscover.at/pension-elfy). There, you will find immaculate rooms, some with kitchens, a patio for enjoyable breakfasts in good weather, a lovely garden from which you can clearly see remains of an ancient Roman viaduct, and a fine hostess. Elfriede Pusitz, will load you up with good food at breakfast and lots of information on what to see in central Vienna, which is only about 12 miles away.

Take the train for a few Euros. You will disembark right behind St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the heart of the tourist attractions. Then, making sure your driver speaks English if you don’t do German, rent a horse-drawn carriage for about 10 Euros per person. That may seem extravagant, but it gets you around to the main attractions efficiently, and you’ll get good insights about what to return to later for detailed explorations. Besides, clattering over cobblestones in a carriage is a lot of fun.

For lunch, do what the locals do. Walk to the flea market and buy bread, pretzels, cheese, sausages, and something to drink from a huge selection. You can feed four people in style for about 12 Euros, less than the cost of one lunch at most Viennese restaurants.

You might want to hang around for a bite of dinner if the mid-day meal has left any space for that, or visit a wine tavern for a sing-along (those haughty Viennese don’t frequent beer taverns). Or, you could return to Baden to dine where Frau Pusitz will assure you of finding plenty of good food at good prices.

Baden, a spa city in Roman times, itself is an interesting place to visit. It provided vacation homes for Austro-Hungarian imperial families and such artists as Johann Strauss and Ludwig von Beethoven, who was inspired to write most of his Ninth Symphony there. Nowadays it serves the same function for wealthy Viennese, but you don’t have to be a wealthy tourist to stay there.

In mid-April, we paid 60 Euros for a first-class double room at Pension Elfy, breakfast, taxes, and good advice included.

Up Nort Wit Da Yoopers

After learning I grew up in Northern Wisconsin, a neighbor introduced me to a man he said was a Yooper. Having been exposed to an occasional “Uff da” and dozens of Finlander jokes in my youth, I knew something about where the guy hailed from.

Residents of my hometown had much more in common with the denizens of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula than with those down-State city slickers in Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine. We were suspicious of State government. After all, State agents could hurt our tourist business by enforcing liquor, gambling, and fishing and hunting regulations. (The drug store in the front part of my family’s “Main Street” building had two slot machines in the middle of the establishment, right in front of the fishing tackle display, many years after gambling was declared illegal in Wisconsin.)

We didn’t want to discourage anybody who liked to travel “up Nort for the Fourt” or any other time. The city people brought greenbacks we needed, and we were pretty good at extracting them. There also was a common perception that more tax dollars were traveling the 200 miles south to Madison than were migrating back up Highway 51 to the north.

Similar feelings about Detroit and Lansing were more intense in the U.P. The Yoopers, a true collection of rugged individualists, several times pushed proposals to secede from Michigan. In 1962 they got serious and formed the Upper Peninsula Independence Association to make it happen.

About that time, my Dad became well acquainted with William F. Brown, who had come to town to open a real estate and insurance agency. Mr. Brown was in his early 60s, an energetic, outgoing man with a wry sense of humor. He landed a part-time job as an appraiser when property values were in question during lawsuits in the county court. Brown had lots of real estate expertise, but not much knowledge of the area. He recruited my Dad as a partner who had lived in Tomahawk all his life and knew a lot about the values of various building locations and whether the owners were likely to have maintained their property.

I recall Mr. Brown chuckling about how he and Dad could complete an appraisal in a matter of minutes. He said they never entered a building, or measured much of anything. They just got the construction date, eyeballed the place, roughly paced off a few dimensions, and declared a value. Dad said they must have been fairly accurate; their findings were only challenged once in the many years they worked together.

Mr. Brown wasn’t a Yooper, but he knew a chance to interject some humor into the Northwoods environment when he saw one. He became a vocal supporter of seceding from Wisconsin to join the U.P. in a new Great State of Superior. I was young and quite willing to entertain thoughts of rebellion against any authority that happened to be present. I read some of the realtor’s writings about getting a divorce from Wisconsin and forming a 51st State with the Yoopers. Dad just snorted when I said secession seemed like it had merit. “It’s all a bunch of Brown’s b.s.,” he said.

The State of Superior never materialized, but there was some fun during the campaign. Lots of folks wore T-shirts featuring the proposed State’s official emblem . . . a giant mosquito.

Prosit, Herr Schmidt

Wyman Schmidt was a leader in silvicultural research in the vast Northern Rocky Mountain area for 34 years. His studies and those of the group of scientists he led were directed at many tree species—western larch, ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, whitebark pine, and others—and forest ecosystems at a wide range of elevations.

Schmidt was recognized as an excellent research program planner and manager. He effectively led a unit whose members were scattered over a wide geographic area and organized several international technical conferences attended by hundreds of scientists and resource managers. He also deserved honors as an entertainer.

The forester became a barbershop singer as a teenager. During Air Force service in the Korean War, he often was assigned to Special Services to provide entertainment at bases throughout the U.S. When fellow Forest Service research personnel met in Bozeman or Missoula, Montana, where Schmidt’s unit had offices, you could count on him to have arranged musical or audio-visual shows to help fill off-duty hours.

We had two major laboratories in Missoula, and two people in the unit I supervised were stationed there. It never was a chore to visit Missoula; I enjoyed the city. It just seemed to be a place populated with genuine, down-to-earth people like those I grew up with in the Midwest. It also had some pretty down-to-earth eating places, among them the Missoula Club (the Mo Club), the Oxford (the Ox), the Montana Club, and a pizza place whimsically named “Red Pies Over Montana” after a movie about forest fires and smokejumpers titled “Red Skies Over Montana.”

Schmidt knew how to take advantage of what was available locally to entertain a visitor, sometimes in novel ways. Around midnight after one lengthy Missoula meeting, he invited me to head downtown with him for a bite to eat. He picked the place as one with an unusual menu that included breakfast items served at the bar at all hours.

I ordered scrambled eggs. Schmidt poked me and whispered, “Watch this.” He told the bartender he wanted an order of brains.

The bartender whirled around and yelled to the cook at the top of his lungs, “He needs ‘em!”

Schmidt made several trips at the invitation of governments in Europe to provide expert advice on forestry activities. After a visit to Germany, he put together a slide show describing his trip. He offered it for viewing as an evening activity at a Montana meeting of fellow Research Station employees. The last slide pictured Schmidt raising a stein at the famous Hofbrauhaus in Munich during Octoberfest. He claimed his visit just happened to end in Munich.

Schmidt got a lot of razzing about that. He was accused of arranging a boondoggle trip that allowed him to avoid work and spend most of his time in beer halls. He took all the kidding in stride, and figured out a subtle way to strike back.

Sometime later, Schmidt was sent to what was then Yugoslavia as a technical advisor. He again produced a slide show describing his activities, and attendees at another Research Station meeting were invited to a showing. The last slide showed Schmidt again toasting the audience--from a table in the Hofbrauhaus! He refused to answer any questions about how Munich had been relocated to the Balkans.

We stopped in Munich last month. Of course, we made a special visit to the Hofbrauhaus. Of particular interest was the wall of beer steins there, where personalized mugs are locked away for use only by their owners. Alas, we couldn’t find Schmidt’s stein. All were identified by numbers, not names. A few had pictures of the owner. Perhaps Schmidt’s was removed to be enshrined in a Munich tourist hall of fame somewhere else, but certainly not in Serbia or Croatia.

Raus, eine kurze Hose (Out, Short Pants)

They’re not just for show, although holidays and festivals bring them out of closets in droves. Lederhosen often could be spotted gracing the frames of Teutonic men during our recent four-country auto tour from Baden to Switzerland and Liechtenstein and across Bavaria and Austria.

Lee has been fascinated by the leather shorts for several years. When we reached Salzburg on April 12 he found just the right store and after an hour or so of expert advice from the Austrian shopkeeper and Karen and Sandy, he was outfitted in elegant style.

Lederhosen are among the most versatile forms of clothing. The leather pants come in various lengths, from very short to those that cover the knee. They can be worn with or without suspenders or belts. Any sort of shirt is OK. Men wear them to work on farms. With linen or other expensive coats or jackets, men wear them to work in offices. Men, sometimes sporting ruffled shirts and ties, get married in them. But, men never wear them in Vienna’s State Opera House. We learned that the hard way.

Lee received admiring, and occasionally quizzical, glances (when he spoke English) as he wore his Lederhosen throughout a full day of sightseeing in the old imperial capital. We planned to cap off a grand day by attending a ballet version of “Die Fledermaus” at the historic opera house.

As we waited in line for admission, a uniformed attendant tapped Lee on the shoulder, pointed at his pants, and intoned, “Lederhosen, nein.” We had driven in from the city of Baden, and left our luggage there. Sandy saved the day. She remembered stowing some of her dirty clothes in one suitcase in the car.

Lee and Karen hustled away to see what was available in the laundry as Sandy and I held our places in line. They returned with Lee wearing a pair of Sandy’s slacks. With a six-inch gap between the top of his shoes and the bottom of the slacks, he wasn’t a pretty sight, but he passed the opera house’s pants test.

As our line moved forward, the attendant administered the shoulder tap to a young German man just ahead of us who was wearing regular walking shorts. “Shorts, nein,” was the command this time. The young man promptly stripped to his underwear, pulled a pair of wrinkled trousers out of a backpack, put them on, and smiled in triumph at the official.

Another tap and, “Packs, nein,” wiped away the smile. Everybody got in eventually. The ballet was wonderful. Everyone in the audience wore long pants.

Lee is not the first Klade to run afoul of short pants sanctions. In 1987 I was with a half dozen fellow Forest Service employees who were led by a local to “the best Mexican restaurant” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after a day of meetings. I had completed my freshening up process before dinner by changing to a pair of walking shorts.

The doorman said I could not enter the restaurant. Plaintive pleas by me and my associates, which were elevated to the manager level, did no good. Shorts were forbidden, whether worn by men or women.

The manager finally said he had a way to solve the problem if I would go along with it. He produced a gaudy embroidered skirt, one usually loaned to women who showed up in shorts. It was a dazzling Hispanic red, yellow, and white creation, with a “one size fits all” elastic waistband.

I put the skirt on, entered with the group, and all sorts of innovative comments about my appearance flew about throughout our meal. The climax came when one of the more fun-loving Forest Service men loudly asked me for a dance, and we got a round of applause after a few whirls around the small floor in the center of the restaurant.

When we left, we moved through the door in a tight group concealing me in the center. The manager was leaning against a pillar a few feet beyond the exit. “All right,” he said, “hand over the skirt. I knew you Forest Service guys would try to sneak it out of here.”

The Pub Was the Place

The songwriter’s line, “On State Street, that great street,” could have applied to the site of some of Madison’s zaniest antics in the 1950s just as well as it fit Chicago’s busy thoroughfare. Many University of Wisconsin students spent a lot of free time on the street that ran from the State Capitol to the lower edge of Bascom Hill on campus.

The State Street ambience was light hearted; the students and business owners who catered to them made it so. A Rennebohm drug store, a favorite place to gather for coffee and chit-chat, was called, of course, The Pharm. Creative students often chose the sidewalks outside The Pharm as places they could entertain a big audience with their hijinks. As part of one of our Sigma Nu initiation stunts, a pledge was required to stand at the busy intersection for an hour eating popcorn out of a Kotex box.

Nearby, two bookstores faced each other across the street. In the student newspaper, The University Co-op’s ads said it was “across the mall from Paul.” Paul’s Book Store gave its location as “across the loop from the Coop.” University enclaves seem to inspire inventive names as well as prose. When our son was a University of Minnesota student, he took us for a beer at “The Improper Fraction,” where U of M students hung out. The bar was nothing special, but its name struck me as memorable.

State Street bars didn’t have cutesy names, but I thought they had distinct personalities. I was not a regular in the taverns as some students were. Most regulars flunked out of UW in a semester or two. But I visited all the State Street taverns at one time or another.

The Kollege Klub, where locals and visitors mixed with students, attracted noisy, and sometimes unruly, crowds. Two of my fraternity brothers who were on the boxing team worked there part-time as bartenders. Now and then they also functioned as bouncers.

The Brathaus, a favorite hangout of law school students, had much quieter patrons who actually were interested in the food as well as the drink. The grilled “brats” would have been classified as Polish sausages anywhere else in Wisconsin, something that still mystifies me. Brathaus “brats” definitely were not on menus in Sheboygan.

The Varsity Bar was a dimly lit smaller place, where young men took serious dates for a bit of hanky-panky in the booths. Things could get very serious at the “Var Bar.” Fraternity brother Don Tubman and his steady girlfriend Sue Mickeljohn took to spending considerable time there. Don and Sue became Mr. and Mrs. Tubman after their junior years.

The Pub was something special. There, I enjoyed my first State Street beer as a 17-year-old freshman after gaining admittance with a poorly altered draft card saying the bearer was 19. All the beer bars had their special stories. Tales of events at The Pub probably could fill the pages of a lengthy book. I heard a lot of them because Jack Peters, my best Sigma Nu buddy, tended bar there for a year or more. Jeff Weir, another Sigma Nu good guy, poured suds at The Pub before signing on for an Army tour and again in 1961-62 when he returned to UW to finish up work on a degree. Weir has a good memory, and lately has been sharing a few of the better Pub stories through e-mails. He became an attorney, and has practiced law for more than 25 years in Door County.

The Pub was the scene of “phantom dates.” Whether by house rule or just an accepted rule of conduct, coeds never entered the bar alone or in groups of females only. So those who wanted admittance badly hung around outside until they found a non-threatening male walking by who would agree to escort them in. The understanding was that the man would not have to stay, and many didn’t.

The Pub was home to one of the craziest characters in Madison history. Cy Butt lived for several years in an upstairs apartment. His roommate, Bobby Hinds, was a heavyweight boxer on the UW team who also was known for strange behavior. Butt gained fame by staying enrolled as a UW student for nearly 30 years. That happened because a family will provided him with a comfortable living as long as he was a student in good standing at Madison. Accounts vary, but one holds he stayed in the Law School for the last 12 of the 30 years, before the rules were changed and he was forced to graduate.

Butt, known as the “Sage of State Street,” was good at thinking and drinking, according to a writer who knew him well. He bombarded Madison’s two newspapers with letters to the editor advancing outlandish ideas. He once fired a pistol inside his apartment, and when a Madison police officer showed up to investigate, Butt said the explosion helped him with his writing. A favorite Butt antic was to walk up State Street tipping his hat to any female he passed. A few were said to faint when they got a close look at the live mink Butt was carrying on top of his head.

I encountered Butt only once--in The Pub. He came in wearing an old gray sweater with a bulge under it. He ordered one 15-cent beer and shared it with what I thought was a cat snuggled in the sweater. Maybe it was the mink!

I no longer remember the exact number who received law degrees with him, but when Butt finally graduated in the summer of 1955 I was in summer school and clearly recall reading the news. The Daily Cardinal headline proclaimed something like: Cy Butt and 87 Others Graduate From Law School.

The Pub was a bar and grill. The menu was interesting. Weir recalled serving Yummies (hamburgers) and Chummies (cheeseburgers). He said a Chummie with Swiss cheese was known as a Swummy. Fritos were an order of “Vegetables,” because you had to have them for a balanced meal.

Weir said the regulars at the Pub loved to sit near the front windows, park their beers on a ledge, and tap on the window panes when an especially attractive coed walked by. One regular noticed holes in the metal sidewalk elevator cover that was opened when kegs of beer were delivered. He welded a half dollar to a bolt and attached it to the metal panel. Gales of laughter swept through the bar whenever an embarrassed girl realized she couldn’t pick up the coin after bending over to grab it, and the regulars were watching.

Rumor had it that some student bartenders contributed to sort of a Pub welfare program for thirsty, but poorly financed, buddies. An early version had guests plunking a couple of nickels and dimes loudly on the bar when the regular bartender wasn’t watching. Their pal behind the bar would serve an 85-cent pitcher for the “wholesale price” payment of 30 or 40 cents, and help cover up the ruse with a loud, “Thank you,” as he rang up the sale.

Later, The Pub’s owner installed a cash register tape mechanism to thwart any conniving by student bartenders. Some were said to occasionally beat that system with an ingenious scheme to ring up receipts in a way that balanced the till and the tape totals, yet helped a few special friends satisfy their thirsts at reduced rates. Most transactions at The Pub, however, were known to be strictly on the up and up.

The Pub was the place to be on St. Patrick’s Day. Green beer flowed after the bartenders injected vegetable dye into the kegs. A lot flowed—Weir said as many as 35 half barrels were emptied over the three-day weekend.

When I visited The Pub about 40 years ago as an old grad the floor spaces where the regulars once positioned themselves to observe pretty girls walking down State Street were occupied by pinball machines. I quietly turned around and left. It just wasn’t the place to be anymore. I could envision the ghost of Cy Butt frowning.

Where the Prince is No Pauper

Why we visited Liechtenstein two weeks ago is somewhat mysterious. Perhaps we considered the tiny nation, one of the smallest independent States in the world, akin to the mountain that must be climbed “just because it’s there.”

Sandy, Lee, Karen, and I had no problem finding the place, although it does its best to hide by snuggling up between Switzerland and the western border of Austria. Even a country that is only about 15 miles long and seven miles wide cannot avoid detection by modern global positioning equipment. When we drove in, the day was sunny and mild and we knew the Prince was keeping an eye on things because the Liechtenstein flag was flying at the mountain-top castle above Vaduz, the capital city. That meant he was at home.

I didn’t take long to find out what makes the wheels go round in Liechtenstein—money, and lots of it.

Histories and even tourist brochures state that members of the House of Liechtenstein are “good at business” or “entrepreneurial.” Family leaders owned lots of land elsewhere when Germany was a series of small, frequently warring, States until the mid-1800s. Unfortunately for the ambitious Liechtensteiners, their lands did not qualify for designation as an imperial State. So they bought what is now Liechtenstein in two purchases in 1699 and 1712. Although they didn’t bother to live there, the area was designated as a principality in 1719 and allowed to join the German Confederation of States. It was the only small German State to maintain independence through numerous reorganizations and two world wars.

In 1938, the Prince moved to the country named for his family, occupying the medieval castle above Vaduz. You can go there to look, but you can’t enter or touch. It is a private castle.

With Hitler making serious noises about bringing all Germanic lands into the Third Reich (German is the official language in Liechtenstein), the Prince may have been feeling a bit of heat. He flew to Berlin in 1939 for a private meeting with Hitler. No one knows what deal was struck, but the Wehrmacht never marched into the principality. Opposition would have been light, anyway. The business-like princely family dissolved the Liechtenstein army in the 1860s, because it was too expensive to maintain.

The Prince established the first Liechtenstein bank in 1861. Today, a dozen or more modern financial buildings constitute the Vaduz skyline. Mirroring their Swiss brethren to the west, they long have featured accounts unavailable to the prying eyes of tax collectors. That probably soon will change. The Prince recently advised parliament that bank reform, including adoption of a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with the United States, was top priority if Liechtenstein was to continue as the ‘best-organized and best-regulated State in the world.”

In contrast to a lot of glitz and glamour at Rolex, Armani, Gucci and other shops and a flock of overpriced cafes in the car-free zone below the Castle of Vaduz bordered by the banks, much of Liechtenstein is alpine country where skiing is popular in winter and small pastures start where city streets end. The Porsches, Ferraris, and Mercedes traversing the only main route through Vaduz often are slowed by a farm tractor hauling a trailer full of manure.

The Prince lives well above any unpleasant odors and can look down from his castle with considerable financial satisfaction. Beyond other family properties, he can easily see the princely vineyard and winery and parts of the princely forest. If those and other views become boring, he can stroll through the hallways of his home to inspect one of the finest private art collections in Europe.

It’s good to be the Prince.

Sorry He Asked

Commenting a while back on the demise of the Christian Science Monitor brought one of my favorite newspaper stories to mind.

Christian Scientists I knew, and I knew many, were scrupulous about abstaining from drinking and smoking in accordance with church doctrine. In fact, I have only witnessed one exception. My Aunt Dorothy, who professed to be a member although she rarely attended church services, occasionally requested a bottle of Miller High Life when she visited our home. She was a strong-willed lady, and Dad usually had to go downtown and bring back the beer rather than risk a tirade about intolerance. We believed “Dode” demanded the beverage just to shake Mom up a bit.

Christian Science rules prevailed on all church property. Newspaper people at the time the story took place were known for observing few, if any, rules of deportment in their workplaces.

After a brash, young reporter was seated for his appointment to interview the Monitor’s chief editor in the newspaper’s offices in Boston, he said, “I suppose it’s OK if I smoke in here.”

The editor fixed the upstart with an icy glare and said, “Nobody ever has.”

Cashing In At Last

After years of contesting with opponents, the March-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians has the green light to move ahead with development of a major casino not many miles up the highway from our home.

The Native Americans plan to make a bundle. The State of Michigan apparently believes they will, judging by an agreement approved by both parties. The State will get 8 percent of slot machine profits up to $150 million a year. Above that the profit share rises to 10 percent. Geez--a hundred million here and a hundred million there could add up to some real money.

Some may be jealous of our soon-to-be-rich Indian brethren. But those of us who recall the poverty experienced by many Pottawatomis 60 years ago are not among them. They were few in number near my hometown, but those who lived in mysterious places like the tiny town of McCord west of Tomahawk were far from wealthy.

One day near the onset of a Northern Wisconsin winter, my Dad finished his workday and he and I started for home. Outside, we were greeted by a chaotic scene in the middle of “Main Street.” A crowd had gathered, two of Tomahawk’s finest were on the scene, and Joe Waubiness and an Indian woman assumed to be Mrs. Waubiness were holding a shouting match with each other and the local gendarmes.

It seems that Mr. Waubiness was accustomed to being locked up for large parts of each winter in the Lincoln County Jail in Merrill. There he enjoyed a warm bed and food until spring brought his release and return to Tomahawk. Unfortunately, a new Sheriff had refused to house him when the local police radioed to arrange his incarceration that fall. Waubiness pondered the injustice of that decision over several drinks in “The Mug and Jug” at the end of our block, and finally careened out of the tavern to state his case in the middle of the street. His wife was angry because (1) Waubiness apparently had no intention of taking her along to jail, and (2) he and the Tomahawk policemen were ignoring her complaints altogether.

Waubiness finally hit upon a solution to his cold-weather lodging problem. He hurled a rock squarely into one of the large plate-glass windows at the front of Nick’s Casket Factory, completely shattering the pane and scattering glass in all directions. He turned to one of the cops with a smile and said, “Now you have to take me.”

With head held high, Waubiness assumed a position in the rear seat of the city’s squad car and was driven away on the first leg of what he hoped would be a trip to his winter lodgings in Merrill. Mrs. Waubiness was left in the middle of the street. Nick and Sons was left with a substantial repair bill.

It is good to know that the Pottawatomis in Southwestern Michigan will not have to resort to crime to stay warm next winter.

The Next American Tragedy

I’ve just finished a good book. Two things made this reading experience unusual. Larry Tobin, copublisher of the Tomahawk Leader, is the author of Pressing Matters. I started my journalism career at the Leader 53 years ago, and could relate personally to his tale of a weekly newspaper owner's adventures. Although Tobin spent years writing his first novel, its appearance at this point in history could not have been timelier.

The other half of the publishing team in my northern Wisconsin hometown, Kathy Tobin, recently issued a positive review of my memoir, Days With The Dads: Recollections of a Small-Time Journalist. Reviewers look for a key attribute that differentiates the book under examination from others. Mrs. Tobin said, “Yes, Dick Klade has a knack for remembering the most unusual ordinary moments.” After pondering that observation, I realized it’s a pretty apt description of the tales in my book. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

You may think Mrs. Tobin’s friendly comments influenced my analysis of her husband’s work. I recognized that possibility, and took pains to consider his book objectively. After all, I have no obligation to say anything whatsoever about it, although it served as a springboard to an important forecast.

Two things separate Larry Tobin’s novel from the herd. He builds suspense in a masterful, and quite unusual, way. He gets a reader engrossed in guessing about the outcome of a situation, relieves the tension by giving us the problem’s resolution, and immediately starts building new suspense about another problem. Most novelists build suspense about a single situation, with a grand-climax revelation at the end. Tobin does it differently, and the result is a good read.

Pressing Matters has a central theme—a moral to the story, if you will—running through it. The plot has a small-time newspaper publisher exposing serious corruption involving city officials. The discovery of the wrongdoing doesn’t happen because the publisher is a crusader by nature or stays up nights looking for dirt to dig. It happens just because he and his newspaper are there, and their normal news-gathering work begins to reveal suspicious activities. The big message is that newspapers are vital parts of our society.

To me, that’s a truism that cannot be repeated too often. It has been true since our founding fathers protected newspapers in the first amendment to the constitution. It has been true in big cities where crooked mayors were forced out of office by editorial heat. It has been true in small cities, like De Pere, Wisconsin, where embarrassed city council members threw out the bids for a new police car after I reported improper conduct at the bid opening by the Ford dealer who also was a councilman.

Somebody has to keep an eye on the everyday activities of public servants. When that stops, democracies are doomed. Tobin’s mythical publisher tells us why: “There is an arrogance of power that afflicts not just heads of state—the Napoleons, the Tsars, the Nixons. Whenever authority is unchecked it can be abused at every level of our lives. Some people feel their sense of power—real or imagined—gives them the right to act without consideration for those around them or for the moral effects of their actions.”

Unfortunately, the newspapers big and small that have been there when needed to hold public servants accountable are doomed. Radio didn’t do them in; people couldn’t remember much of what was said. Television didn’t kill them, as many predicted it would; stations made a lot more money airing comedies than presenting news. Free shopping guides didn’t do the deed, although they hurt papers in many localities by siphoning off advertising revenue. Newspapers survived because they could deliver a product to subscribers that the competitors could not match with sound bites and exclusively commercial offerings.

The Internet is what has plunged the daggers into the hearts of newspapers large and small. It can deliver ads, news, and opinions instantly at little or no cost to the “publishers” and with great convenience for the readers. Free want ads available at sites like Craigslist have crippled the lucrative newspaper classified ad business that radio, television, and shopping guides could not destroy.

Growing numbers of young moderns do not subscribe to newspapers, nor do they read them at all. The total number of newspapers in the United States has been declining rapidly for more than a decade; the current economic crisis merely accelerated the mergers and failures. Some of our oldest news institutions are suffering mightily or disappearing.

The owner of the Chicago Tribune, which immodestly called itself “The World’s Greatest Newspaper” when it was our family paper years ago, was $13 billion dollars in debt in December when he declared bankruptcy. Just as it was about to turn 100, the Christian Science Monitor announced it will stop publishing next month, except for a puny weekly offering, and shift to providing Internet news. The decision was based on rising costs and dwindling circulation.

With the Wall Street Journal on the right and the New York Times on the left, the Monitor occupied the center ground as one of the only newspapers that could be thought of as “national” in the U.S. Its daily editions restricted church news to a small, clearly labeled section. The rest of the paper was considered by most professional journalists to display excellent, objective reporting and some of the best analysis available. The “print bite” approach taken by U.S.A. Today hardly qualifies it as a worthy replacement for the Monitor in the national newspaper arena.

So what? If Americans can get their news and analysis from a flock of TV networks, websites, and blogs, why should we care if newspapers die?

For one thing, we should care because of potential government control of the very organizations who should be watching it. The first amendment is precise about what type of media it protects from control:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech, or of the press . . . “

When commercial radio appeared, so did the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC regulates the airways by licensing stations, including those used by the rapidly proliferating television networks. Although court decisions have gradually extended first amendment protections to broadcasters, the coverage as yet is not equal to that afforded the print media. It probably never truly will be. Those who assign channels obviously could control what is presented. That is a risk we should not be willing to run.

The great strength of the Internet, total freedom from any control other than feeble attempts by legislators to limit pornography, is its great weakness as a news source. It’s a free for all. Few bloggers have any credentials, and so far the few websites claiming to purvey legitimate news have taken the TV sound bite approach and probably will continue to do so. Some legitimate analysis is presented, but it’s hard to recognize it amid all the junk. Most of the good analysis is merely a repeat of articles from the dwindling number of print media.

When the newspapers are gone, who will cover the local school board meeting? Who will have the training and motivation to cut through red tape and secrecy and get to the bottom of things when an action of a town or county board smells funny? Who will write thoughtful analyses giving us the meaning, not just the fact, of events? Who will document the little things—the births, deaths, business changes, and small tragedies and triumphs—that collectively become the history of our country? We don’t know, and that is sad.

One of the great founders of our nation made the strength of his feelings on the subject clear:

“. . . were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1787.

Mr. Jefferson, the newspapers you saw as necessary in a vibrant democracy are about to disappear from the American scene. That disaster is not many years away. I may not be around to say, “I told you so,” but perhaps those of you who are younger will recall you first read the dire prediction here. I very much regret feeling compelled to make it, but I think a death announcement from a friend is slightly better than one from an enemy.

Bearded Look-Alikes

Ron Lindmark and I were clean-shaven young men when we worked together in the mid-1970s at Intermountain Research Station headquarters in Ogden, Utah. Lindmark moved up to a post in the Forest Service national office and that led to his appointment as Director of the North Central Research Station, the hub of renewable natural resource studies in the Midwest.

Lindmark’s messages usually contain a fascinating bit of trivia or two in addition to the normal accounts of the whereabouts and activities of mutual acquaintances. His latest communication did not disappoint. He had been reading this Blog. “I just had to include this photo after viewing your photo,” he said. “I noticed that the lower parts of our faces are similar.”

I noticed that the economist, who had been well-trained as a scientist, had carefully qualified his observation. Unlike many men of similar vintage, Lindmark still has an abundant crop of hair on top of his head as well as on the bottom. He also continues to be a rather handsome guy for an old gaffer. Unfortunately for me, those facts seriously limit the number of our similarities. However, the story Lindmark sent with the photo of himself and his alleged famous likeness described a situation with Latino hero worshippers somewhat similar to one of my experiences.

Lindmark said he had taken to sporting a scraggily full beard he started on a camping trip shortly after retiring. He converted it to the present carefully trimmed goatee after his wife, Lynette, protested that he looked like Yasir Arafat. The trim job apparently made him look like another celebrity. On a visit to Mexico, several young storekeepers insisted that he was Colonel Sanders of fried chicken fame. “I said NO, he died several years ago, but I am his brother,” Lindmark recalled. “That was a mistake! I was mobbed.” Lindmark’s grandchildren also noted the resemblance, and the bobblehead pictured with him here was a birthday present from them.

I concealed myself behind a semi-full beard for about 20 years before deciding the goatee was more sophisticated (and also called less attention to the increasingly sparse cover on the top of my head). While fully bearded, I experienced a look-alike encounter in Jamaica when Sandy and I were taking a tour with a busload of other visitors. We were in the first two seats next to the driver. I was wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat.

The driver had stopped so we could walk past some open-air shops to an historic church and back. Just as all were aboard, a teenager waving his arms ran out from one of the shops. He pounded on the bus door, pointing at me, and yelling, “Kenny Rogers, Kenny Rogers!”

The driver angrily indicated he wanted the interloper to get away. When the racket continued, the driver simply started to pull away. The Rogers fan was undaunted. He ran along beside my window, and as the bus accelerated he jumped up and clung to the rear of the vehicle. He continued to bang on the bus and yell what he thought was my name. At the next stop the driver dismounted and pried the teenager off his bus.

Actually, Kenny Rogers and I have one thing in common. Although it is true that Rogers is a great showman who knows how to tell a musical story, neither of us has much of a singing voice.

Nevertheless, I thought being mistaken for him was quite an honor; at least I did before discovering an entire web site devoted to Kenny Rogers look-alikes.

Wake Up and Cheer

The University of Wisconsin basketball squad was one of the last teams selected for this year’s “March Madness,” the NCAA tournament. That was a bit of a comedown from the past few tourney designations, although in a way it was a break for my alma mater because the team did not have a banner year.

When I was a student at UW, getting into an NCAA tournament by any means possible would have touched off a tremendous celebration in Madison. The Badger hoopsters were awful. Coach Bud Foster was in the twilight of his lengthy career, still playing the slow-motion basketball that brought him success in the 1940s. The trouble was, it was the l950s.

The old Fieldhouse, which came to be known as The Barn, had plenty of vacant seats when the Badger basketballers were being overwhelmed by an opponent. This was in complete contrast to the situation nowadays in the new Kohl Center, where the fans, dubbed “The Grateful Red,” occupy every available seat and raise the roof with cheering that sometimes helps befuddle visiting teams.

In the 1950s, you could have gone to sleep at a game in the Fieldhouse. I did. Because my student athletic ticket book was prepaid, I went to see two games. For the second, a slaughter administered by Indiana, I brought along a very thick history book. After reading it for awhile, I put it beneath my head as a surrogate pillow as I stretched out across a vacant row of seats. I slept through most of the second half. So did the Badgers.

There was no sleeping in the Fieldhouse when the Badger boxers performed in the 50s. The place always was packed to the rafters with 15,000 fans. I never missed a night at the fights, especially because three fraternity brothers—Bob Morgan, Terry Tynan, and Bob Meath—were among the Wisconsin pugilists. Morgan and Meath both won NCAA championships. The team never lost to a visiting group during my years on campus. The “Grateful Red” would have been proud and loud.

The competition was fierce. Michigan State, Idaho, Louisiana State, and Syracuse had good teams. None was better than the Badgers, however. Fighters wearing cardinal and white so dominated college boxing for 20 years that a writer titled his book describing the era as Lords of the Ring: The Triumph and Tragedy of College Boxing’s Greatest Team.

The tragedy happened in 1960, three years after I graduated, and it happened in the Fieldhouse. Charlie Mohr, a talented Badger boxer who was an Olympic team prospect, died of injuries sustained in the ring when the NCAA tournament was held at Madison. That horrible event signaled the end of college boxing. It was to be the last NCAA boxing tournament.

Tender, Loving Wear

Last night was St. Patrick’s Day eve. By chance, I was introduced to Pat Davis at a meeting of the Plainwell Arts Council. She was well-acquainted with all the members of the O’Leary family, the clan from whom we bought our home. If O’Leary isn’t Irish, what is?

We like what Mrs. Davis called "the O’Leary house.” Everyone around here refers to it that way. For us, it’s the right space in the right place. Sandy has a special area where she can stamp and craft things to her heart’s content, and I have my very own private place to create new tales that are electronically dispatched almost instantly to bore large segments of the populace. We can look through a multi-aged miniature oak forest onto a handsome golf course fairway and green, and have a deck big enough to share the view with a hundred or so guests should we choose to throw a really big summer shindig.

The only problem is that the house has been occupied by various O’Learys and several different renters for brief periods of time over the past five years. It has not had the quality of care that can be provided only by a single set of dedicated owner-occupants. The list of things large and small to be shaped up is lengthy.

When we first moved in, it seemed as though a new intriguing problem lurked in every corner. The large number of phone jacks and television connections was impressive, but about half connected to nothing. The second day, a high-powered garage door opener opened nothing. In some places less-than-wonderful amateur wiring posed potential hazards, and a small opening allowed raindrops to fall unimpeded into the attic. And, etc., etc., etc.

The most important things were fixed fairly quickly. Our handy son, Lee, did yeoman work, even sacrificing his vacation days to perform repair tasks ranging from plastering to rewiring. His fiancee, Karen, solved electronic mysteries that baffled everyone else. They worked so hard we are thinking of increasing their “Klade pay” from “free sheets on Sunday” to the old Army standard, “three hots and a cot.”

When temperatures soared the other day, we thought it was time to haul screens up from the basement. Five cover two windows and three double doors opening to the deck. The screens were in a downstairs storage area where lighting is adequate, but fairly dim.

We checked the screens out and decided finally we had found elements of the house that could be put into service without any repairs or adjustments. Surprise! When we hauled the screens to daylight, it was plain to see that the mesh in three of the five was not going to keep out mosquitoes or other pesty wonders of nature. The next stop for the screens will be the repair shop behind the local hardware store.

When we met Mary O’Leary Knecht at our sale closing, she said, “There’s a lot of love in that house.” She described how her brother had taken time out from his construction business in Texas to custom-build it for their parents. She talked about many good times in the home and neighborhood. She was gracious and helpful.

The sellers were honorable in every respect. We knew an 18-year-old house was not going to be perfect in every detail. We made a fair deal with the O’Learys. All will be well, but it will take a bit of time to get it there.

Now, if we can just figure out how to replace that bronze leprechaun holding a shamrock on the front door with a guy wearing lederhosen and an alpine hat . . . .

Degrees of Belief

Quite a few Michiganders have interrogated me about life in Utah when they learned we lived for 30 years in the Beehive State. None have asked directly so far, but sooner or later most get around to finding out if we are Mormons.

I tell them there were many good, and a few not so good, things about living for years as a minority in a society dominated by a single religion. One of the wonderful things was how LDS (stands for Latter-day Saints) believers support and nurture members of their families. Incidentally, LDS people refer to all others as “nonmembers” or “gentiles.” Even Jews become gentiles in Utah, which probably surprises quite a few of them.

Like “backsliding Baptists” in the South, who are known to get much closer to bourbon bottles and other sorts of sinful behavior than their pastors recommend, some Mormons don’t follow the letter of the law. “Jack Mormons” covertly or overtly guzzle alcohol on occasion and even smoke. Both practices are banned by the “Word of Wisdom," which is supposed to be observed by all true believers. The Jacks often refer contemptuously to the hardliners as “Churchy” people. Polygamists, who officially were excluded from LDS membership more than 100 years ago, are known by both groups as “Pligs.” Thousands of Pligs live in Utah and nearby.

Just for fun, I like to build suspense by letting the conversations about our Utah past go a while before making it known that we are none of the above. Back in the days when my work required a fair amount of airline travel, I often astonished fellow passengers by musing about which of my wives would be there to greet me when my flight landed at the Salt Lake airport.

Oh well, I also for years have introduced Sandy as my “first wife.” She is not always altogether happy about that.

Always a Lady

Recently, I sent a brief history of some highlights in my Mother’s 89-year life in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, to Darlene Wurl. Mrs. Wurl is putting together displays featuring some of the women who contributed much to my hometown community through their civic activities.

My little story included the obvious. My mother was a founding member of her Christian Science society, and later served as First Reader for more that 20 years. Mom also was a long-time member of several clubs that sponsored many civic activities and improvements. She was elected to the Board of Education, perhaps the first woman to achieve that distinction, and served for 11 years, the last nine as Board President. She was the first woman to hold the board presidency.

What my story left out, because it was inappropriate for Mrs. Wurl’s project, was the most important thing. My Mother was first, last, and always a lady. I never heard her utter a negative comment about a fellow human being. When the going got tough, her responses never were anger or regret; they were positive, sympathetic, and encouraging. She would not have considered striking her children, or anyone else. She dressed up before walking downtown to shop.

When Mother was about 87, she became very weak and tired. Finally, she strayed from her Christian Science principles in an effort to stop her decline. With a referral from Doctor R. J. Henderson, who had been a fellow board of education member, she went to the Marshfield Clinic for a series of tests.

Like the much more famous Mayo Clinic, the Marshfield Clinic was known throughout Wisconsin and much of the Midwest as an outstanding diagnostic institution. It attracted many doctors considered authorities in their specialties. Mom’s first tests showed a need for more focused exams, and she asked me to come home and drive her to the clinic for that work and to hear the diagnosis by an expert M.D.

The expert was a kindly man in his mid-50s who was very professional in explaining the problem. Mom’s hearing was not good, so he talked primarily to me and I repeated what he said so we would be sure Mom understood. The bottom line was that her body was not making sufficient white blood corpuscles, and the only treatment our expert knew of was a male hormone in capsule form, which he prescribed.

Mom nodded quite agreeably at that part of the news. But then, the doctor went into a description of side effects from taking the hormone. “You will develop more hair on your arms and legs than you have now,” he said. He smiled just slightly, and said Mom might even want to shave off a few whiskers that the drug could cause to sprout.

Mother didn’t wait for me to repeat a word of that. “Listen, young man,” she told the middle-aged physician, “I’ve been a lady all my life, and I’m not going to do one single thing that will change that.”

I reasoned with Mom on the drive home. She relented a little, and I had the prescription filled at Tomahawk Drug. About a month later on another visit, I noticed the medicine bottle in a bathroom cabinet. Mom had not taken a single capsule.

A Different Solution

“Isn’t it about time for you to get ready for your appointment?” Sandy asked. I was lounging before the computer in my pajamas doing some serious work by taking on three robotic electronic figures in a game of hearts.

“Heck, that’s not for a couple of hours,” I said.

“Did you forget we were supposed to change to daylight time today?”

“I didn’t forget anything, It’s only a little after eleven, and I’m not supposed to be there until one thirty.”

An application of wifely wisdom quickly convinced me the appointment was only about 20 minutes away, not several hours. I had once again failed in my feeble attempts to adjust the mysterious workings of my digital watch, and my guesstimate of the “new” time was based on Mountain, not Eastern, time.

Several months ago, after reading about the Campbell Solution to Coping with Digital Watches (see “Seeking a Timely Solution” posted Nov. 20), Sandy handed me a comic gift. It was a duplicate of the cheap Walmart watch that had become my everyday timepiece. The dupe was set to daylight time so I could merely change watches when time changes were called for each spring and fall.

The Campbell Solution was put into effect to take care of things in Utah. After about an hour of intense study of directions and trial-and-error resettings, I succeeded in adjusting one of the watches to Eastern Time when we moved to Michigan. I forgot about the other watch, which now is several hours off the mark.

Rather than go through another digital resetting ordeal, or getting some 10-year-old kid to do the task for me, I adopted the Klade Solution to Digital Difficulties. I threw both digital watches into a dresser drawer and started wearing my 50-year-old, stem-wound Bulova. It doesn’t do anything but tell time, but I can set it right in an instant if it goes astray.