Popularity

In 1930s, humorist J.P. McEvoy wrote the Post column “Father Meets Son” presented to readers in the form of letters filled with advice for navigating life’s rocky road. Employing a mix of wry humor and tough love, Dad doled out life lessons on everything from work to women. Readers loved it.

Popularity is poisonous, Dad says, encouraging his son not to place too much worth in the admiration of people his own age. Instead, focus on earning the attention and approval of older men and women — especially older women.

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“When you go to a party don’t make the mistake that most callow youths make — Don’t make a beeline for the prettiest girl in the room.”
Illustrated by Ralph Pallen Coleman

Popularity

By J.P. McEvoy

Originally published on October 30, 1937

Dear Son: Of course I am pleased that you have become so popular, but I don’t know whether I am more pleased than worried. Popularity can be a subtle poison, especially the kind you are getting your first taste of now. It is so easy for a young fellow with personality to gather admirers. From that to the establishment of a little private court which he can lord over is the next step — and that step is down, not up.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I want you to be popular with your fellow workers. I want you to share their interests and take pleasure in their divertissements. But that is only a small part of your curriculum. You have more serious work ahead. This may run counter to the popular notion of how to achieve success, but popular notions on most subjects are wrong. Savages are not the only ones who are surrounded and submerged by superstitions. For every superstition you can show me in a savage village I can show you 10 in a so-called civilized suburb. And probably no superstition is more popular than the one which says, in effect, that one must conform in order to succeed — that to dare to be different is to court disaster.

Now take your present situation. You are a salesman. You are told on every hand you must be a good fellow; that you must pal around with your contemporaries, make their pleasures your pleasures, their interests your interests, and that to indicate in the slightest way you have ambitions for other things is to be a stuffed shirt and a snob. My boy, that is just a popular song which might be called The Ballad of the Easy Way. Don’t fall for it. The Hard Way is better. Not easier, but better. It is too easy to cultivate your contemporaries, to bask in their smiles, to warm yourself in their approval, to butter yourself with their flattery. They know little if anything more than you do, usually not as much. They can teach you nothing. But they can waste your time. Don’t let them do it.

Don’t waste your time with people who have nothing to contribute to your growth, when you can have just as much pleasure and infinitely more profit out of associating with people who can teach you something. Seek out older men for friends and preferably men who are not in the same line of business you are pursuing. Collect grizzled old doctors, hard-bitten lawyers, skeptical scientists. Enlarge your circle to include artists and musicians and writers. You will learn to be a better salesman by observing how a veteran trial lawyer handles a jury; an old family doctor has forgotten more about the psychology of the human critter than most sales managers will ever know. From artists you will learn how to observe, from scientists you will learn how to question, from writers you will learn how to listen, and from everybody you will learn how to enrich your own life with new and varied interests.

Older men. Wiser men. Let the young fellows you know play around like puppies on a rug if they want to. You trail along with the wise old hunting dogs. “There’s tricks to all trades but mine.” Learn them.

If you wanted to fight you would ask a Dempsey how. If you wanted to dance you would look for an Astaire to coach you. There are masters all around you. You have only to seek them out and tap their resources. Do it and you will have no time to waste holding petty court and impressing shallow admirers with your equally shallow attainments. Cultivate friends who can and will criticize you, shrewdly, mercilessly, and constructively. Young admirers who think you are a devil of a fellow can do you a lot of harm — old critics who know you are a hell of a mess will do you a world of good.

When you are impressionable you are eager to impress. More often than not this eagerness will defeat you. When you meet new people, relax. Be at ease. Make yourself a center of calm, a little pool of reserve. Let them be mirrored in it. Observe quietly, listen attentively. Study the game that’s going on and find out if you know anything about it before you decide to rush in and take part. Scouting the other team is sound practice and good sense. It’s done best from the sidelines, and quietly. If you don’t understand the game, try to learn about it. If you know the game and you want to play, choose your own position before you run out on the field. I am quite sure no one ever told you this in school, and I am equally sure it will save you a lot of grief if you learn it now. Otherwise you may blunder along for years under the delusion that in order to dominate a discussion you must lead it, and to impress a gathering you must impose your opinions on it.

One more small paragraph on this subject before I leave it. The most interesting, the most valuable people in a gathering are not always the most vivid. Learn to seek out the quiet ones, force yourself to cultivate those who seem, at first blush, to be the least interesting. More often than not, as they unfold their personalities, they prove to be deeper and richer than you could have ever suspected, and to the gratifying joy of friendship you will add the satisfying thrill of discovery.

Older men. And older women. When you go to a party don’t make the mistake that most callow youths make — don’t make a beeline for the prettiest girl in the room. She is used to it. She expects it. She won’t be grateful. Bow, and pass on — to an older woman. The older woman won’t expect it — she will be intrigued by your good taste, charmed by your good manners and, likely as not, she will turn out to be the pretty girl’s mother, or her rich aunt from Australia. Now you have a friend at court and the pretty girl’s interest in you as well, for behold, you, a handsome young man, have shown no interest in her!

Or better yet, the elderly lady to whom you have been so polite, so attentive, probably will be the wife of the most influential citizen in the community. Her husband has long depended on her instinct for sizing up people. Someday he may look you over, and her good opinion may be the difference between success and failure for you. It’s a man’s world, to be sure, but behind every important man there usually stands a woman who influences his judgment and helps him to make decisions. The man may not remember your achievements, but the woman will not forget your good manners.

Affectionately,

Dad

Previous: The Difficulty of Marriage

The Difficulty of Marriage

In 1930s, humorist J.P. McEvoy wrote the Post column “Father Meets Son” presented to readers in the form of letters filled with advice for navigating life’s rocky road. Employing a mix of wry humor and tough love, Dad doled out life lessons on everything from work to women. Readers loved it.

Dad wonders if his son will fall on his face when he is married, but decides that marriage is really just another kind of job — the skills he has gained from one can transfer to the other.

Man talking to his wife
“And yet, all around you, you will see husbands and wives who don’t trust each other, and yet each blames the other because their marriage is not successful.”
Illustrated by Ralph Pallen Coleman

The Difficulty of Marriage

By J.P. McEvoy

Originally published on August 21, 1937

Dear Son: As the time draws near for you to take off the springboard, you seem to be increasingly anxious. Are you going to make a neat dive or are you going to land on your face? You have been getting a lot of advice about marriage, and you will get a lot more. As long as you live, people will be telling you what to do and what not to do. I wouldn’t have stepped into this, only you asked me.

The old man is no prophet. The only thing he can tell you with any degree of assurance is that you will get a lot of advice, but that you won’t take any of it. Young couples have to find out everything for themselves. All the old truths that millions fought and bled and died over must be rediscovered to have any validity. It seems a great pity and a terrible waste of time and energy, but apparently there is nothing to be done about it. Everything you will ever need to know about making your marriage happy is common knowledge, and I could tell it to you in five minutes, but unless you are the wonder boy of the age, you won’t register it — much less use it.

The principal thing to remember is so simple, it will take you years to figure it out: Making a success of marriage takes just the same kind of doing as making a success of anything else in life, for marriage is not something apart from life, it’s a part of life itself. You’ve already discovered that to be a success in your job, you have to work at it. If you want to get along with the boss, you have to make the effort. If you want to get along with your customers, you have to study ways to please them. You have learned not to make promises that you can’t keep; you have learned you must keep the promises you make.

Marriage is a job you know nothing about, so you will have to study it and you will have to work at it, and the very same technique you are using to make a successful career will go a long way toward making a successful marriage. Think of your wife as a partner and marriage as a going concern. Business partners divide the responsibilities and the duties of the business. They consult together, they compromise their differences, they trust each other and they present a united front against the world. If they didn’t do all these things, how long do you suppose their partnership would last? And yet, all around you, you will see husbands and wives who are in the business of life together, who don’t share the responsibilities and duties of the job, don’t consult together, don’t compromise their differences, don’t trust each other, don’t present a united front against the world, and yet each blames the other because their marriage is not successful.

You will be told wives are hard to handle; but there is nothing so easy to handle as a wife, provided you don’t try too hard. Just make her happy and keep her busy, and she will handle herself. And I would add you have gone a long way toward making her happy when you keep her busy. More women are unhappy because they haven’t enough to do than for any other reason. A man does a woman no kindness when he makes it difficult or impossible for her to keep her time fully occupied. Give her a lot of responsibility; let her have her own departments and let her run them. Let her feel that she is helping you, that you need her, that you couldn’t get along without her. Take a genuine interest in what she does, but keep your hands out of it unless she asks you.

You will be living on your salary, so you won’t have much money to argue about; but that’s when people argue the most. Arrange your finances so you have as few discussions as possible about money. If you have only $3 a week each for spending money, don’t dole it out to each other. Each of you should have your own personal account, just as you have your own toothbrush, and into these accounts should go your own personal allowances — they should go there quietly, painlessly, and automatically, to be spent any way you like, and should never be referred to again by either party. There is something indelicate, if not indecent, about handling money, or talking about it, and arguments about money are infinitely degrading.

Just now Gloria seems perfect. Go right on thinking so. After you have been married a while, you will see all kinds of things you would like to change, a lot of improvements you would like to suggest. Restrain that creative impulse! Let her alone. This may encourage her to let you alone too. People don’t change. Their characters are already established, their habits are fixed, their likes and dislikes all deeply rooted. Good energy is wasted by husbands and wives trying to remodel each other. You wouldn’t try to remodel your boss or your best customer; you ignore his faults and compliment him on his virtues. Apply the same technique to getting along with your wife. The effect is startling, the results miraculous.

One of the hardest things for a young fellow to remember about marriage is that his wife is a woman. Too often he gets to thinking about her as another kind of a man, only smaller and more unreasonable. Most of the time wives aren’t unreasonable at all — they are just feminine. Now you think it is cute and charming for Gloria to be so unpredictable; go right on thinking so, because she is going to get more unpredictable all the time. There is nothing mysterious about the feminine viewpoint, but it’s hard to explain. You have to experience it. For one thing, it’s very personal. It is very difficult for a woman to argue objectively. When you differ with a woman, it doesn’t mean that you have different views as far as she is concerned. It means that you don’t feel the same about her as you did before you expressed a different view. If you don’t understand that, imagine how difficult it will be to explain it to Gloria. Don’t try. Just remember what you have been learning in business: The customer is always right.

Are you polite to a customer? Are you friendly? Are you kind? Are you thoughtful? Do you keep your opinions to yourself if you feel they are going to start arguments? Do you set out to charm your customer? Do you look for points to be complimentary about? Do you flatter him; subtly, but as often as possible? Then you know all there is to know about getting along with a wife!

Affectionately,

Dad

Previous: Professionalism and Appearances

Coming soon: Popularity

Would You Trust Him With Your Sandwich?

Vintage Original Vintage Ham advertisementHe may not look it, but the devil you see on cans of Underwood’s Deviled Ham is now 146 years old, which makes him the oldest food trademark in America.

This advertising mascot was created by the William Underwood Co. of Boston back in 1870. When the company was founded in 1822, it had specialized in producing condiments, such as mustards and pickled vegetables. Then it created a new food from ground ham and seasonings. Its spiciness suggested an infernal name, and “deviled” ham was born.

The original mascot sported long claws and a scowling gaze above a long, satanic mustache. Today, he’s a smiling cartoon figure who holds a harmless-looking pitchfork.

Underwood was a pioneer in the canning industry. As early as 1836, it began packing its products in steel cans with tin linings because the companies that made its glass jars couldn’t keep up with the demand for Underwood’s goods. Consequently, Underwood’s canned foods made their way west with pioneers and across Civil War battlefields with Union soldiers.

In his 1902 Western novel, The Virginian, Owen Wister wrote that “portable ready-made food” was a valuable aid to Western settlers, and a calling card of civilization in Wyoming’s cattle country. Watching cowboys provisioning themselves for the trail, Wister “grew familiar with the ham’s inevitable trademark — that label with the devil and his horns and hoofs and tail very pronounced, all colored a sultry prodigious scarlet.”

Professionalism and Appearances

In 1930s, humorist J.P. McEvoy wrote the Post column “Father Meets Son” presented to readers in the form of letters filled with advice for navigating life’s rocky road. Employing a mix of wry humor and tough love, Dad doled out life lessons on everything from work to women. Readers loved it.

Dad’s “far-flung network of inscrutable spies” has reported that his son is, in short, a lazy slob, so Dad feels obligated to explain how to be a civilized adult.

Professionalism and Appearances

By J.P. McEvoy

Originally published on July 17, 1937

Dear son: My far-flung network of inscrutable spies has been reporting on you. They tell me that the boss likes you, that you get along fine with your fellow salesmen, and your selling record is improving all the time. And I hear, too, that you are a hard worker, but the minority report says you work hard only in fits and starts, and that you are inclined to be sloppy about your appearance and slovenly about your speech.

I can hear you say, “So what? Does the firm want a salesman or a movie hero? Am I supposed to deliver sales or speeches? And how can a fellow be expected to work at top speed all the time?”

Let’s take the last thing first. No one is going to expect you to work at top speed all the time. No one does it, no one can, no one should try. A career is a marathon, not a hundred-yard dash, and the technique for getting there is pretty much the same. A man who tried to win a marathon in successive 100-yard dashes would never even finish the distance, much less place. A steady, relentless dogtrot does the trick. A race horse can beat a man around a one-mile track, but a man can run a race horse to death by just keeping after him and never letting up.

And now about your appearance. I know you have never given it much thought, so you probably feel that because you don’t think of it, no one else does. When you were a small cub, no one cared very much whether your ears were polished or your pants were pressed. In college, you considered a sweater the height of elegance, and you went around in a raccoon coat that a raccoon wouldn’t have dared come down to dinner in. Occasionally you gave a pretty fair imitation of how a civilized man should look and act, but these inspirations usually faded out as soon as the young lady transferred her attentions elsewhere. Now you complain that your fiancée is always after you to buy some new clothes. She thinks your ties are fierce and your shirts are a horror. I suspect she is right. I am not touched by your complaint that if you listen to her, she will have you all powdered and perfumed like a Persian kitty.

Probably the worst that will happen to you is that your suits will be pressed, your shoes will be shined, your hair will be cut, your fingernails manicured, and your haberdashery will not be fighting a continuous guerrilla warfare with the rest of your attire.

Almost 200 years ago, Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son, said, “Dress well, but not too well. Be neither negligent nor stiff. As you must attend to your manners, so you must not neglect your person.” And then he added, “My Lord Bacon says that a pleasing figure is a perpetual letter of recommendation. It is certainly an agreeable forerunner of merit and smooths the way for you.” You may recall, I gave you a copy of Lord Chesterfields Letters a few years ago, hoping you would read them all and profit by most of them. I marked a number of passages for your special attention, but the following rated three stars, or maybe it was four. “Dress is one of the various ingredients that contribute to the art of pleasing; it pleases the eyes at least, and more especially of women. Address yourself to the senses if you would please; dazzle the eyes, soothe and flatter the ears of mankind; engage their hearts and let their reason do its worst against you. … Whenever you find yourself engaged insensibly in favor of anybody of no superior merit or distinguished talent, examine and see what it is that has made those impressions upon you; you will find it to be that douceur, that gentleness of manners, that air and address which I have so often recommended to you; and from thence draw this obvious conclusion, that what pleases you in them, will please others in you; for we are all made of the same clay, though some of the lumps are a little finer, and some a little coarser; but in general the surest way to judge of others is to examine and analyze oneself thoroughly.”

Incidentally, I note in one of your recent letters that you have started to make friends with the dealers in your territory by doing little favors for them whenever possible. This is a good plan, but not the best. One thing wrong with it is that it is too obvious. Another, that it is not nearly so effective as the reverse method. If you really want to make an impression on people, if you want to make them feel friendly toward you, if you want them to remember you gratefully, let them do something for you. When you do something for someone, whether it’s to lend him money or tell him about a good place to eat, you have done him a favor, to be sure, but you have also put him under obligations to you, and he is bound to resent it just a little, even if he isn’t conscious of this resentment. Let him tell you about a good place to eat. It will make him feel superior. It will give him a glow. It will give you an opportunity, the next time you see him, to tell him how smart he was. That will build him up. He will always remember that he recommended a restaurant to you. He will soon forget that you ever recommended one to him.

Did I say something about lending money? Let me add a word. Don’t! If a friend wants to borrow money from you, ask yourself if you can afford to lose it. If you can afford to lose it, give it to him, don’t lend it. Tell him to forget it. And see that you forget it too. If you can’t afford to lose it, hang on to it. Now that you have started out to make friends, remember there is nothing so painful as having a friend who owes you money and who can’t repay you. It hurts him worse than it hurts you, and it hurts you plenty. You don’t make friends or keep them by lending them money. Polonius was an old bore, but one of his nifties is worth pasting in your hat:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend.

Affectionately,

Dad

Previous: Separated from Love 

Coming soon: The Difficulty of Marriage

Scary Giant Finds His Gentler Side

2016-mj-green-giantCreated in 1928, the Green Giant was originally a mascot of the Minnesota Valley Canning Company.

The character was created to sell their unusually large green peas. In early print ads, the giant looked more like a wild-haired caveman who wore bearskins and a solemn expression. Then a young Leo Burnett gave him a makeover — a green, leafy suit, green skin, a big grin, and the word Jolly in front of his name. But he was still a bit frightening.

In 1958, when he first appeared in TV ads, one of the copywriters observed that “when you try to move the Giant around and really show what he looks like, he comes off a monster. The baby cries and the dog goes under the bed.” So the Leo Burnett ad agency created his signature “Ho, ho, ho” laugh. And to make him even more approachable, he got a companion, the Little Green Sprout, in 1972. The changes helped turn the monster into something downright lovable.

The canning company, now the Green Giant Company, is today the largest vegetable brand in the world. And the Green Giant has been named one of the top 10 ad icons of the 20th century by Advertising Age magazine.

Separated from Love

In 1930s, humorist J.P. McEvoy wrote the Post column “Father Meets Son” presented to readers in the form of letters filled with advice for navigating life’s rocky road. Employing a mix of wry humor and tough love, Dad doled out life lessons on everything from work to women. Readers loved it.

While his son suffers under the terrible taskmaster that is his new supervisor, Dad reveals the two words that can win almost any argument with one’s boss.

Father Meets Son: Separated from Love

By J.P. McEvoy

Originally published on June 26, 1937

Dear Son: Of course you are depressed that her father should separate you from your loved one by many miles of cruel distance and many weeks of cruel, cruel time. And why should it be necessary to start you at the bottom, with only a drawing account so small that it barely supplies you with the necessities of life? And why add insult to injury by putting you under a branch manager who is the legendary slave driver and man-killer of the entire sales force — an ogre who has never been known to say a kind word or do a good deed?

Well, I can’t do anything about your heartaches over your girl, but I can save you a lot of headaches over your boss — this one or any other one. For, rest assured, you will always have a boss over you, just as your boss will always have a boss over him, whether it is the president or the directors or the bankers. And that is the secret of getting along fine with him. Realizing that he has a boss who is probably riding him just as hard as he is riding you.

When your new hard-boiled bass is trying to get more sales out of you, just imagine you are sitting behind the desk and he is standing in front of it. The home office is hammering you for results and you can’t deliver them unless this fellow on the other side of the desk brings in his share. Get that picture in your mind and it will do you and the boss and the company a lot more good than grousing. There are at least two sides to every question. There are certainly two sides to every desk — your side and the boss.

When the boss jumps all over you with his boots on, you can be sure there is nothing personal in it. He isn’t doing it because he dislikes your taste in ties or because your hair is curly. And instead of thinking up snappy comebacks, say something to this effect: “You’re right. I haven’t come up to your expectations, but I have tried. I am going to keep on trying. I want to help you. You have a much harder job than I have. I appreciate the good advice you have given me, and I hope you will not become too discouraged to continue it.”

You can’t talk like that to your boss? Well, maybe you can’t at first, but think it, anyway. Let whatever you have to say come from that kind of thinking. It will govern what you say, it will mold it and give it the right tone. Later you will be able to say it simply, easily, naturally — and mean it. Note that the little speech started off with just two words: “You’re right.” Believe me, son, you can win more arguments with any kind of a boss by admitting, right off the bat that he’s right. Once you have taken the wind out of his sails, you can bring him about and steer him almost anywhere you like. Start right off and say, “You’re right.” Then you may go on and say, “But don’t you think that —” Not, “I think that —” Always “You.” Never “I.” All of us are egocentric, bosses nothing but. They think “ I, I, I.” They are not interested in you. But if you, too, think “I, I,” you’ll never get together.

Give your boss a lot of thought. Try to understand what makes him act that way. Is he grouchy? It may be a weak stomach or a strong wife. Does he fly off the handle and go into rages? His boss may be on his neck. Give your boss a break. He may not show his appreciation to you, but he can’t help but feel it. I have been on both sides of many desks and my experience has been that the boss is like the village maiden in the old song: “More to be pitied than censured, more to be helped than despised.”

Meanwhile, her father is giving you the chance to make good for him while you are making good for her. Learning to sell his customers will teach you to sell him. And you will discover no better way to learn what your fellow men are like than by trying to sell them something they don’t want. Which means trying to sell them almost anything, for people really don’t crave anything so much as to be let alone.

Fortunately, your father-in-law-elect is in a business that is rooted in a fundamental hunger. We are told that self-preservation and reproduction of our kind are the two basic instincts, but, surely, the deep desire for change is basic too. The peat migrations of history are too easily explained as quests for happier hunting grounds or greener pastures. It is just as likely the Huns were bored stiff with the same old scenery, and the Gauls were only trying to “get away from it all.” So your father-in-law-elect hitched a new wagon to an old star when he went into the business of building and selling trailers.

As a junior salesman in this field, you certainly have two strikes on most of the lads who roam the world trying to sell people ideas they heartily dislike. You’ll be paid to convince people that hills look green far away. They know it! That people who have to stay in one place are to be pitied, while people who are free to follow the sun are envied. They know that too. You have to bait them with the lure of the open road. They’ll take the bait, and the rod and the reel, too, if you don’t hang on.

Our country was settled by people who couldn’t stay at home. It was settled in the East by people who couldn’t stay put in Europe — and settled in the West by their children who couldn’t stay put in the East. It was no chore to sell covered wagons to our forefathers; it should be much simpler to sell trailers to their descendants.

Especially now that you will be making good not only for yourself but for her, I suspect it will put a new glint in your eye and new power in your elbow. Nothing like girlish cries of encouragement from the stands to rough up the game. History tells us the combats of the gladiators were mild affairs until the vestal virgins were the guests of honor. And we all know the stimulating effect of the dark-eyed senorita in the box on the dark-eyed matador in the bullring.

If men were left to themselves they would go right back to their caves and gnaw bones. It is the little woman who has prodded and goaded them to hunt trophies and gather booty, to fight for a place in the sun when they would rather sleep in the shade. Bringing home a new head from the neighboring tribe or a new icebox from the neighboring store, is equally arduous for the male, and, in his private opinion, equally uncalled for. But the little woman is more acquisitive, more ambitious, more concerned with keeping up with the Joneses in the next cave, or the next bungalow.

And a good thing too. Or is it?

Affectionately,

Dad

Previous: Being in Love 

Coming soon: Professionalism and Appearances

Burr Slur? Broadway’s Hamilton Doesn’t Tell It Like It Is

With a Pulitzer Prize for its creator and a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations, Hamilton is the hottest show on Broadway. Its multiracial cast portrays the pantheon of Revolutionary greats, and for many a starry-eyed critic, the musical’s hip-hop songs, R&B rhythms, and tri-cornered hats represent “a rigorously factual period drama.” Those are the words of Jody Rosen in The New York Times, and he is not alone. As an academic who spent years studying Aaron Burr before producing a scholarly biography, I can say emphatically that rules of historical rigor do not apply to Hamilton.

The musical follows an old playbook that divides the founders into heroes and villains. This started after the Revolution, when Charles Willson Peale began compiling portraits of “Revolutionary patriots” and displayed them in his renowned Philadelphia Museum. In 1818, a Russian diplomat and artist, Pavel Petrovich Svinin, observed that “every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home, just as we have images of God’s saints.” In death, Washington figuratively became a god when an artist attached his iconic face and head to a classic pose of Jesus sitting on a cloud and ascending into heaven. The impulse to glorify the founders is still with us. They were romanticized in the silent film era and in innumerable hokey movies since.

The drama of the founders has overtaken the reality. In the undergraduate seminar I teach, America’s Founding Myths, I ask my students to identify the life masks of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, produced in 1825, which is as close as we can come to capturing their likenesses. None of my students recognize them. Why? They are old. Adams is jowly and bald. There isn’t an ounce of glamour in these unflattering busts. The reason that Hamilton is so popular is that the theatergoer is treated to vigorous youth, brazen sex appeal, and macho brashness, capped by so-called genius — all wrapped up in a loving and whimsical portrait of a Hamilton who “tells it like it is” in the pounding, nonstop rhythms of hip-hop. Which guy do you want to be? A shrunken Jefferson, or the dashing and daring Hamilton who, like Peter Pan, never appears to grow up?

How to Build Your Virtual Brand

The phrase “personal brand” is tossed about rather freely these days. You’re not exactly a product, so what does “personal brand” even mean? Simply put, it’s what people say about you when you’re out of earshot. You’re being judged all the time on myriad factors, ranging from your profession to how you dress to the vocabulary you use, and even to your posture.

The same goes for your online self — or what image-building expert William Arruda calls your “virtual brand.” Founder and president of personal branding firm Reach, Arruda has given hundreds of keynote addresses to Fortune 500 companies and authored books on the topics of online identity and career management.

You may be asking: Why bother? If you’re well-established in your career, nearing retirement, or already retired, you may feel like your brand may not need a lot of care and feeding. But in today’s internet-driven world, the opposite is often true, particularly if you’re starting a second career, seeking part-time employment, or promoting a new business, service, product, or something as simple as a knitting blog. There are millions out there trying to make their mark: “It’s much harder to stand out,” writes Dan Schawbel, best-selling author of Promote Yourself and Me 2.0.

Bottom line: Regardless of age and career status, your online reputation matters. “It used to be thought that an online profile was nice to have, but I think today it’s a must-have,” Arruda says. “More people are meeting us online before they meet us in person. So our first impression now is being formed in bits and bytes.” In fact, if you’re not managing your online ID, “you’re really doing yourself a disservice, because we know how important first impressions are,” he adds.

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The Eureka Factor

image
Brainstorm: Researcher John Kounios is shedding light on what goes on in the brain when a flash of insight hits.
Jeff Fusco Photography

This is how one of the pioneers in understanding the “aha! phenomenon” — those flashes of insight about a problem — carves out a creative, idea-inducing space for himself. On his 45-minute commute to and from his college office in Philadelphia, John Kounios picks the quiet car on the regional rail. No ringing cellphones. No chattering passengers. To further isolate himself, the affable professor of psychology at Drexel University puts on his noise-canceling Bose headphones, slaps on his sunglasses, and closes his eyes. No distractions, not even the rumble of the train nor the scenery streaking past the window.

Then, he thinks.

His thoughts wander, perhaps to the future or to something that makes him happy. Once he’s achieved a defocused state in which his mind is most open, Kounios meditates on a problem he wants to solve or turns over a hunch. Relaxed, he allows the associations to flow.

Often enough, Kounios has an aha! moment, that sudden awareness of a new idea, new perspective, or solution to a conundrum. The scientist says he has gotten some of his best, most insightful ideas this way. That’s why he goes to considerable lengths to encourage this distinct type of thought, something he argues is not done nearly enough.

After all, a creative state of mind has led to advances in cancer research, remarkable melodies, even the first barcode scanner. Insights make differences in smaller ways too, like discovering an inventive take on Sunday dinner or figuring out that New York Times crossword puzzle clue.

The path to creativity, though, is no easy one, especially in a 24/7 connected, beeping, blinking, always-in-information-overdrive world.  “I really think the modern lifestyle is not as conducive to this deep creativity that produces really powerful insights,” says Kounios, co-author of the recent The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain. “We’re too busy, too distracted, too stressed out. We don’t get enough sleep. We’re too tired. It’s hard to get into this creative state.”

More than a century ago, composer Gustav Mahler retreated to remote cottages in Austria to construct some of his greatest symphonies. Alone, he connected with nature, enjoyed the peace and quiet, and concentrated on the musical ideas playing out in his mind. Solitude was so critical to his process that at Lake Attersee, where he wrote his second and third symphonies, organ grinders were paid to stay away and cowbells were muffled. “Isolation allowed him to sink into this creative state,” Kounios says of the favored composer.

Cognitive psychologists have long debated the definition of creativity. It is hard to pinpoint — one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it concepts. Commonly, though, scientists describe it as the ability to generate an idea or product that is both novel and useful. Its relation — insight — is a vital ingredient to many of mankind’s greatest, most sublime discoveries.

How do folks get those out-of-the-blue ideas? Let us count the ways:

Consider the iconic tune “Yesterday.” For Paul McCartney, sleep was his muse. The melody for one of the Beatles’ most beloved songs came to him complete in a dream. He immediately got out of bed, the story goes, and tickled the keys of his nearby piano.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is infamous for his bouts of writer’s block. The creator of The West Wing and numerous other hit shows takes showers — sometimes six a day — to break down his mental dam and spur the flow of ideas and words.

Sometimes many little intuitions lead to the big Eureka! Cancer surgeon and researcher Judah Folkman is known for developing a new field of study: angiogenesis. It was a series of insights over decades that led him to understand the role of blood vessels in cancer.

As early as 1895, surgeons puzzled over a curious aspect of the disease. Removal of the primary tumor caused small metastatic tumors to suddenly grow out of control. In 1960, Folkman made a chance observation that cancer cells devoid of blood vessels failed to grow, a radical concept at the time, and one many other researchers refused to accept. But it was a Rosh Hashanah service many years later that provided the space for his ultimate epiphany.

In 1989, Folkman was sitting in the back row of Boston’s Temple Israel and listening to prayers. Out of nowhere, he had an insight that “explained everything.” Other research had shown that tumors release chemicals that either spur or inhibit blood vessel growth toward them. At that moment in synagogue, Folkman realized that when the balance favors chemicals that inhibit vessel growth, the tumor is stunted and unable to enlarge beyond a millimeter. His aha! explained why the removal of a large, primary tumor — and the source of chemicals that restrain blood-vessel growth — can spark metastases elsewhere in the body.

Folkman persisted because his gut, or rather his brain, told him he was on to something. That type of intuition, researchers say, is the brain’s way of signaling that an insight is on its way.

A decade ago, Kounios and his colleague and co-author Mark Beeman, a professor of psychology and neurosciences at Northwestern University, discovered the “neural signature” of sudden insight — an area the two psychologists blazed with novel brain-imaging studies that continue to attract buzz. “Things like creativity … are difficult to study from a scientific perspective,” says Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of the book The Seven Sins of Memory. “Ultimately, if we’re going to have a full understanding of these phenomena, we need to know what role the brain plays.”

Kounios and Beeman’s approach was “pioneering … in this field,” Schacter says. “They’ve shown insight … is something you can study. You just need the right paradigm.”
The researchers “have obviously had some insights into insight,” he quips.

In his spare lab dominated by a few computer terminals, Kounios and his graduate students explore the complex workings of the creative mind with the simplest of tools: EEGs and word puzzles.

Two Styrofoam head models — playfully nicknamed Aristoteles and Bartholomew — store the lab’s two elastic EEG caps equipped with red, yellow, and green electrodes.
Last summer, doctoral student Monica Truelove-Hill volunteered to demonstrate a typical insight study. The electrode-laden cap was positioned on her cranium and connected to a signal amplifier by long, thick cords. Next, each electrode, including reference nodes behind her ears, was painstakingly filled with conducting gel that would ferry a small voltage from the scalp to the electrode.

Then, Truelove-Hill studied a series of anagrams on the monitor. For example, she saw the letters F-R-E-E and came up with reef. Or she saw E-N-D-O and found done. After each try, she noted whether she arrived at the solution through insightful thought — that is, a sudden, unexpected answer — or through analytical thought, which requires methodically trying different options. Reef, she said, resulted from trying different combinations of the letters, but done just came to her.

All the while, her brain waves rose and fell on a nearby computer screen, looking like peaks and valleys on a mountain range. Later, the researchers scanned the output for signals that stood out from the general noise of the working brain.

“It’s like panning for gold,” says Kounios, who directs Drexel’s doctoral program in applied cognitive and brain sciences. “You get rid of the junk and then you find that nugget.”

Skeptics have long argued that aha! moments are nothing special — just emotional reactions to otherwise deliberate, analytical thoughts.

When Kounios and Beeman met as researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in late 2000, they discussed how insights, accompanied by a rush of excitement, even joy, feel different from analytical thoughts. They set out to objectively study the processes. “When an idea pops into awareness, it seems to come from nowhere,” Kounios says. “But it’s not coming from nowhere. There are events in the brain that lead up to that aha! moment.”

How do you study a thought that is sudden and unpredictable? Brain scans. At the time, technologies such as the EEG and functional MRI (fMRI) had not been applied to insight research, a field traditionally built on behavioral experiments.

Kounios’ work on the neural basis of semantic memory (how people acquire, use, and sometimes forget knowledge) involved EEG scans. Through his studies on language comprehension, Beeman was versed in fMRI, which measures brain activity through changes in blood flow. He was convinced that the right hemisphere, used to draw together distantly related information, also contributed to aha! moments.

Each technology has a sweet spot. EEG is king of when things are happening in the brain, accurate to within milliseconds. But it’s not so great with where. That falls to fMRI, which can produce “exquisitely detailed maps” of where a process is occurring in the brain. Its flaw is pinpointing when precisely.

“We saw that it was a powerful combination,” Beeman says. Put together, the data would reveal a clearer picture of what happens in the geography of the brain at the precise moment of an insight.

The next challenge was to design an experiment to illuminate that instant when a person solves a problem with a sudden idea. After all, Kounios and Beeman couldn’t follow subjects around 24/7 hoping for epiphanies.

Typically, several steps lead to an insight. You grapple with a problem (known as immersion), then hit an impasse, then experience a diversion or break from the problem, and finally, voilà! A solution is at hand.

Kounios and Beeman look at creativity as the ability to take an idea, process, or object, break it down into its parts, and reinterpret those elements in a surprising, aha! way to achieve some goal. They place less emphasis on an idea’s novelty or usefulness. “What’s novel to one person may not be novel to another,” Kounios says. “Additionally, a new idea could be very creative but end up not working. In that case, it’s still creative but isn’t useful. And are works of art really ‘useful’?”

In Kounios and Beeman’s view, composers rearrange notes to make music. Inventors rearrange machine parts to create the latest gadget. And so on. When the parts come together in a non-obvious way instantaneously, it’s an insight. When it takes trial and error, it’s a product of analytical thought.

Think of a game of Words with Friends. Sometimes a seven-letter bingo just pops out, and other times a strong word demands trying out numerous combinations until the right one is hit upon.

In the lab, Kounios and Beeman turned to word-association puzzles popular in cognitive science experiments. For example, take pine, crab, and sauce. Then figure out a common word that makes a familiar compound or phrase with each. (Spoiler alert: apple.) These puzzles can be solved either with solutions that pop into the mind suddenly or through a process of elimination.

Each researcher did the experiment in his own lab with a set of subjects and analyzed the data. When they traded brain scans and overlaid the images, what they saw was astounding in many ways. “You couldn’t find a more perfect match,” Beeman says.

Here’s what they saw: At the moment of insight, high-frequency EEG activity known as gamma waves occurred above the right ear. Gamma waves represent cognitive processes that link together different pieces of information. The fMRI showed a corresponding increase in blood flow in the anterior superior temporal gyrus, the part of the brain’s right temporal lobe involved in making connections between distantly related ideas (think jokes or metaphors), as Beeman suspected.
And the kicker? This activity was not present in analytical solutions to the word problems.

They had discovered the pathway in the brain triggered during an aha! moment: The right temporal lobe, located just above the right ear, lights up when a flash of knowledge occurs.

“By showing that insights have a different neural correlate from analytical thought, that conscious, deliberate, methodical thought, we could show that insight is really different,” Kounios explains. “It is this sudden neural event that occurs right about the time an idea pops into awareness.”

The resulting 2004 article in the journal PLOS Biology — and the attendant media coverage — captured the public’s imagination. The Times of London, for one, proclaimed in its headline the discovery of the brain’s E-spot, E standing for Eureka.

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Creative spark: An EEG cap helps researchers identify when and where things are happening in the brain.
Jeff Fusco Photography

By now, most cognitive psychologists agree that insight is distinct from analytical thought. One study showed that a couple of seconds before a puzzle is presented to a subject, the brain engages in different activity, depending upon whether that individual ultimately solves the problem insightfully or analytically. Another documented that even during a resting brain state, when a problem is not actively tackled, distinct areas still light up, pushing subjects toward one type of thought or other.

“Some people have a predilection to tackle problems with insight,” Kounios says. No one, though, is 100 percent one way or the other. Currently, Kounios is proposing a project that looks at people who already have a track record of creative accomplishment and whether they tend to move back and forth between insight and analysis more often than the average Joe.

Going forward, Kounios and Beeman want to explore the influence of genetics on creativity and what other factors, besides mood and anxiety, might play a role.

“It’s a complex story,” Beeman says. “We’re still putting together a lot of the pieces of the puzzle.”

Creative genius is often more celebrated than more mundane toil. But is one way of thinking better than the other? Kounios gives an emphatic no: Every great idea demands an analytical workhorse to make it happen. And the most methodical person will never make significant progress without a dose of spur-of-the-moment creativity.

The problem comes from a modern world that leaves little room to daydream, to let the mind simply wander. “People are continually trying to fill up those types of opportunities with multitasking,” says Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who agrees with Kounios and Beeman’s lament that we live in distracted times.

In his own work, Schooler tracked the creative ideas of physicists and writers during the day. “We found about a third of those ideas happened when they were mind-
wandering, and when they were mind-wandering, the ideas were more insightful,” he says. Mind-wandering, he notes, tends to happen during nondemanding tasks, such as gardening, showering, or doing light housework (offering perhaps additional motivation for a tidy abode).

Kounios and Beeman’s original study also produced a telling surprise: A second before the gamma-wave activity, a burst of alpha waves appeared on the right side of the brain at the back of the head. “Alpha waves mean there’s a restriction of incoming visual information,” Kounios says. He calls it a brain blink.

“We didn’t expect that finding,” he says. Initially, the researchers puzzled over it, until Kounios realized that when someone is asked a difficult question, he often looks away.

Kounios, in fact, did that a couple times during our interview. The brain’s focus on visual information “can hijack thought,” he says. “It can overshadow everything else. By looking at a blank wall, or closing your eyes, or looking down, you cut off that distraction, and that boosts the signal-to-noise ratio of that weakly activated, unconscious idea.”

How else, besides staring at a wall or doing housework, can you encourage creativity? Kounios offers three strategies, based on his and others’ research:

Stay positive. A good mood “has a powerful effect on creativity,” he says. This byproduct of feeling safe may allow for more risky ideas to take root.

Focus inward. A lot of creative people “like to get away from everything,” he says. A shower is a classic example of sensory deprivation; running water is the perfect white noise. Bill Gates takes “think weeks,” where he goes alone to a cabin retreat, reads, and ruminates.

Sleep on it. Besides improving a person’s mood, sleep consolidates memories. “It brings out the non-obvious connections and associations in the details of a memory,” Kounios says.

The good professor can attest to this last one. He was searching for a catchy title for the insight book. One evening, his wife, Yvette, who teaches writing, fell asleep on the couch. “Yvette woke me up in the middle of the night. She said, ‘I had an aha! moment about the title.’”

Her idea: The Eureka Factor. His editor, of course, loved it.

From the Archive: The Nature of Creativity

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” —Albert Einstein, interviewed by George Sylvester Viereck, October 26, 1929

“At a certain crucial stage both poet and scientist are groping in the dark, hardly knowing in what direction their data are tending, till a flash of imagination lights up the pattern for them. We have evidence, in the lives of the great scientific discoverers, how often this flash comes when the mind is asleep or occupied with other matters. But it would not have come, any more than a theme comes to the poet, without a great deal of preliminary work in the sifting and assessing of data and experience.” —C. Day Lewis, “The Making of a Poem,” January 21, 1961

“It is when he is faced with the unknown that man’s imagination springs to the fore, like a fountain gushing up out of a rock.” —Nancy Hale, “The Magic of Creativity,” April 29, 1961


Nights in a Tree House

Spending a night in a tree house is one of those irresistible holdovers from childhood; we dream of drowsing off to the low drone of a zillion insects in the surrounding forest, waves of sound lifting into a crescendo and then slowly subsiding. My grandfather called them katydids. My college friend Donna Hunt, who was sharing my rented tree house — lodged in a 200-year-old white oak in the middle of southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest — immediately got out her iPad, Googled “katydid,” and quoted the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Any of numerous predominantly nocturnal insects related to crickets and grasshoppers and noted for their loud mating calls.” A sexual evensong, all those katydid body parts rubbing madly against each other.

We chose this particular tree house because Donna’s daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Marty Canfarelli, decided to build Timber Ridge Outpost and Cabins — a scattering of log cabins and tree houses — pretty much smack in the middle of the Shawnee National Forest. (Elizabeth’s card reads, 37°33’52.18″N, 88°20’17.03″W.) We chose the larger tree house — sleeps six, shower, air conditioning, kitchen, Wi-Fi: all very luxe. Ideal for travelers like ourselves who are beyond roughing it.

Donna and I became friends at the University of Illinois in the 1950s. We were outliers of a sort, being among the minority to come from the mostly rural southern part of the state. We are Californians now, neighbors by chance and luck, and one day last summer we found ourselves hankering for a visit to the place our folks always called “down home.”

We flew to St. Louis, slipped into a rented lipstick-red convertible, drove across the river to Illinois, and moved onto roads that seemed like one long tunnel of corn. The sky was blue, the air warm, the top down.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data show that Hardin County, home to the tree houses, had a population of 4,226 in 2014, many of them from families established in these hills and hollows for generations. At the local school, Elizabeth told us, every classroom has at least one set of cousins, sometimes two. Whenever land comes up for sale, the U.S. government makes an offer and adds another piece to the puzzle that is 280,000 acres of Shawnee Forest. There is not a single stoplight in Hardin County; traffic scarcely exists, except for the oversized silver trucks that move in a loop all day and all night, taking coal from the nearby mines to the river and dumping it into giant barges.

The Shawnee National Forest covers much of the bottom tip of Illinois. The state is mostly flatland, except for a sector bordering Kentucky where the earth buckles into rolling hills with ridges and hollows. From the top of one of those hills, you can see for miles, no major highway in sight. Only forest interrupted occasionally by a clearing with a farmhouse and a hay field. Easy to imagine how it would have looked to those early arrivals who rafted down the Ohio to settle this country. One of them, John James Audubon, had a mill 60 miles upriver in Henderson, Kentucky. In 1809, he drew a Cooper’s hawk from these forests, and in 1813, a dickcissel. He might even have brushed past our white oak in his search for the birds immortalized in his masterpiece Birds of America. The winter of 1838 and ’39, the Cherokees from the Great Smoky Mountains paused in this hill country as they were pushed west, marking their trail with tears. Not too long after, my great-grandfather Brinker arrived from Germany, still wearing his wooden shoes.

Waking early enough to watch a midnight-blue sky turn pearl gray, then splashed with lavender, and finally full light laced with birdsong is high on my list of worldly delights.

Those pioneering days of river travel are long gone, leaving behind rusty little towns surviving as clusters of antique shops. You could make a case for there not being a whole lot more to do in this neck of the woods today than in Audubon’s time: birding and hunting and hiking, and horseback riding on trails that move up and over and through the woods.

In Abraham Lincoln’s day (he was a Kentucky boy before he came to Illinois), telling stories took the place of radio and television. Abe was a master of the tall tale; Marty Canfarelli carries on the tradition. Get him going on hunting licenses, bobcats, and road kill, or ask his wife Elizabeth about her hermaphrodite cat. Then talk to us about laughing until your side aches.

There are lakes for swimming and small car ferries that wobble across the Ohio River, delivering travelers to Kentucky. When we booked our tree house, we were told to bring our own provisions, all grocery stores being out of range of Timber Ridge. But we also knew we would talk Elizabeth into taking the wheel of the red convertible to drive us onto one of those quavering car ferries and into Kentucky, where the Amish have settled.

Across the river, tacked to a tree or a post in front of almost every farm was a sign announcing what was available that day: fresh bread, ripe tomatoes, green beans, and sweet corn. At a stall served by a shy young Amish girl wearing a long gray dress and a delicate, starched white cap, ears of corn were piled on a cart. We tested one ear by pulling back a few leaves to find a fat little worm noshing on the tip end. Pesticide free. We flicked the little pest off and checked to find the rest of the ear unblemished. At another stop, we found peaches from a local orchard. We bought a peck. Peaches for breakfast in a tree house, and later sweet corn, green beans, ripe tomatoes for dinner, and, of course, peaches again for dessert.

Our tree house required climbing 20 stairsteps to the main cabin; inside was a ladder to a loft big enough for two queen-sized beds. Donna climbed the ladder and chose the bed next to a tree trunk that moved into the room, up, and out again. I chose the pullout sofa in the living room, where I could look out the window at a night sky slathered with stars. There was no swaying in this solid treehouse — for that, you choose the smaller one, purposely built to move in the wind — but from my nighttime perch there was the illusion of rocking, created, I think, by the rustle of all those oak leaves in the slightest breeze, and maybe a little moan or two from creaking branches.

Sleeping in the tree house — and waking early enough to watch a midnight-blue sky turn pearl gray, then splashed with lavender, and finally full light laced with birdsong — is high on my list of worldly delights. Still higher is the momentous deck just outside the screen door. A platform, it wraps around the very heart of the massive tree, placing you up there with the squirrels and birds and other tree lodgers. A singular world with a table for eating, chairs for reading, tree time. Donna and Elizabeth had trouble dislodging me long enough to drive over to the famous Museum of the American Quilter’s Society, across the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky, a must-see for anyone who values the art and the craft of quilting, which includes all of the women in the generations of my family who once lived nearby.

On the way to the museum, just before we crossed the river, we passed a turnoff for Brookport, Illinois, where my mother went to high school. The schoolrooms in this county still have students named Brinker and Douglas and Kerr, the current generation of my kin — descended from the aunts and uncles and cousins who stayed to make their lives here. Kids who, maybe, spend the early evenings on front porches with their granddads, listening to the katydids.

Growing Up at Gettysburg

Do you have the kind of bullet that killed Lincoln?” asked a tourist buying a Derringer pistol, wearing a God Bless America T-shirt. I looked up from the counter a bit confused. I’d come in late after watching Steven Spielberg and Doris Kearns Goodwin speak at Gettysburg’s Soldiers’ National Cemetery for the 149th Remembrance Day, the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s address. I was cold, and my coffee had only begun to wake me up.

“It should be the size of any pistol bullet,” I said. “I’ll look up the caliber on my phone and see if we can find one that matches.” It was a strange request, but it didn’t faze me the way it would have years earlier. I had been working in my family’s store, The Horse Soldier, for a little over six full months after graduating college in 2012. I had promised my grandmother, who had worked at our front counter every day possible until retiring this year, that I would stay at our relic and antique store through the summer of 2013. We were preparing for the deluge of tourists that would be drawn by the 150th commemoration of America’s bloodiest battle; this was no time to be squeamish.

I picked up a U.S. Minié ball from hundreds of bullets stashed in front of our counter and wondered whether my grandfather knew what he was signing us up for when he found his first one.

Relics from Gettysburg

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What Happened to Apple Pie?

Editor’s note: Put off by the flavor (or lack of it) in mass-produced baked goods? Seems that concern has been around for quite some time, as evidenced by this 1942 Post editorial about apple pie.

The Decline of Apple Pie

Editorial originally published on July 25, 1942
A friend tells us of an Iowa miner who has had apple pie for lunch every day for the past 45 years. His wife fabricates a fresh pie each morning, puts half of it in her husband’s dinner pail, and they share the remaining half at the evening meal. That’s all we know of the story, but it is obvious that the miner’s wife learned her trade back in those golden years of cookery before subversive influences began to destroy the character of America’s finest dessert. If the Iowa miner were to find in his dinner bucket the kind of apple pie you get in most public eating places these days, he would tamp it in as ballast around a stick of dynamite. Just how our hotels and restaurants arrived at the abortion which they mistakenly list on the menu as apple pie is one of the major mysteries of the past 20 years. It is surprising that an indignant populace hasn’t sought a court injunction.

Apple pie, properly compounded of fresh, thinly sliced apples, sugar, and spices, is one of our noblest American institutions. Within it, there is all the generous flavor put there by the wind and the blue sky and the gentle rains of summertime. It balances off a good many of the shortcomings of this confused world.

Most restaurant apple pie, however, tastes as if it had been left in a Turkish bath overnight. What actually has happened is that chefs somehow have acquired the ridiculous notion that apples should be stewed before putting them into the crust. The result, naturally, is a spiritless concoction which, if it had appeared at an old-fashioned country-school pie supper, would have brought about the ostracism of its creator.

As matters stand, there is probably nothing we can do about the use of precooked, watery apples in pie except to exercise the democratic right of protest. If the proper recipe for apple pie had been written into the Bill of Rights, as it should have been, we could demand that the FBI take immediate action.

For the perfect apple pie recipe, pick up the July/August 2016 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

Marriage Season

June, the traditional month for brides, is fast approaching, and this pastor has been hard at work praying I won’t have to put on my suit and officiate at any June weddings this year so I can spend those four Saturdays riding my motorcycle instead. My wife and I were married in June 32 years ago, and when I think of what we put our poor minister through, I want to dig him up and apologize. We were married 100 miles from his house, which meant he had to drive down the day before, conduct the Friday night rehearsal, and then sleep in the only hotel in town — a buggy hovel that rented rooms by the hour — because it was too far to return home. I’ve had to do the same thing more times than I can count, and I usually ended up wishing the couple had just eloped and saved everyone the trouble.

I’m not sure how June became the month for weddings. It’s a tradition we seem unwilling to shake, even though February is a much better month for weddings because we’re all tired of being stuck inside and could do with a good party. Then the couple could honeymoon in the Caribbean, and it would be a nice escape from winter. What good is the Caribbean in June, when it’s just as warm and sunny back home? Plus, there’s a symbolism to winter weddings, the inference that it’s just the bride and groom standing together against a cold and gloomy world. All June promises is endless stretches of sunshine and roses, which is why so many people married in June get divorced when they hit their first patch of trouble. A wedding should prepare us not only for the best life has to offer, but also the worst. Sickness and health, richer and poorer, for better or worse. In June, it’s nearly impossible to convince anyone there might be sickness or poverty awaiting them. In February, sickness and poverty are all we expect, so health, wealth, and happiness are a nice surprise.

All June promises is endless stretches of sunshine and roses, which is why so many people married in June get divorced when they hit their first patch of trouble.

Every year, I ask my wife what she would like for our anniversary, and she always says the same thing: “There is nothing I want nor need.” This is the problem with being married to a Quaker. Just once, I wish she’d pretend to be an Episcopalian and say jewelry or flowers or candy. I would especially like it if she said candy.

It’s interesting, and I hadn’t considered this until now, but in all the years we’ve been married, my wife has never asked me what I wanted for our anniversary. The cultural expectation seems to be that wives should get anniversary gifts, but not husbands. There are a whole bunch of things I want, and would happily provide my wife with a list were she to ask. Which might be why she doesn’t.

I have three motorcycles, each of them long in the tooth. One is 17 years old, another is 32, and the third one is 42. That’s close to 100 in human years. I’m long overdue for a new bike, so that would be the first thing I would suggest. I already know she wouldn’t get me that, so I would have to go to the second gift on my list — a new truck, which she also wouldn’t get me. Which brings us to my third gift request — a new pocketknife, which is what she always buys me for my birthdays. I own 34 Case pocketknives, most of them gifts from my wife. I like pocketknives, but I can only use one at a time, so my other 33 knives sit in my sock drawer, tarnishing.

This year, I hope we make it to the fourth item on my list — Saturdays off. This means my wife will have to officiate my weddings for me, which will give me more time to ride the new motorcycle I’m going to buy for myself just as soon as my wife isn’t paying attention.

News of the Week: Men of Late Night, the Monopoly Musical, and a Moon of Strawberry

What Letterman Said About Colbert

This week’s stupid internet controversy involves David Letterman and Stephen Colbert. When a preview of Letterman’s talk on Dateline with Tom Brokaw (which was postponed to last Sunday because of the shootings in Orlando) made the rounds a couple of weeks ago, social media and the web in general FREAKED OUT because Letterman supposedly said some bad things about Colbert. CBS shouldn’t have given him the show! They should have given the show to a woman!

You know what happened next, right? We found out that, actually, Letterman didn’t say anything bad about Colbert or “blast” him, as many outlets reported. He simply stated that he wondered why CBS didn’t give the show to a woman (more an observation than “they made a mistake” opinion) and that he didn’t watch late night television anymore and it’s no longer his problem. The “controversial” lines in question lasted for a total of less than 20 seconds, but hey, at least it gave people on social media and pop culture blogs something to have a “hot take” about.

Here’s a snippet from the interview (and here’s the entire episode):

Monopoly: The Musical Coming To Broadway

This could be a complete disaster or the most bizarre, brilliant thing ever seen on stage.

The Broadway production company Araca Group is putting together a musical based on the classic board game Monopoly. It’s still a few years away, so for now we’re just going to have to do with the board game.

You know what’s going to happen. Every actor in the production is going to want to be the car.

Could be great, could be terrible, but it will certainly be interesting. They’re aren’t many Broadway shows that can say they’re brought to you by Hasbro. I can’t wait for songs like “Pass Go (And Collect $200),” “Taking a Chance on Love,” “The Secret Marvin Gardens,” and “I’m Just a Thimble.”

RIP Anton Yelchin

There’s a theory online that 2016 has been a horrible year for celebrity deaths. I think every year seems to be that type of year when you go down the list of famous people who have passed away, but I’ll admit that 2016 does seem to stand out.

Anton Yelchin, a really talented actor, passed away this week when his SUV somehow pinned him against a security fence at his Studio City, California, home. The death has been ruled an accident. He was 27.

His most famous role was as Anton Chekov in the big-screen Star Trek movies. The third in the series, Star Trek Beyond, will open on July 22. Yelchin also starred in several movies including Alpha Dog, House of D, Hearts in Atlantis, Fright Night, Terminator Salvation, as well as TV shows like Huff, ER, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and The Practice. Here are messages from JJ Abrams and Star Trek star Zachary Quinto:

Yelchin’s 2015 Grand Cherokee Jeep was actually recalled because of roll-away concerns.

Strawberry Moon

We had a strawberry moon this week. No, it’s not the name of a dessert or a new rock band – though it could be and probably is — it’s the name we give to the full moon in June, around strawberry harvest season:

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/745458007895511040

This one was unique because it was the first time in 49 years that it happened on the same day as the summer solstice. That won’t happen again until 2062.

Remembering Pay Phones 

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been at the supermarket, just minding my own business shopping, when I’ll see someone talking really loudly on their phone. They’ll be arguing with someone or talking about a boyfriend they broke up with or about some medical problem they have. I also see a lot of husbands talking to their wives, making sure they get the right product the wife asked for. When I hear these conversations, my first thought is “I wish phone booths still existed.”

Ian Frazier misses them — or, pay phones in general — too. In a 2000 essay that’s included in his new collection, Hogs Wild, Frazier writes about how they gave us a cultural commonality, and how “they belonged to anybody who had a couple of coins.” Now most of them have gone away because we carry phones with us all the time. And even the ones that still exist aren’t the “booth” type, so there’s no privacy anymore.

But maybe they’re coming back, in a way. Some restaurants and office buildings are starting to put them in again. And New York City is starting to turn some booths into Wi-Fi hotspots. I think there’s an argument to be made that because everyone has their own phone now, phone booths are needed more than ever. And let’s keep pay phones around too for the people that don’t use smart phones, even if the number of those people are vanishing faster than pay phones are.

Starbucks Being Sued

Does Starbucks underfill their lattes? That’s the basis of a lawsuit against the chain brought by two California customers. The plaintiffs say that the company changed their recipe in 2009 and they now use less milk, which makes the drinks 25 percent smaller, which makes them overpriced.

Starbucks tried to get the suit dismissed but a judge disagreed, saying it could go forward.

I always have the opposite problem at Starbucks or the cafe at Barnes and Noble. They always fill the cups up too much, with excessive amounts of ice, and it overflows when I try to put the straw through the hole. I hate when that happens.

This Twinkie is 40 Years Old

In 1976, a high school teacher in Maine unwrapped a Twinkie. He ate one and kept the other under glass so his students could see how long it lasted. Here’s what it looks like today:

That’s odd and fascinating, and I guess we could look at it two ways. We could say, “My God, if it’s still around, what is in those things? Maybe we shouldn’t even be eating them!” Or maybe we should be eating more of them, if it can stay around, intact for over 40 years. Forget daily vitamins or Ensure, just eat a Twinkie a day.

The Twinkie is now owned by one of the teacher’s students, who is the dean of students at the very same school. She has it in her office.

The “Internet of Everything” Has Gone Too Far

This is how people used to shop for Twinkies and other groceries: You’d open up your fridge and cupboards, see what you needed, and you wrote it down. Or maybe you just went to the store and bought what you needed without a list. Now, apparently, if you have to figure out what you need, you take out your smartphone:

Yup, that’s right. Instead of just remembering what you need or taking a guess or having your wife — who is standing right next to the fridge balling a melon — check to see, you push a few buttons and an app shows you what’s in your fridge. Thanks, Samsung! How did we ever get by without this?

I can’t wait until the day I can open an app on my phone and see if I have clean socks or not. Don’t laugh. That day is coming.

National Chocolate Pudding Day

It’s this Sunday. Here’s a recipe for the ultimate chocolate pudding from Betty Crocker. Here’s one from The New York Times using dark chocolate. Or, if you want something a little healthier, how about this recipe for chocolate almond pudding?

Throw some chopped up Twinkies in there and tell us how it tastes. Just make sure you check the expiration date first.

Upcoming Events and Anniversaries

The Berlin Airlift (June 25, 1948)

The crisis, which involved Soviet troops blocking Allied access to parts of the German city, lasted for almost a year, ending on May 12, 1949.

Wimbledon starts (June 27)

The grass court tennis tournament is one of the very few things I like about summer.

Jayne Mansfield dies (June 29, 1967)

The actress died in a car accident along with two others in Mississippi. Her children, including Law and Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay, were in the car but survived.

26th Amendment ratified (July 1, 1971)

The constitutional amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Finding Avery

“The T-shirt’s selling like Facebook shares.” My brother’s standing there, a goofy grin splitting his face.

I look up from my book. “T-shirt?”

“You know. The one advertising my restaurant.”

Oh, right. The eatery that, so far, exists only in Jeff’s mind. I lay the book aside, crossing my arms. “What are folks going to do when they realize there’s no restaurant?”

“But there is.” He flops into the chair opposite me. He’s got that farm boy look — the freckled, blue-eyed, open face under a thatch of strawberry-blond hair — that draws people to him, especially the ones who think, Now here’s a guy I can fool. I love Jeff, but he never thinks things through in a logical way.

“Where?”

“Well, I got a couple of places in mind. One’s right across the street from Mom and Dad.” (What we call the old folks’ home.)

“Most of them can’t eat barbecue ribs,” I remind him. “Or corn on the cob. They don’t have the choppers.”

“I changed the menu.” He runs a large hand through his hair and then narrows his eyes at me. “Proves you’ve never read the T-shirt.”

I shrug. “So enlighten me.”

He jumps up, disappears into his bedroom, and comes out holding a beige garment with green writing on it. “KELLY’S DELI,” it says in big block letters. Beneath that in equally large letters framed in an arc are the words, “NEW YORK ATTITUDE. OLD SOUTH SOUL.” And then, in smaller type: “Food for folks on the run. We got your bagels and lox, your biscuits and gravy, your pastrami and Swiss on rye, your pulled pork barbecue, and a WHOLE LOT MORE. We don’t do chit-chat. We do chow.” Near the bottom of the shirt, in very small letters that normally would disappear inside somebody’s waistband, are the words “Chef Avery Savory.”

Handing Jeff the T-shirt, I ask him, “Who’s Avery Savory?”

“The chef.”

“I can see that. But who is he? I mean, a friend of yours? Somebody you’ve hired to — to . . . ?” Unable to finish the question, I wave the words away.

Jeff shrugs. “I don’t know yet. I’m still looking.”

“It’s a made-up name, right? Like a way to hint that the food’s good?”

“Well, sure. It will be good. I just have to find the right guy. He’s gotta have a Brooklyn accent, too. And, you know, attitude up the wazzoo.”

“Not to mention cooking skills.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that should be a snap.” I pick my book up, convinced that, yet again, Jeff’s dreams will crash headlong into the hard reality of actually finding somebody like that — a prospect about as likely as discovering cold fusion.

“He doesn’t have to come outta one of them cordon blue schools, you know. This kind of food’s pretty basic.”

I close the book, leaving my index finger to mark my place. “You don’t have the money for a trip to New York.”

“I don’t need to. I put a want ad in the Citizen-Times last week.”

“And now you’re screening applicants?”

“You don’t have to be so sarcastic,” he says. “Matter of fact, there haven’t been any nibbles so far. But that’s just on the website. Somebody might’ve applied the old-fashioned way.”

“The mail’s on the kitchen table,” I cut in. “Although it’s mostly bills.”

Thing is, I’m the chef. I make all our meals, now that Mom and Pop are living in the retirement home.

“I could fix pastrami and Swiss on rye,” I tell my best friend, Viola.

“Okay. But why?” She’s putting a coat of clear polish on her nails. “If it ain’t ham on a biscuit, no way I’m touchin’ it.”

“Well, Jeff’s place is supposed to cater to the — you know. Flatland furriners?”

“Yankees.”

I nod, even though Viola’s not watching me. “Jeff figures we have enough eateries here that serve Southern food. He wants his place to be different, something that’ll make visitors feel right at home.”

“I’m agin’ it,” she says, mimicking the drawl that all Southerners are supposed to have. “Damn Yankees. Why don’t they just stay up there in the frozen north?”

“Jobs.”

She snorts. “Well, then, hon’, let ’em learn to eat Suthrun.”

It takes me quite a while to find the pastrami — at a supermarket deli on the outskirts of Charlotte. It’s 30 miles away, and gas ain’t cheap, but still.

Rye isn’t too plentiful in our town, either, but I forgot to look for it when I was at the deli up in the city. I figure whole wheat will do, but the sandwich winds up tasting like salted beef brisket. I form a mental picture of walking the streets, pastrami sandwich on a plate, asking strangers, “Are you from New York? Would you do a taste test for me?” But, of course, I’m not that bold.

When he tastes the sandwich, Jeff swears something’s missing. “S’why we need to find Avery.”

“Avery doesn’t exist, Jeff. Except in your head.”

“There are prolly hundreds and thousands of Brooklyners, or whatever, who’re dyin’ to move south and get away from all that hullabaloo up there. I just haven’t found him yet.”

And you won’t. Of course, I never say those words because I want Jeff to succeed. We could use the money, for one. For another, I’d dearly love to have more than 10 minutes to find out how Lady Emma is going to get herself out of the pickle she’s in before being interrupted by my brother.

But I am curious. So I Google pastrami on rye, my eyes bugging out at the photo of a New York-style sandwich so loaded with meat that one sandwich could easily feed a family of eight. Then I find a recipe that uses three slices of pastrami and two slices of Swiss cheese on rye with either mayo or mustard.

That one tastes okay, but it’s not nearly as scrumptious as a po’ boy.

“Give it up, willya?” says Jeff when I ask him to taste it again. “All these kinds a sam’iches — they got some secret ingredient. Avery will know what it is.”

Actually, I know what it is: spicy brown mustard. Which I don’t have and don’t intend to drive 30 miles and back to buy. If the deli in the supermarket even sells it. After all, I’m only experimenting.

The T-shirts are still flying off the shelf, and now Jeff’s getting phone calls from folks wanting to know when’s the grand opening and how to find the deli.

“Man, I really need to find Avery,” he tells me one day at lunch.

“How about first locating a place where he can work?”

“Got that one covered.” Hands clasped behind his head, he tilts onto the back legs of his chair.

“Don’t tell me it’s across the street from Mom and — ”

“Too expensive. And, anyway, those old folks aren’t in any hurry, are they. They don’t need to grab a quick bite.”

Jeff has a point. “So … ?” I wave my hand.

“The Caswell Building. Over on Pinehurst Street?”

I know where it is. At the very heart of the two and half blocks we call downtown. “And that’s cheaper?”

“Welllll. Not really. But it was a sandwich shop before, so all the equipment’s pretty much already there.”

“You know, Jeff, I don’t want to bring up the subject of money, but — ”

“Then don’t. I got it covered.”

“From T-shirt sales?”

“You don’t have to yell. I’m not goin’ deaf here.”

I drum my fingers on the tabletop, waiting for an explanation.

“Avery’s the key,” he says, rocking forward with a thump. “Once I find him, we’ll be set.”

Or bankrupt. I’m so flooded with thoughts of the two of us panhandling on the streets, sleeping in a shelter, cleaning up in gas station restrooms, my heart feels like a trapped butterfly. “We could get a second mortgage on this place,” I offer.

His eyebrows shoot up. “You kidding? That sure would be a stupid thing to do.” He sits there, drumming his fingers in accompaniment to mine. “Anyway, we don’t need to. I got it covered.”

I’m sweeping leaves off the front porch one morning when the phone rings, and I wonder if it’s the retirement home.

“Kelly residence,” I say, just barely catching the phone before it goes to voicemail.

“Residence?” the caller echoes. He’s got a rich, deep voice and an accent I’ve heard only in gangster movies. “This ain’t Kelly’s Deli?”

“Uh, well, sort of. Jeff’s not here right now. Can I leave a message?”

“Tell ’im it’s Reuben. I’m tired of waiting.”

For what? Repayment of a gambling debt? “You want to leave a number?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from quavering. But the line is dead.

Has Jeff been going to the dogs again? I thought he’d learned his lesson after the Michael Vick thing. Could he be dealing drugs? Oh, Lord. Say it ain’t so.

“Reuben called,” I say to Jeff the minute he walks in the door.

“Reuben who?” He heads for the kitchen where I hear the sound of the fridge opening. “Got anything cold in here?”

“Reuben’s tired of waiting,” I call out.

Jeff’s standing there, beer in hand. “Who’s Reuben?”

“You’re asking me? I only answer the phone around here. He wanted to know if this was Kelly’s Deli.”

“And you said no?”

I shake my head. “Of course, not. I sort of fudged. The guy sounded real tough, though. Like one of those movie gangst — Oh, boy. He had a Brooklyn accent. Maybe he’s calling about the chef’s job. What did you put in your ad, anyway?”

Jeff shrugs, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows the last of the beer. “Just wanted somebody with a” — he makes finger quotes — “New York accent and the attitude to go with it.”

“Wonderful.”

Jeff goes to the phone where he’ll soon recall that, since it’s big, black, older than Jimmy Carter, and doesn’t have caller ID, he can’t find Reuben’s number. “Shit. Wonder if he’ll call again.”

“Probably the minute you leave the house.”

“My luck, that’d be the case.” He stands there, staring at the phone. “Tell him he can hook up with me at the Caswell Building. He should look for the empty space in the lobby where all the windows are papered over.”

It’s then that I realize Jeff is not just fooling around. If he’s at the brown-paper-on-the-windows point, he’s damn serious. Oh, man. What are we going to do? I rake my fingers through my hair, which isn’t nearly as thatchy as my brother’s. “What if Reuben never calls? What if he isn’t responding to the ad? What if he’s some thug who has a score to settle with you?”

“Oh, for Chrissake. You’re always such a damn party pooper.”

I’d call myself a realist, but then I always was better than Jeff at school.

When Reuben calls, I’m ready. But instead of asking him to meet Jeff on Pinehurst Street, I tell him to meet me at Sissy’s Crepes and Croissants.

Reuben’s only comment? “Ya gotta be kiddin’, lady.”

Just testing, actually. Does he want the job, or not? No way am I going to have Jeff thinking all his problems are solved when maybe they really aren’t.

Reuben doesn’t look like a New York guy. He’s blond, for one thing. A bit on the pudgy side, too, although maybe he’s channeling Marlon Brando. Still, I was expecting skinny and swarthy, dressed in black, a Robert deNiro- or Al Pacino-type person wearing a scruffy leather jacket — though it’s pushing 80 in the shade, so scratch the jacket.

“Don’ tell me you actually eat this stuff,” he says to me when Sissy hands us our menus.

“You got a problem?” she retorts, hand on hip, mimicking his accent.

“Yeah,” he says, pointing to his stomach. “It’s called overeating.”

She leans over, pointing to the no-fat crepes with yogurt topping. “I’ll just have a regular coffee,” he says and then remembers he’s in the South. “With cream and sugar.”

“And you?” Sissy winks at me.

“How about some sweet tea? I just ate one of Geraldine’s sausage biscuits, and I’m about to bust wide open.”

Reuben scoots his chair back, out of reach. “So. That ad in the paper.” He spreads his arms. “Here I am.”

“Really?” I squint at him, sizing up his considerable heft. “You’ve got the right accent, I’ll grant you. And maybe you can do the attitude thing, but can you cook?”

“Cook.” He scratches his chin. “As in … ?” He waves his hand in a circle.

“Southern-style and New York.”

“You’re kiddin’ me.”

“Didn’t you read the ad? We” — now where did that come from? — “need a chef who can do both types of cooking, plus talk like a New York guy and act like one.”

He examines his short pudgy fingers and then looks at me. “Two outta three ain’t bad, is it?”

Actually, it’s awful. That would put us — make that Jeff — back to square one. “The operative word, I believe, was chef.”

He seems mesmerized by the steam rising off of his coffee. “I can do counter work. You know, food prep. Bus tables and stuff.”

“No table service. Strictly carryout.” Although … had Jeff actually been that specific three months ago when he’d first sketched out his dream?

Reuben’s double chin starts to quiver, and I figure totally un-tough-guy tears might even fall. He sips his coffee, staring at me over the rim of his mug. “I need a job.”

Call me a softie. No, call me brilliant. Because Jeff won’t, and Reuben doesn’t know from nice.

When Kelly’s Deli opens on November 3, Chef Avery is manning the grill, while Jeff and Reuben handle everything else.

Jeff asks, “You want slaw with that, ma’am?”

Reuben says, “C’mon, lady. Make up your mind. We ain’t got all day.”

Avery calls out, “Two pulled chicken and one Coney Island comin’ up.”

A reporter from the Citizen-Times arrives. I know him from high school and can still recall the time he got suspended after a true, but unflattering limerick he’d composed about the principal had appeared in the school paper. He’s standing there, taking notes, and then he looks at me. “I’m trying to find Chef Avery Savory.”

I give him my best high-wattage smile — the one that always wins them over — and point at my toque. “C’mon. Have we met?”

Being in Love

In 1930s, humorist J.P. McEvoy wrote the Post column “Father Meets Son” presented to readers in the form of letters filled with advice for navigating life’s rocky road. Employing a mix of wry humor and tough love, Dad doled out life lessons on everything from work to women. Readers loved it.

His son’s relationship with the boss’s daughter is getting serious! Dad encourages his son to talk to the boss about turning him into a father-in-law — but to find the emergency exit first.

Father Meets Son: Being in Love

By J.P. McEvoy

Originally published on June 5, 1937

Dear Son: So you love the boss’s daughter and the boss’s daughter loves you, and where do you go from there? She wants you to go right to the boss and tell him the good news. You are not so sure he will think it is so good. And a lot of other things are worrying you. You have no money, no prospects, and the only job you have is driving the family car — her family. What will the old man say when he learns the family chauffeur wants to marry his daughter? And if he says, “Okay!” won’t people say you married for money, or just to get ahead? Quite a situation, but hardly a novel one. The movies would go out of business without it.

Suppose we sit down together and go over the situation bit by bit, like a couple of inchworms. First, there is this marriage question in general. Boss’s daughter or no boss’s daughter, should you get married at your age and in your economic spot? You are 23, you have no money saved up, you have a college education and a liberal arts diploma, you have had a few months’ experience at making your own living, you are ambitious, healthy, moderately good-looking, and in love. Not an impressive capital with which to start a business as difficult as marriage, unless you plan to put “good will” in at a handsome figure. Which has been done, and many times with great success. The girl is young and beautiful and spoiled, and her father is rich, and she is in love with you. It would take a smarter man than I am to analyze that statement and give you a trustworthy picture of the assets and liabilities in it. As a business proposition, the partnership you propose is not necessarily doomed to succeed. Neither is it bound to fail. A number of factors that do not appear on the balance sheet will decide the issue. Let us take them up, not necessarily in the order of their importance, because we don’t know what that order is.

You. Are you too young? You will have to find that out for yourself. Some boys are men at 18; some men are boys at 80. Do you want to grow up? Do you want to mature? Then you certainly are not too young to start. Holding a job matured you a little, but holding a wife will mature you a lot. If for no other reason, I would be in favor of an early marriage because of that. It’s a hard school, but you can’t go through it without acquiring a lot of valuable knowledge you can never get from books. You will learn patience and tolerance, and patience and cooperation, and patience and more patience.

The girl. You started out thinking she was a spoiled brat. Now you know she is an angel. The chances are she is both. Being a spoiled brat doesn’t mean she hasn’t plenty of good qualities hidden away. Being an angel doesn’t mean she can’t be spoiled again. Her love for you apparently has brought all her best qualities to the surface, where they shine like beaten gold. You say her parents are genuinely surprised by the change that has come over her. She has become serious where before she was giddy; she has become thoughtful where before she was thoughtless. And love has wrought this wondrous miracle! Is it a real miracle or only the appearance of one? Is this new Gloria the substance, and the old Gloria the shadow? Or vice versa? Or are there two inextricably mixed Glorias awaiting your magic to bring out the better one and make it the dominant personality? You’ll never know until you have to work at it.

Her mother. From what you have told me about her, you need expect very little assistance from that quarter. She is and always will be Gloria’s natural ally. Proudly she carries a banner on which you may read this illuminating slogan: “My daughter! May she always be right, but right or wrong, my daughter!”

Her father. He seems to hold the key position just now. You are working for him — and what will he think when you tell him you have nominated him to be your father-in-law? From what I gather so far, he seems to be a pretty reasonable, sensible, practical fellow; so maybe he won’t be so surprised as you think. Whether you work for him or somebody else should make little difference, so long as you do your work well. Why should he care whether you are driving his car or somebody else’s car or your own car, if driving a car is the job? Being sensible, he probably doesn’t care a hoot. He will undoubtedly want to know if you are honest and ambitious and intelligent; if you have a good mind and a sound body; if you are willing to work, and work hard; if you have intestinal fortitude and the yeast of growth in you.

What more can a young man hope to bring to marriage these days? Money? He hasn’t had the time or the opportunity to make it himself, and any other kind comes too easy not to go the same way. Position? The only position that does you any good in the long run is what you make for yourself, and that again takes years of hard work. If a young man needs only capital or an opportunity and has all the other assets, I see no reason why he should not accept, or the prospective father-in-law should not extend, such assistance. There was sound economics in the dot, or dower, system in the older countries. And isn’t it just as sound today in your own land, if the dot takes the shape of opportunity for the young man to marry and get started rather than force him and the girl to wait for years, until the bloom has been taken off their romance?

If I were your prospective father-in-law instead of your father, I would look at it something like this: I have a daughter who is young and attractive and full of beans. She is better off married to someone she loves than batting around hunting for thrills and winding up a few years from now jaded and too hard to please. I have no son, and this young man, if he has the right stuff in him, could be a son to me. Why, then, shouldn’t I give him the chance to work his way up in my business and learn how to handle it, so that eventually I can turn the reins over to a young man who belongs in the family, instead of to some stranger? Why should I expect him to wait until he can support my daughter in the manner to which she is accustomed? That is much too rich for her blood, as it is, and she would be better off starting all over again at the modest scale on which her mother and I started.

At the same time, this may be one of those puppy-love infatuations. How do I know? How will I find out? Time is a subtle ally. Time will tell if they really love each other; time will tell if the young man has the makings in him. I will ask them both to wait one year. In that year I will give the young man every opportunity in my business to show what he can do. If he makes good and proves to me that he has the potential capacity for business and social success, I will give them my blessing and help them on their way. If he doesn’t make good for me or the girl in that time, nobody has lost anything, nobody has been hurt, and we can all sit down together then, discuss the new situation, and come to a reasonable decision based on experience instead of guesswork.

That’s what I would say if I were the girl’s father. I find it even easier to say since I am not her father, but yours. What will he say? Go and ask him. But first look around for the nearest exit, and, in case of emergency, be prepared to run, not walk.

Affectionately,

Dad

Previous: The Boss’s Daughter

Coming soon: Separated from Love