Out of My Mind (8 page)

Most hats don't fit my head, so I don't wear hats. I have a big neck but short arms, so shirts that fit are hard to find. The shirts with big necks have the longest sleeves.

I'm always irritated with sizes in a grocery store when I buy eggs. The eggs in the boxes that say “medium” are small. Those marked “large” are medium, and the ones marked “jumbo” are large, if you're lucky.

When I decided to buy a new car several months ago, I went to the dealer who'd sold me my last one. I liked that car and was ready to buy a new model. I drive a lot in New York City, where space is at a premium. The new model was six inches longer than my old one. That was enough to turn me off and head me toward purchasing another car. My new car is three inches shorter than my old one. These days, it's difficult to get anything that's smaller than the model you already have. In New York, three inches in the length of a car can make the difference between getting or not getting a parking space.

Books are difficult to deal with because their sizes vary so much that they don't all fit in the same bookcase. Publishers ought to get together and decide to issue books in just two or three sizes. The books on my shelves vary from small ones, 4-by-6 inches, to fat volumes that measure
20-by-14 inches. The bigger ones are called “coffee table books” because they don't fit anywhere else.

The newspaper I spend at least an hour reading every day is an inconvenient size. I don't know how they started printing a paper that when opened to an inside page, is twenty-eight inches across and twenty-two inches from top to bottom. There is simply no way to handle it comfortably, and I end up folding it all sorts of different ways. Just as I get the page how I want it, I come to the end of a story and it says, “Continued on page 22,” so I have to start folding again.

I realize this is sort of a ridiculous subject, but I started thinking about sizes and couldn't stop. What got me started was a copy of the new
TV Guide
. The editors (or maybe the sales manager) of
TV Guide
decided that the handy,
Readers Digest
–sized
TV Guide
was too small and they came out with a traditional magazine-sized magazine.

Next thing, I suppose
Reader's Digest
will be putting out a magazine the size of
Fortune
or
Esquire
.

Please don't greet me at this time of year by saying “Happy Holidays.” “Merry Christmas” has the sound I like. I associate it not with anyone's birthday, but with all the great December 25ths I've spent in my life with my family. “Happy Holidays” is a wishy-washy, politically neutral substitute that avoids any religious connotation but doesn't have any of the warmth and intimations of joy that “Merry Christmas” holds.

I don't mind those who think of Christmas as the birthday of Jesus Christ but I am not one of them. “Merry Christmas” long ago left behind any religious implications it ever had. It has a meaning all its own that exceeds any specific association you could attach to it. We all know what we mean when we say “Merry Christmas,” even though it would be hard to spell out.

I don't dislike anyone on Christmas. I'm with my family and sometimes a few friends. I love the togetherness of it. I've never been lonely on Christmas. I know I'm lucky and even that makes me feel good.

In the early days in New England, Puritans opposed the idea of Christmas. They called Christmas “a Roman corruption of a heathen practice.” I don't know what the Puritans' hang-up was over Christmas. Of course, there were a lot of crazy Puritans.

Christmas is celebrated in most European countries and we've adopted some of their traditions here. The Christmas tree came from Germany, along with stollen, their traditional Christmas fruit cake. Aunt Anna made ours.

There's a difference of opinion about where “Santa Claus” came from. The most common story is that he was originally a fourth-century bishop from the area that's now Turkey. He was very generous, always giving things to kids, and the Christmas gift tradition started with him. When I read that, I wondered if he ever got anything for someone that he didn't like.

Christmas is older than I realized before I started reading about it. The Roman Bishop Liberius is said to have chosen Dec. 25 as the birthday of Jesus in about 350 A.D. Dates like this are staggering to my brain. That was 350 years after Christ was born and 1,656 years before 2006. When you think about how hard it is to get a story right in the news the day it happened, you wonder how accurate such an old story can be.

I don't think our great Christmas carols represent actual history either, but they're beautiful.

You won't hear “Bah, Humbug! or “Happy Holidays” from me.

“Merry Christmas!” is my greeting for the day and it should be used by Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists.

Some things—and people—age well. Some things—and people—just get old.

It's not easy to say exactly what makes one old chest of drawers a valuable antique and what makes another a piece of junk.

One of my favorite chores is going to the dump in my hometown on Saturday morning. Throwing stuff away that is cluttering up your house or your garage is a cathartic experience that feels good—but in addition to that, it's always interesting to see what other people throw away.

I don't like to have anyone see me do it, but I sometimes come home with more in the back of my Jeep than I took to the dump. Last week, the man in the car next to me was throwing out a piece of furniture that I couldn't identify. While he took one piece of it to the discard pile, I inspected another piece still in the back of his car. It was the top of some kind of table made of a single pine board almost forty inches square. Any board forty inches wide came from a huge tree probably 100 years old and the table itself was probably almost 100. When the man returned to get it to throw away, I asked if I could have it. I now have a beautiful old pine board that will have a new life because I will refinish it and turn it into something else. I feel good about saving it from being incinerated.

What started me thinking about this subject of old or used things was nothing as attractive as an old board. It was a banana peel I saw that someone had thrown in the street near where I park. Considering how attractive a banana looks sitting in a bowl of fruit along with some oranges, apples, pears and peaches, it's interesting that it turns instantly into so disgusting a piece of garbage once the edible part is removed. There is absolutely nothing aesthetically attractive about a banana peel.

Some of the used or secondhand cars you see for sale in lots with prices written on their windshields aren't much better-looking than a banana peel. On the other hand, I drove past an old-car show a few
weeks ago and they had some antique beauties that were better-looking than the day they were made. What makes one old car junk and another collectible?

The clothes in my closet fall in two categories. A few of my good old tweed jackets made from material woven in Scotland or England have gained charm and character with age. They don't look seedy; they look well worn.

On the other hand, a lot of my old clothes ought to go. I'm running out of hangers and some of the suits hanging from them were mistakes when they were new and they've aged badly. I'd throw them out, but it hurts too much when I remember what I paid for them.

Some of my old books are ragged from the number of times I've thumbed through them looking for favorite passages. I've written remarks and notes in the margins and on the blank pages at the beginning and end. They're a mess, but they look beautifully familiar to me and I wouldn't trade them for brand new copies with pristine dust jackets. I don't know why it is, but old and new both seem more interesting than middle age. I have five pairs of middle-age shoes I'll never wear and never throw out.

There's no telling what wakes you on those nights you can't sleep. Last night, I awoke at 2:20. It was the sound of falling snow that did it. I knew it was snow because there was not a single, solitary sound. The silence of falling snow is deafening.

I lay there for several minutes, trying to breathe quietly so as not to obliterate the soundlessness. Finally, I couldn't handle my doubt any longer. I got up (I'm fighting off “arose”), pulled back the curtain and looked out on the backyard. Sure enough, there it was—gently falling snow hitting the ground silently, covering the little slate walk and clinging,
half an inch thick, to tiny branches which are themselves no more than half an inch thick. It perched on top of the points of the picket fence in a beautifully symmetrical peak that no human hand could fashion. They say no two snowflakes have ever been the same but we don't know, do we? I saw two that looked very much alike.

There are all kinds of sounds in nature that are better than noise. Some sounds are good or bad depending on where you are and what you're doing when you hear them. Nothing is worse than a downpour of rain when you're caught out in it without a coat or umbrella. But inside, the sound of the same downpour is a pleasure that makes you appreciate your shelter.

Of all the sounds combining weather with nature, none is so persistently loud and impossible to turn off as the roar of the sea rolling up onto a broad, sandy beach. I envy people who live on expensive property near the ocean. There's the roar as thousands of tons of water advance on a broad front along the width of the beach, or the crash when the waves hit the immovable rocks that cup the shoreline at either end of a sandy crescent. There is the soft, seething sound as the water recedes. It pauses briefly out at sea, gathering strength for its next attack. A beach confounds angry waters by accepting them and defeating their destructive intentions, waiting patiently for the waves to go back where they came from, out to sea.

The heat of summer is as silent as snow but it's an oppressive silence. There is no pleasurable relief from heat comparable to the great feeling of pulling up the extra blanket on a cold night. Air conditioning is a modern marvel but it is loud, heartless and mechanical, with no charm. I don't like it but I don't know how we ever lived without it.

Wind is nature's most unpredictable sound. You never know for sure what it's doing, where it's coming from, or where it's going when it leaves. It's going somewhere but while it blows, it seems to stand still. The trees in front of my house are miraculously strong standing up to the wrath of a gale. The trunks creak, the branches crack, but the big maple has stood through hundreds of storms since it was a slip of a tree
whipping in the wind fifty years ago. The tree will, in all probability, survive many more years.

My perfect day would be to awaken to a cool and sunny day with a sun that shone in the kitchen window while I ate breakfast. I'd take my own shower under circumstances that improve on nature's showers by allowing me to control the force and temperature of the spray with the twist of a dial.

By the time I sat down at my typewriter, which is not a typewriter at all any longer, my ideal day would be cloudy with a threat of rain that discouraged my considering even grocery store travel and encouraged this kind of overwriting.

I have what I think is bad news for people who own a home that has a lawn.

James Hagedorn, the president of Scotts Miracle-Gro, says that his company has developed a new, slower-growing, genetically engineered grass that hardly ever has to be mowed.

I'm for progress in most areas, but grass is one thing that doesn't need to be improved. I don't want my lawn to be genetically engineered. What makes Mr. Miracle-Gro himself think I'll be any happier if I only have to mow the lawn twice a year? If he's so smart, how come he leaves the “w” off “grow” in the name of his company? He thinks “Miracle-Gro” is clever?

The fact is, Mr. Hagedorn, people like to mow their lawns. It's like shoveling the snow off the sidewalk. There are just a few simple chores left that are easy and satisfying for the homeowner, and those are two of them. If someone has a sidewalk too big to shovel or a lawn too extensive to mow, they must be rich enough to pay someone to do it for them. Cutting the grass is not a job we hate. It's easy, satisfying and it makes
the place look better. So leave our grass alone, Mr. Hagedorn. We like it the way it is. Nothing makes people feel prouder than mowing their lawn . . . unless it's shoveling their sidewalk.

There are women who enjoy ironing because they find ironing relaxing. For the few minutes it takes them to do it, they know exactly what they're doing. That's the way it is with a man shoveling a sidewalk or mowing a lawn.

If Mr. Hagedorn wants to help homeowners, he ought to give some attention to the jobs we really hate. How about coming up with a machine that would clean out the attic, tidy up the basement, or make more room in the garage, Mr. Hagedorn? Could you redesign a lawnmower to do that? If you could, you'd be doing something for us. We'd all like to be able to get two cars in our two-car garages. Could you arrange that?

As a matter of fact, you've got some work to do redesigning the lawnmower before you redesign grass. Forget about not mowing lawns. Figure out a place where we can put that damn lawnmower when we're done with it. A lawnmower doesn't fit anywhere. We use it seven times a year, and the rest of the time it's just in the way. Give us a lawnmower that folds. The lawnmower takes up too much room that we need for other things like shovels, rakes, bicycles, gas cans. There isn't a mower of lawns among us who likes the design.

When I mow the lawn, I make a satisfying executive decision. The question is always whether to mow up and down, up and down, or across and across, across and across. Sometimes, I alternate the pattern of my mowing. I'll just keep going around and around in a diminishing oblong pattern until the patch in the middle gets small enough so that the mower's wheels span the strip of grass left and I can get it with one satisfying pass.