I pretended to be reading the paper for thirty seconds more and then looked up to see where the young woman had gone. She was standing a short way off, on the heartless marble floor of the station, doing nothing. I thought how close to barefoot she looked in her thin, old leather shoes.
Most beggars in New York City are either con artists or alcoholics. She didn"t seem to be a con artist or an alcoholic, and I don"t know what someone looks like who"s on drugs or smoking marijuana. You can"t make enough begging to be a drug addict, anyway. Drug addicts steal. She didn"t look like a thief.
There aren"t a lot of beggars in New York but there are all kinds, and every pa.s.serby has a decision to make. The black kids stand at the clogged entrance to the bridges and tunnels and slop soapy water on your windshield with a dirty sponge. If you give them a quarter, they clean it off. If you don"t, they don"t. I"m torn between compa.s.sion and anger at times like this. It"s blackmail but it"s better than stealing and I laugh and give.
The ordinary street beggar will not be helped by what anyone gives him, though. And, anyway, I have the feeling the saddest cases and the ones who need money most desperately don"t beg for it.
Morning People and Night People 149 149 Everyone in New York is approached at least once a month. You have to have a policy. Mine is simple! To beggars on the street, I give nothing. I wish I was certain I"m right, I keep thinking of the young woman in Grand Central and the two fried eggs.
Morning People and Night People A re you consistently dumber during some hours of the day than others? I certainly am. I"m smartest in the morning. You might not think so if you met me in the morning, but that"s the fact. After about 11:30 a.m., my brain begins getting progressively duller, until by late afternoon I can"t remember my middle name. It is morning as I write. My middle name is Aitken.
Each of us has his best hours. The people who have to have a cup of coffee to activate their brain in the morning are the slow starters. I have a cup of coffee to get my body going, but my brain starts up without it.
It"s always best if what we are coincides with the way we wish we were. It doesn"t happen often to most of us, but both morning people and night people seem to be pleased with themselves the way they are.
I know I"m pleased to be a morning person. I think it"s best. I a.s.sociate it with virtue. It works out best for me, too. Not perfect, but best. I get to work very early, taper off around noon and have a very unproductive period between about 1:30 and 4:30. Unproductive periods are important too, you know.
Somewhere around 4:30, my brain begins to stage a mild comeback, but by then it"s time to quit and go home.
I feel sorry for the people who think best in the evening and I"d like to tell you why. Night people awaken grudgingly. They dread getting up but eventually drag themselves out of bed, put themselves through their morning ablutions and stumble to work hating every minute of it. By noon their metabolism is finally moving at the same speed as the current of activity that surrounds them and they begin to blend in. It is now lunchtime.
In the early evening, after the sun has gone down and the rest of the world is settling in, they"re ready to go. They waste some of their smartest hours, when they should be most productive, watching some of the dumbest shows on television.
Prime-time television was designed for those of us who are smartest in the morning. By 8 p.m., we"ve lost most of our critical faculties, and "Dallas" and "Laverne and Shirley" are just perfect for our level of intellectual activity. Even if we don"t like them, they don"t bother us enough to make it worth our while getting up to turn them off.
The night people sit there doing the crossword puzzle or reading the paper and grumbling because there"s nothing on the tube worth watching.
It seems apparent to me that we ought to rethink the whole pattern of our daily lives. We"ve got to make some changes.
If each of us really does need seven hours" sleep, it would probably be better if we took it in shorter periods. I often get more sleep than I need or want all in one piece during the night. Even when I go to bed at 11:30 and get up at 5:45, which is my habit, there"s something wrong with just lying there in one place for six hours and fifteen minutes.
I"ll bet it would be better for both our brains and our bodies if we took our seven hours in sections instead of all at once. Say we slept for three hours between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., two hours from noon until 2 p.m. and another two hours between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. This would give us the same seven hours, but better distributed over the twenty-four-hour period.
There are some problems that would have to be worked out, of course. The reason all of us now try to get what is known as "a good night"s rest" is not because that"s the way our bodies like it, but because the whole civilized process of going to bed and getting up is such a time-consuming activity that we couldn"t afford to do it three or four times a day. And, of course, if it took the night people a couple of hours to get going again after each sleep period, they"d be less help than they are now. A personal opinion, you understand.
The Sound of Silence 151 151 And, of course, there are other questions that would have to be resolved. When, for instance, would we change our underwear, take a shower and make the bed?
The Sound of Silence 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 that 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. .h.i.t the immovable rocks that cup the sh.o.r.eline 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 circ.u.mstances 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.
Where Are All the Plumbers? 153 153
The Search for Quality Where Are All the Plumbers?
For the past few days I"ve spent most of the time in my woodworking shop making a complicated little oak stool for Emily.
I like the whole process of writing but when I get back there in my workshop, I notice that I"m quite contented. Yesterday I worked until 2:30 before I remembered I hadn"t eaten lunch. It even has occurred to me that I could give up writing and spend the rest of my life making pieces of furniture that amuse me. Who knows? I might get good at it.
It"s a mystery to me why more people don"t derive their satisfactions from working with their hands. Somehow, a hundred or more years ago something strange happened in this country. Americans began to a.s.sume that all the people who did the good, hard work with their hands were not as smart as those who worked exclusively with their brains. The carpenters, the plumbers, the mechanics, the painters, the electricians and the farmers were put in a social category of their own below the one the bankers, the insurance salesmen, the doctors and the lawyers were in. The jobs that required people to work with their hands were generally lower-paying jobs and the people who took them had less education.
Another strange thing has happened in recent years. It"s almost as though the working people who really know how to do something other than make money are striking back at the white-collar society. In all but the top executive jobs, the blue-collar workers are making as much as or more than the teachers, the accountants and the airline clerks.
The apprentice carpenters are making more than the young people starting out as bank clerks. Master craftsmen in any line are making $60,000 a year and many are making double that. In most large cities, automobile mechanics charge $45 an hour. A mechanic in Los Angeles or New York, working in the service department of an authorized car dealer, can make $60,000 a year. A sanitation worker in Chicago can [image]Hard at work in his woodworking shop in Rensselaerville, New York make $ 35,000 a year. All this has happened, in part at least, because the fathers who were plumbers made enough money to send their children to college so they wouldn"t have to be plumbers.
In England, a child"s future is is determined at an early age when he or she is a.s.signed either to a school that features a cla.s.sical education or one that emphasizes learning a trade. Even though we never have had the same kind of cla.s.s system in America that they have in England, our lines are drawn, too. The people who work with their hands as well as their brains still aren"t apt to belong to the local country club. The mechanic at the car dealer"s may make more than the car salesman, but the salesman belongs to the club and the mechanic doesn"t. determined at an early age when he or she is a.s.signed either to a school that features a cla.s.sical education or one that emphasizes learning a trade. Even though we never have had the same kind of cla.s.s system in America that they have in England, our lines are drawn, too. The people who work with their hands as well as their brains still aren"t apt to belong to the local country club. The mechanic at the car dealer"s may make more than the car salesman, but the salesman belongs to the club and the mechanic doesn"t.
It"s hard to account for why we"re so short of people who do things well with their hands. You can only conclude that it"s because of some On Conservation 155 155 mixed-up sense of values we have that makes us think it is more prestigious to sell houses as a real-estate person than it is to build them as a carpenter.
To further confuse the matter, when anyone who works mostly with his brain, as I do, does something with his hands, as when I make a piece of furniture, friends are envious and effusive with praise. So, how come the people who do it professionally, and infinitely better than I, aren"t in the country club?
If I"ve lost you in going the long way around to make my point, my point is that considering how satisfying it is to work with your hands and considering how remunerative those jobs have become, it is curious that more young people coming out of school aren"t learning a trade instead of becoming salesmen.
On Conservation My grandfather was right and wrong about a lot of things, but he was never undecided. When I was twelve, he told me we were using up all the good things on earth so fast that we"d run out of them.
I"ve worried about that. I guess we all have, and I wonder whether it"s true or not. The real question is, will we run out of the things we need to survive before we find subst.i.tutes for them? Of course, we"re going to run out of oil. Of course, we"re going to run out of coal. And it seems very likely that there will be no substantial forests left in another hundred years.
Argue with me. Say I"m wrong. Give me statistics proving there"s more oil left in the ground than we"ve already used. Tell me there"s coal enough in the United States to last seventy-five or a hundred years. Make me read the advertis.e.m.e.nts saying they"re planting more trees than they"re cutting.
I"ve read all those arguments and I"ll concede I may be wrong in suggesting impending doom, but if doom is not exactly impending, it"s somewhere down the line of years if we don"t find replacements for the basic materials we"re taking from the earth. What about five hundred years from now if one hundred doesn"t worry you? What about a thousand years from now? Will there be an oak tree left two feet in diameter? How much will it cost in a hundred years to buy an oak plank eight feet long, two inches thick and a foot wide? My guess is it will cost the equivalent in today"s money of a thousand dollars. A piece of oak like that will be treasured as diamonds are treasured today because of its rarity.
I don"t think there is a more difficult question we"re faced with than that of preservation. A large number of Americans feel we should use everything we have because things will work out. They are not necessarily selfish. They just don"t believe you can worry about the future much past your own grandchildren"s foreseeable life expectancy. They feel someone will find the answer. Pump the oil, mine the coal, cut the trees and take from the earth anything you can find there. There may not be more where that came from, but we"ll find something else, somewhere else, that will be a good subst.i.tute.
The preservationists, on the other hand, would set aside a lot of everything. They"d save the forests and reduce our dependency on coal and oil in order to conserve them as though no satisfactory subst.i.tutes would ever be found.
It"s too bad the argument between these groups is as bitter as it is, because neither wants to do, intentionally, what is wrong. The preservationists think business interests who want to use what they can find are greedy and short-sighted. Businessmen think the preservationists are, in their own way, short-sighted. (One of the strange things that has happened to our language is that people like the ones who run the oil companies are called "conservatives," although they do not approve of conserving at all.) All this comes to me now because I have just returned from Hawaii and seen what havoc unrestricted use can bring to an area. To my grandfather, Honolulu would probably look like the end of the world if he could see it now.
Design 157 157 We have just about used up the island of Oahu. Now we"re starting on Maui. Is it right or wrong? Do the hotels crowded along the beach not give great pleasure to large numbers of us? Would it be better to preserve the beauty of Hawaii by limiting the number of people allowed to be there? Would it be better if we saved the forests, the oil and the coal in the world and did without the things they provide? If there is middle ground, where is it?
The answer will have to come from someone smarter than I am. I want to save oil and drive a big car fast, I want to cut smoke pollution but burn coal to save oil, and I want to pursue my woodworking hobby without cutting down any trees.
Design Last summer I made a chair. The wood was maple and cherry, and I invented what kind of a chair it was as I went along. When I finished, the chair looked great, but it has one shortcoming. It tips over backwards when anyone sits in it.
My design was better than my engineering.
Most of us are so engrossed in whatever it is we do with our days that we fail to consider what anyone else is doing with theirs. I attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., a short time ago and everyone there but me was a designer of things. I never knew there were so many. I came away realizing that designing what a product will look like is a substantial part of any business. There are thousands of people who spend their lives doing it.
Everything we use has been designed, well or poorly . . . your car, your toaster, your watch. When Alexander Graham Bell finished inventing the telephone, all he had was wires. Someone had to decide on the shape of the instrument it would be housed in, and they came up with that great old standup telephone. That was industrial design. There is usually trouble between engineers and designers. Most designers are creative artists who tend to ignore the practical aspects of a product. Most engineers, on the other hand, don"t usually care much what a product looks like as long as it works.
The only time the consumer wins is when design and function blend together in one harmonious unit that looks great and works perfectly. We know it doesn"t happen often.
A lot of artists who can"t make a living selling their paintings or anything else that is commonly called art often turn to commerce. Sometimes they are apologetic about having to make a living, but they ought not be. If they are bad artists that"s one thing, but if they are competent or even talented artists they ought to take a lot of satisfaction from being able to provide the rest of us, who don"t have their talent, with some visual niceties. Making the practical, everyday world good-looking is not a job to be embarra.s.sed about.
It may even be that industrial design and commercial art are more important than art for art"s sake. Art always appeals to me most when it has had some restrictions placed on it. I like art that solves a problem or says something a new way. Uninhibited, free-form, far-out art never seems very artistic to me. Artists who can do anything in the whole world they want to do don"t usually do anything. Even Michelangelo was at his best when he had a ceiling to paint.
The danger industrial designers face is that they"ll be turned into salesmen. The first rule of industrial design should be that the product must look like what it is, not like something else. If something looks like what it is and works, it"s beautiful and no amount of dolling it up will help it. This accounts for why bridges are so attractive to us. The best bridges are built from plans that come from some basic engineering principle that hasn"t been altered by a salesman who thinks he could get more people to cross it by making it a different shape. I always liked the Shredded Wheat box for the same reason.
The best-designed packages are those whose first priority is to contain the product. The ones we are all suspicious of are the packages that are too big and too fancy for what they were built to contain. We are Quality? 159 159 tired of false cardboard bottoms and boxes twice as big as they need to be to hold something.
The original green six-ounce Coca-Cola bottle was one of the great designs of all time. It was perfect in almost every way and has, naturally, been all but abandoned. The salesmen took over the bottle from the designers, and now it"s too big or not a bottle at all.
I hope our industrial designers can maintain their artistic integrity, even though they have turned to commerce, because what worries me about all this is the same thing that worries me about that chair I made. Too often we"re making things that look better than they are.
Quality?
I t is unceasingly sickening to see someone make a bad product and run a good one out of business. It happens all the time, and we look around to see whose fault it is. I have a sneaking feeling we aren"t looking hard enough. It"s our our fault, all of us. fault, all of us.
If it isn"t our fault-the fault of the American people-whose fault is it? Who is it that makes so many bad television shows so popular? Why were Life, Look Life, Look and the and the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post driven out of business in their original forms while our magazine stands are filled with the worst kind of junk? Why are so many good newspapers having a tough time, when the trash "newspapers" in the supermarkets are prospering? No one is forcing any of us to buy them. driven out of business in their original forms while our magazine stands are filled with the worst kind of junk? Why are so many good newspapers having a tough time, when the trash "newspapers" in the supermarkets are prospering? No one is forcing any of us to buy them.
Around the office I work in, they changed the paper towels in the men"s room several months ago. The new ones are nowhere near as good as the brand they had for years, and it takes three to do what one of the old ones would do. Somebody in the company decided it would look good if they bought cheaper paper towels. It is just incredible that smart people decide to save money in such petty ways.
I had a friend whose father owned a drugstore in a small town in South Carolina. It was beautifully kept and well run. My friend"s father was an experienced druggist who knew the whole town"s medical history. During the 1950s, one of those big chain drugstores moved in selling umbrellas, plastic beach b.a.l.l.s, tote bags and dirty books, and that was the end of the good, honest, little drugstore.
We are fond of repeating familiar old sayings like "It"s quality not quant.i.ty that matters," but we don"t buy as though we believe that very often. We take the jumbo size advertised at 20 percent off-no matter what the quality is. I"m glad I"m not in the business of making anything, because it must be heartbreaking for the individual making something the best way he knows how to see a compet.i.tor come in and get rich making the same thing with cheap materials and shoddy workmanship.
America"s great contribution to mankind has been the invention of ma.s.s production. We showed the world how to make things quickly, inexpensively and in such great numbers that even people who didn"t have a lot of money could afford them. Automobiles were our outstanding example for a long time. We made cars that weren"t Rolls-Royces but they were good cars, and just about everyone could sc.r.a.pe together the money to buy one.
Somewhere, somehow, we went wrong. One by one, the good carmakers were driven out of business by another company making a cheaper one. I could have cried when Packard went out of business, but there were thirty other automobile makers that went the same way, until all that was left was General Motors, American Motors, Chrysler and Ford. And in a few years we may not have all of them.
We found a way to ma.s.s-a.s.semble homes after World War II. We started slapping them up with cinder block and plywood, and it seemed good because a lot of people who never could afford a home before were able to buy them.
They didn"t need carpenters who were master craftsmen to build those homes, and young people working on them never really got to know how to do anything but hammer a nail.
We have a lot to be proud of, but there is such a proliferation of inferior products on the market now that it seems as though we have to find a way to go in another direction. The term "Made by hand" is still the Signed by Hand 161 161 cla.s.siest stamp you can put on a product and we need more of them. We need things made by people who care more about the quality of what they"re making than the money they"re going to get selling it.
It"s our own fault and no amount of good government, bad government, more government or less government is going to turn us around. The only way we"re going to get started in the right direction again is to stop buying junk.
Signed by Hand The other night I was sitting looking at a brick wall in the living room of some friends. It has become popular to tear the plaster off old brick walls of houses in downtown areas of big cities, and leave the mellow, irregular shape of old red brick exposed. It adds warmth and charm to a room.
The house was something like 125 years old and the wall must have gone up with the house. Many of the bricks weren"t perfectly oblong, being handmade, and you could see that the bricklayer had a problem getting the whole thing plumb and square.
It was a great brick wall though, and the people who owned the house had derived a great deal of pleasure from it over the years. There were pictures hung on it, a mirror, pieces of bra.s.s and some cherished old family china plates. They loved it.
Who built the wall? I wondered. Who spent months of his life putting up that wall, trying to make a perfect wall out of bricks that were not perfect? Who did this laborer"s work of art? I asked my friends if they knew.
They beckoned me to come to a remote corner of the wall over by the door and near the baseboard. There, scratched in the ancient mortar that still held the bricks together, was the name "T. Morin."
Maybe signed work is the answer to getting better workmanship again. Everything that anyone makes should have his or her name on it [image]A contemplative Mr. Rooney, armed with a pen, ready to strike for praise or blame and reference. Work is frequently so anonymously done that the workman has no reason to identify with it and be proud of it. If everyone is going to know who made it, the person making it will be more careful.
I can understand why people don"t always put their names on their work. The workman is seldom completely satisfied with what he"s done. The man who built the brick wall in my friends" house was proud enough to want his name there for the life of his wall but modest enough not to want it in a prominent place.
During World War II, I stayed in the home of a British aircraft worker in Bristol, England. The British aircraft engines had a reputation for being the best. When the man came home from work one night, we talked about what he was doing.
"Me and my buddies are making an engine," he said.
And that"s what he meant. He and two other men were actually a.s.sembling from scratch an engine for a Spitfire fighter plane. They were intensely proud of their work and you can bet the RAF fighter pilot who sat in the c.o.c.kpit with a Luftwaffe F-W 109 in the sights of his guns had confidence his airplane wasn"t going to let him down.
Each Rolls-Royce, the best automobile in the world, is still made by hand by just a few men, not on an a.s.sembly line. The work on that airplane, or on a Rolls-Royce, is a long way from the work on the U.S. planes that are reported to have been made with bogus parts. Fake parts might get past an a.s.sembly line worker. They wouldn"t get past one man making an engine.
Everything should be signed by the people who make it. We live in a house that was built about one hundred years ago. We have raised four children in it. I know every nook and cranny, every strength, every defect it has. I know the beams in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the rafters in the attic. I know the crack between the foundation and where the cellar steps lead down into my workshop-but I don"t know who built the house. This is wrong.
Every builder of every house should be compelled to attach his name, in some permanent but inconspicuous way, to that house . . . for better or for worse.
What we need in our country is fewer mile-long a.s.sembly lines turning out instant junk and fewer "project" builders turning out ticky-tack houses by the hundreds. We need more builders of solid brick walls willing to put "T. Morin" on their work.
Loyalty For years I kept my money in the same bank and filled my car at the same gas station. I liked the idea that I was loyal.
Over the years there"s been a big turnover in bank personnel, and it occurred to me that when I went there, no one in the bank knew I was a loyal customer but me. It was the same with the gas station. I flattered myself into thinking they appreciated my business. When they gave me my change and said, "Thank you, have a nice day," I thought they were thankful and wanted me to have a nice day because I was such a good customer. Several years ago I realized I was kidding myself. The gas station had changed hands three times, and they didn"t have the vaguest idea that I"d been buying my gas there for seventeen years.
Lately I"ve been banking and buying gas at my own convenience. I buy gas at the station nearest me when I need it or I drive to one I know is a penny cheaper. I"ve changed banks twice recently because they opened a branch a block closer to my office. Give me a toaster or move in next door and you have my allegiance. Loyalty got me nowhere.
I suppose both gas stations and banks would object to being linked together, but they serve the same purpose in my life. When I run out of gas or money, I have to go to a place where I can get more. Gas stations used to compete for my business by offering free air, free water and a battery and oil check. Now you"re lucky if the attendant bothers to put the gas cap back on.
Banks used to care about my business. They knew me. I didn"t have to bring my birth certificate, a copy of my listing in Who"s Who, Who"s Who, and four other pieces of positive identification to cash a check for twenty-five dollars. If I wrote a check for more money than I had, Mr. Gaffney used to call and sound real angry. But he and four other pieces of positive identification to cash a check for twenty-five dollars. If I wrote a check for more money than I had, Mr. Gaffney used to call and sound real angry. But he did did call. He knew where to find me. No one at the bank knows me anymore. I went in yesterday to pick up a new Master Charge card that was supposed to be there, but they wouldn"t give it to me because I hadn"t brought the letter with me that they sent saying the card was ready. call. He knew where to find me. No one at the bank knows me anymore. I went in yesterday to pick up a new Master Charge card that was supposed to be there, but they wouldn"t give it to me because I hadn"t brought the letter with me that they sent saying the card was ready.
If the bank doesn"t know me by name, the feeling"s mutual, because I don"t know my bank"s name anymore, either. It usually changes before I"ve used up all the checks they"ve sent me with the old name on it. My bank seems to keep acquiring other banks-with my money, I suppose-and they throw the other bank a bone by putting some little part of its name in with their primary name.
My bank"s name was originally the Chemical Bank, plain and simple. They changed it to Chemical National Bank, then Chemical Bank and Trust Co., then they acquired the Corn Exchange Bank and my checks said the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank. I always liked that best, but it didn"t last. They bought another bank, dropped the "Corn" and called themselves Chemical Bank New York Trust Co. This was unwieldy, and I was pleased several years ago when they renamed the bank once again. The new name? The Chemical Bank.
There is a bank in New York called the Irving Trust Company, and I"ve always sort of hoped they"d buy my bank and call it Irving"s Chemical Bank.
It"s too bad everything is as big and impersonal as it is now. I"m sorry to have lost personal touch with the people running the establishments where I do business, but if they don"t care, I can"t afford to be sentimental. When I was a little boy, we patronized Evans Grocery Store. It had oiled wood floors, and Mr. Evans always gave me a free candy bar when I brought him the check for the month"s groceries. The supermarkets were just getting started, and eventually, of course, they ran almost all the little neighborhood grocery stores out of business. My mother kept buying things from Mr. Evans, even though the same loaf of bread was two cents cheaper at the new supermarket. She wanted to help him survive, but apparently the two cents wasn"t enough, because he didn"t make it for long. He never got to be Evans New York Chemical Corn Grocery Store.
On Home and Family A Nest to Come Home to E veryone should have a nest to come home to when the public part of the day is over. Having a little room with a comfortable chair to settle into is important. You should be surrounded by familiar things. You can talk or read or watch television or doze off but you"re in your basic place. You"re home and you don"t have to watch yourself.
I"m not sure the furniture stores and the room designers are in tune with what most Americans want. We"ve never had a designer design anything in our house. It"s all happened by accident. I like our house a lot better than I like those rooms I see in magazines that have been put together by designers. They look more like the rooms they have just outside the men"s room or the ladies" room on the ballroom floor of an expensive hotel. There isn"t a decorator who ever lived who could surround me with the things I like to have around me in my living room.
Decorators go for fuzzy white rugs that show the dirt, gla.s.s-topped tables you can"t put your feet on and gilt-edged mirrors that only Napoleon wearing his uniform would look good in.
I like to have the windows covered so the neighbors can"t see in and I agree you shouldn"t just cover them with newspaper but it"s very easy to carry curtains too far. When strangers come into your living room and say right away how nice the curtains are, then you know you"ve gone too far with the curtains. Friends who come to your house once in a while should not be able to remember what the curtains look like.
It must be difficult to sell furniture. No one in a store would sell you a chair in which the springs were beginning to sag but most chairs aren"t very comfortable until that begins to happen. No one wants to pay a lot of money for a secondhand piece of furniture and yet furniture looks better when it has a well-worn look.