Even though there are no pictures of heat and no one dies instantly as they might in a storm, in some ways heat may be worse than other natural disasters. In terms of physical damage to material things like houses and cars, the hurricane and the flood are worse, but when you"re talking about the human spirit, a heat wave is worse. People join together and work shoulder to shoulder with a great sense of camaraderie to fight the effects of a flood or a snowstorm, but in oppressive heat all effort is impossible.
Half a dozen memories of the worst heat I"ve ever experienced come to my mind when it gets hot.
My first month in the Army was spent at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in August. I will never forget having to stand at attention for hours on the red clay drill field on that one-hundred-degree day. The commanding colonel of our artillery battalion made a maddeningly slow inspection tour of the full field packs we had laid out on the ground, and our company was the one he came to last. Nine men fainted or decided to drop to the ground so they"d be carried off.
Later in World War II, I flew with the Eighth Air Force on bombing raids over Germany and I traveled across Europe with the First Army, but I never had that bad a day again.
When I go to bed at night, I often toss and turn without being able to go to sleep for as long as fifteen or twenty seconds. Insomnia has never been one of my problems. I can go to sleep when I"m worried, I can go to sleep with a headache and I can even go to sleep when I have one too few blankets over me on a cold night. There"s just one thing that keeps me awake, and that"s heat.
Late at night in those early Army days at Fort Bragg, I lay awake in the barracks thinking about ice water. One night I couldn"t stand it any longer. I got up, waited for the guard on duty in the company street to pa.s.s, then I slipped out the door and crawled under the barracks. The barracks were built on stilts, and there was plenty of room to walk in a Neat People 243 243 low crouch. Underneath, I made my way the length of the barracks to the next company street and waited silently again for the guard to pa.s.s. It was as though I was a German infiltrator about to blow up the base, but all I wanted was ice water.
I made my way under three barracks until I came to the post exchange. It was 2 a.m. by then and the PX had closed at nine. But there was something I knew. Every night as they cleaned up, they dumped all their ice on the ground outside the back door. I finally arrived, undetected, and there it was, just as I had hoped. Cakes of ice that had originally been so big that even in the heat they were still huge chunks glistened. I took two cakes so big I had to hold them braced on either hip. It was cold and wet but wonderful, as the icy water soaked through my pajamas.
It took me ten minutes to get back to the barracks and my friends were glad to see me. As a matter of fact, I do not recall a time in all my life when I was so great a hero to so many people.
We broke the ice into pieces, filled our canteen cups with them and then added water. For more than an hour, ten of us sat silently on our bunks in the sweltering heat, drinking that beautiful ice water.
I"m one of the privileged cla.s.s who lives and works mostly in airconditioned buildings. For us, hot weather is like a heavy rainstorm. We get out of our air-conditioned car and rush a short distance to an air-conditioned house. During the workday we move quickly from air-conditioned building to air-conditioned building, as if to keep from getting wet in the rainstorm.
I feel terrible for the people I read about being subjected to awful heat, and I always wish I could bring them ice water.
Neat People N eat people are small, petty, nit-picking individuals who keep accurate checkbooks, get ahead in life and keep their cellars, their attics and their garages free of treasured possessions. They just don"t seem to treasure anything, those neat people. If they can"t use it or freeze it, they throw it away. I detest neat people. I was in a neat person"s home several weeks ago and he took me down into his cellar. He must be making a dishonest living, because there was nothing down there but a few neatly stored screens and the oil burner.
I feel toward neat people the same way I used to feel toward the brightest kid in our cla.s.s, who was also a good athlete and handsome.
My dislike for the tidies of the world is particularly strong this week because I realized Sunday that my desk is such a mess I can"t find anything, my workshop looks like a triple-decker club sandwich with tools on top of wood on top of plans on top of sandpaper on top of tools on top of wood. If I need a Phillips screwdriver, it"s easier to go out and buy a new one than to find any of the three I already own.
How do neat people do it? I hate them so much I don"t want any help from them, but I would like to follow one around someday and see how they live. I bet they don"t do anything, that"s how they keep everything so neat. They probably do all sorts of dumb stuff like putting things back where they belong. They probably know which shelf everything is on in the refrigerator; they could probably put their finger on the nozzle to the garden hose.
What do you do with all that stuff I have cluttering my cellar, Neat People? Did you throw away the hammer with the broken handle? Mine is still down there.
What about the twenty feet of leftover aerial wire and the small empty wooden nail keg? Don"t tell me you were so heartless that you tossed that out. You don"t even appreciate the fact that you never know when you"re going to have a good use for an empty wooden nail keg. That"s how dumb you Neat People are. I, on the other hand, have been ready with an empty nail keg for the past twenty years. That"s about how long it"s been in the cellar, right there in the way if I ever need it.
You probably throw out broken plates and gla.s.s pitchers that can"t be repaired, don"t you? Tell the truth. I don"t. I keep broken plates because I can"t stand to throw them out. I"m waiting for them to make glue that will really mend china and gla.s.s, the way the ads say the glue will now.
Many years ago a man who owned a hairbrush factory gave me a bushel basket of odds and ends of rosewood. They"re beautiful little pieces and I"ve never figured out what to do with them, but I wouldn"t neaten up my cellar by throwing them out for anything.
My wife says the old bookcase I took out of the twins" room in 1973 should be thrown out. She gets a little neat every once in a while herself. Thank goodness that never happens to me. That"s why I still have that bookcase.
We have four children and I"m not saving much money, but should I ever die, I"d like to leave the kids something. I have nineteen cans of partly used paint, some dating from the late fifties, in the cellar. I don"t want them fighting over my estate when I go, so I think I"ll make a will and divide the paint among them, I want it to have a good home.
Driving June is the beginning of the time of year when Americans do the most driving. I often spend 20 hours a week in my car during the summer months. It seems like an awful lot of time now that I"ve written it down. If I sleep for 42 hours a week and drive for 20, that means I"m not doing much of anything for 62 of the 168 hours in a week. Maybe we better get a weekend place nearer home.
The trouble with driving is that you often do it in a state of agitation. I"m not usually very relaxed when I drive because I"m mad at the guy behind me or the woman in front of me or the truck that just cut me off. As soon as I do relax, I get sleepy. I"d rather be angry than sleepy when I"m driving. I"m not a very safe driver when I"m driving slowly to be safe. When I"m mad, I drive faster but at least I"m alert to everything that"s going on. I"m trying to get that dirty so-and-so who cut in front of me.
It is my opinion that the slow drivers are a greater menace on the road than the ones driving at, or slightly above, the speed limit. The slow drivers sit there, slumped way down behind the wheel, smug in the knowledge that they are safe drivers but they"re wrong. They"re the ones who don"t know how to move. They"re the ones who can"t get out of their own way. They cause the rest of us to pile into something to avoid them.
You can tell I"m just off the road because I"m writing in an agitated state. I just drove 150 miles from upstate New York to New York City and it was the kind of drive that makes you wonder whether the weekend was worth it.
I confess to being a compet.i.tive driver. I"m vaguely irritated when someone pa.s.ses me, even when the other driver has a perfect right to do it. The chances are, though, that he doesn"t have a legal right because I"m probably driving as fast as the law allows, or faster. What irritates me on a major highway is that there are some nuts who won"t let you maintain a reasonable distance between your car and the car in front of you. If you do leave a sensible opening, someone comes along and cuts into it and then you have to drop four or five car lengths behind him. You"re losing ground and it makes you mad. I think this is the cause of a lot of accidents. People tailgate because they don"t want anyone getting in between them and the car ahead. When there"s a sudden stop or slowdown, it can be too late to brake to a stop before hitting the car you"re following.
The single most annoying driving habit Americans have on and off the major highways is their practice of hitting the right turn signal just after they"ve started to turn right. By then, you know know they"re turning right. What you would have liked is some indication of their intentions a few hundred yards back. It would have helped you make plans. Why do so many drivers think it does any good to hit the turn signal after they"ve started their turn? they"re turning right. What you would have liked is some indication of their intentions a few hundred yards back. It would have helped you make plans. Why do so many drivers think it does any good to hit the turn signal after they"ve started their turn?
[image]With Spencer the bulldog In city driving, the princ.i.p.al menace for the average driver is the panel truck. I don"t know where they get the people who drive panel trucks. Every year there are a lot of race drivers who fail to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. Maybe they all take jobs driving panel trucks in cities. They"re trying to make enough money to enter the Indy 500 again next year.
The average driver puts 10,000 miles on his car every year, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. One statistic I"d like to see that no one has kept is, how much I"ve paid out in automobile insurance in the past twenty-five years and how much I"ve collected. We"ve owned two cars for most of that time and I guess we"ve paid out a total of more than $20,000. The insurance company didn"t get the perfect driver when they got me but they haven"t done badly. During that time I doubt if they"ve paid out $2,000, mostly in dents.
I had all my accidents when I was driving carefully.
The White House? No, Thank you I"m always pleased but surprised that anyone will take the job of being President of the United States. Of all the jobs in the world, it"s the one I"d least like to have. I know you get a big house to live in for free, a salary of $200,000, a helicopter, an airplane, your own doctor and a big staff but I still don"t want the job. Don"t even ask me because I won"t take it.
The President doesn"t even have a White House psychiatrist, which is probably the doctor he needs most.
It"s always been a mystery to me why anyone would want to be President. Anyone who"d want to be President has to be some kind of nut who loves misery and criticism. If I were President, I"d call my personal physician and say, "What"s wrong with me, anyhow?" anyhow?"
As President, any decision you make affects millions of people. You put thousands of people out of work every time you say, "Cut that." How do you sleep nights or in a Cabinet meeting knowing someone couldn"t feed his family tonight because of some policy of yours that cost someone a job?
A President can"t go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt of the White House on a Sat.u.r.day morning and putter around. He can"t decide to climb up on the roof and straighten the television antenna. He never gets the satisfaction of taking a load of trash to the dump. Considering he"s probably the most powerful man in the world, he"s almost powerless to do anything he wants to do. If he does do something he wants to do, some newspaper or television reporter will see him doing it and claim he"s wasting the taxpayers" money.
It"s nice to have someone concerned about your welfare if it"s a friend but I certainly wouldn"t want a lot of guys running alongside my car every time I started down the street to make sure I didn"t get shot. Furthermore, I"d want to drive my own car. I don"t like to be driven anywhere by anyone. I like to go where I want to go the way I want to get there. The President can"t do that.
You can bet there have been nights when the President sat down after a hard day"s work dealing with world affairs and wanted nothing more than to go to a good movie. Presidents of the United States can see any movie they want right in the White House but that isn"t what "going to the movies" means. "Going to the movies" is getting dressed to go out, driving to the theater, finding a parking place, standing in line to buy the tickets, buying the popcorn and then groping your way down the aisle to find a seat. A President can"t go to the movies. Can you imagine the complaints he"d get if he took the First Lady to one of those dirty, R-rated movies?
There are a thousand things I can do the President can"t. I can go to any restaurant I want to eat dinner or I can stay home and eat leftovers. He can"t do either of those things.
I can wander down a street and window-shop, eat an ice-cream cone or lie down and take a nap and not do anything at all if I feel like it. Why would I want to be President?
For all the power he has to change the world with a snap of his fingers, the President can"t decide to turn over and go to sleep in the morning. He can"t even make a plan for a week from Sat.u.r.day. His calendar is full for the next four years . . . not just the days, but the hours.
I hope you have a happy and successful time in office, Mr. President, but frankly, you can have it.
The Agony of Flight I have just taken a memorable trip I"d like to forget.
Because I was going to be in Los Angeles for only two days, I drove from my office in New York to Kennedy Airport so I"d have my car when I returned and could drive home to Connecticut. The parking area is just a minute"s walk across the road from American Airlines.
When I arrived at the airport for a 9 a.m. flight at 7:30, I thought I had plenty of time. Sure. The short-term parking lot was closed for repair. I was directed to a lot two miles from the terminal. By the time I found it, parked and waited for the bus to take me to the terminal, it was 8:17. The baggage attendants outside told me my flight was "closed" and I could no longer check bags. Inside, I waited in line to check my bag anyway. By the time I got to the gate (all flights leave from the most remote gate), it was 8:40 and they were closing the door.
First cla.s.s for the round trip flight cost $ 2,762.90. Business cla.s.s cost $1,858.90. A coach seat was $517.90. I flew coach. Airlines make coach so uncomfortable that even people who can"t afford it pay the "business" rate.
In flight, the pilot kept announcing that we were ahead of schedule. We landed nine minutes early, and after being told to keep our seats, we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Then came the inevitable: "There is a plane parked at our gate that should be moving out shortly. Please remain in your seats. Thank you for your patience." Which we were not.
Flight times should be recorded from the time they close the door for takeoff to the time they open the door to let pa.s.sengers off. The advertised time of my flight was five hours and fifty-seven minutes. From the time we had to be on board to the time we were allowed off, it was seven hours and twelve minutes.
At baggage claim, the carousel went round and round. My bag never came "round. At the lost baggage office, I waited in line. They were doing a booming business. I finally got to talk to a woman behind the desk, who said my bag would be arriving on the next flight. I opted to have the bag sent to my hotel.
In Beverly Hills, I went to the hotel I"ve stayed in a hundred times. It"s also expensive but I could stay there for weeks for what first cla.s.s costs on American.
In my room, I called American baggage service at 12:30 and was told my bag had been found and would be delivered "within six hours." I once worked at MGM, so I drove around some old familiar places, including Malibu Beach, wasting time waiting for my bag. I needed things in it to dress for dinner with friends. When I got back to the hotel, I called American again and got the "six hour" announcement again. It had now been five.
There was a huge window over the bathtub in the hotel room and by pressing a b.u.t.ton next to the light switch, you could open a curtain that allowed you to look out on a palm frond garden.
I took a shower more to waste time than from necessity-I wasn"t that dirty-and dried off with a thick towel that was six feet long. It made the bath towels at home seem puny.
After the shower, I read the paper and waited for my bag, which didn"t come. It was delivered sometime after midnight, so I went out to dinner in khaki pants and slept in a terrycloth robe.
Sunday night, I ate dinner in my room because I wanted to watch 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes. Mike Wallace interviewed Putin. Morley Safer"s report on West Point was good. I could have done without Steve Kroft"s chat with Ray Romano, but I watched it almost to the end. Almost. Next thing I knew, I woke up and they were showing the Mike Wallace interviewed Putin. Morley Safer"s report on West Point was good. I could have done without Steve Kroft"s chat with Ray Romano, but I watched it almost to the end. Almost. Next thing I knew, I woke up and they were showing the 60 Minutes 60 Minutes credits. I had missed the best part of the show. credits. I had missed the best part of the show.
I"ll tell you about my trip home another time. It wasn"t as good as the trip out.
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Appendix
The Following Things Are True [image]ninety-nine Opinions I"m Stuck With A writer doesn"t often tell a reader anything the reader doesn"t already know or suspect. The best the writer can do is put the idea in words and by doing that make the reader aware that he or she isn"t the only one who knows it. This produces the warm bond between reader and writer that they"re both after because it feels so good.
The fact is, there really isn"t anything new in the world and what I"ve always hoped to do with my writing is to say, in so many words, some of the ideas that lurk, wordlessly, in the minds of a great many people.
There"s no way of knowing how we get to believe what we believe. We"re all trapped within ourselves. We have this much and no more. We have our genes and our youth, during which our opinions are formed.
Most of us don"t change those opinions once we get them. Instead, we spend a lot of time looking for further proof that we"re right.
If we formed our opinions the way we should, we"d get all the facts together and then compare them, using logic and good sense to arrive at the right places. We don"t do it that way very often, though, and as a result we acquire a lot of wrong answers that we"re stuck with for life. I haven"t changed my mind about anything since I was twenty-three. In my head I know I must be wrong about some things but in my heart I don"t think so.
As an indication of what you"ll find in the body of this book, what follows is a hundred opinions I"m stuck with. There ought to be something here to anger almost everyone: 1 . I do not accept the inevitability of my own death. I secretly think there may be some other way out.
2. It"s good to be loyal even when what you"re loyal to doesn"t deserve it.
3. We are selling things better than we"re making them in the United States.
4. Capitalism and the free-enterprise system are not working very well. There are too many very rich and too many very poor in the United States. Fortunately, the economic system that doesn"t work as well as capitalism is communism. Communists are almost all poor.
5. When I was young I always a.s.sumed I"d get to like carrots when I got older but I never did.
6. In spite of all the kind things people are always saying about the poor and homeless, people with jobs and houses are usually more interesting and capable and I prefer to be with them.
7. I am often embarra.s.sed by the people I find agreeing with me.
8. Big Business talks as if it doesn"t like Big Government but the fact of the matter is, Big Business is in business with Big Government. Big Business is closer to Big Government than Big Government is to the people, but neither wants anyone to know it.
9. Most poetry is pretentious nonsense.
10. The people of the United States never worked so well or so hard or accomplished so much as they did during the four years of World War II. We need to find some subst.i.tute for war as a means of motivating ourselves to do our best. Money isn"t the answer, either.
11. I don"t favor abortion although I like the people who are for it better than the people who are against it.
12. Good old friends are worth keeping whether you like them or not.
13. Although I went to Sunday school for several years at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, I was not persuaded that Mary never slept with anyone before Jesus was born.
14. I"m suspicious of the academic standards of a college that always has a good basketball team. When a college loses a lot of games, I figure they"re letting the students play.
15. A person is more apt to get to be the boss by making decisions quickly than by making them correctly.
16. Until we can all have the medical attention a President gets, there will not be too many doctors.
17. A great many people do not have a right to their own opinion because they don"t know what they"re talking about.
18. The least able among us are having the most children. Among women, college graduates are having the fewest babies, high-school graduates are having the next fewest and the people who don"t get to high school or drop out once they do are having the most babies. The most capable women are getting the best jobs and are least apt to have big families . . . or sometimes, any family at all.
19. If I were black, I would be a militant, angry black man, railing against the injustices that have been done me. Being white, I think blacks should forget it and go to work.
20. If I were a woman, I would be an angry woman. Men are satisfied having women be something women are not satisfied being. We have a problem here.
21. There are facts too painful to face. I cannot watch a doc.u.mentary about the slow death facing all elephants and whales.
22. The people who speak up in public for or against something almost always lose my support by being too loud about it.
23. It doesn"t interest me to watch a movie or read a novel in which the characters are put in difficult situations by a writer. I"m not interested in being reminded of difficulties. It"s already on my mind.
24. It"s hard for me to believe that, in the next 150 years, we"ll have as many important inventions and discoveries as we"ve had in the last 150. What is there left comparable in importance to the electric light, the telephone, the gas engine, radio, flight, television, nuclear energy, s.p.a.ce exploration, computers and Coca-Cola?
(If anyone were to read that paragraph 150 years from now, I"m sure they"d laugh at my ignorance.) 25. People like to say, "You"re only as old as you feel," but it isn"t true. It"s just something old people say to make themselves feel good about their age. You"re as old as you are.
26. I spent fifty years of my life working to become well-known as a writer and I"ve spent the last ten hiding from strangers who recognize me.
27. I dislike loud-mouthed patriots who suggest they like our country more than I do. Some people"s idea of patriotism is hating other countries.
28. Politicians deserve better treatment than they"ve been getting and we should stop using the word "politician" as an epithet. Most of them are honestly trying to accomplish something good for all of us.
29. I spent four years in the army but do not belong to any veterans" organization. As a way of getting together socially with people your own age and background, veterans" groups are fine but I disapprove of them as a pressure group. I"m suspicious of professional veterans who wear overseas caps at conventions. Except for the men who were disabled, to whom it owes everything it can give, our country owes veterans nothing. We got what was coming to us, a free country.
30. I wish people spent less time praying and more time trying to solve the problems religion was created to help us endure.
31. It seems wrong for the United States to try to protect democracy by undemocratic means like overthrowing the government of a foreign country by undercover action.
32. A lot of people a.s.sume that we live in an orderly world where every event has a meaning and every problem has a solution. I suspect, however, that some events are meaningless and some problems insoluble.
33. I believe a lot of things I can"t prove.
34. Women have better natural instincts than men and are more apt to do the right thing.
35. I"d make a bad nun. Material possessions give me great pleasure even though all the best advice we"re given for happiness advises us to ignore them.
36. When someone says, "You know what I mean?" I don"t usually know what they mean and I know they don"t know. If someone knows what they mean, they ought to be able to tell you. I mean, you know what I mean?
37. My only war wound is an aversion to German accents.