Up Tight

Henry David Thoreau, a man of notable calm and one I have for years been trying to emulate, never with much success, once observed in his journal that his neighbors in Concord "sometimes appear to work themselves into a state of excitement over remarkably little."

As nearly as I can make out, in 1845, when Thoreau had his pad at Walden Pond, the people of Concord lost their cool only over an outbreak of scarlatina or canker rash--and then never for long. What's more, the excitement seems to have been harmless enough. The witches had all been hygienically disposed of 150 years before--and, besides, that was in Salem, Massachusetts. During the recent unpleasantness in Washington in the 1950s--a period most of us seem as forgetful of as the Germans are of Nazism--I was having a lively little discussion about Senator Joe McCarthy with a lady from Wisconsin. "I really don't know much about him," the lady said. "We're from the northern part of the state, you know."

But back to Comrade Thoreau. It is true that he was once thrown in the pokey in Concord for nonpayment of taxes; but it was only overnight, and he got back to Walden Pond in plenty of time to pick himself a pail of huckleberries for supper. I have never spent the night in jail--for nonpayment of taxes, anyway--but the sessions I've had with the friendly folks from Internal Revenue have always left me in such a state that I couldn't possibly keep anything on my stomach except a fifth or so of Irish whisky.

Now, the village near which I eke out an uncertain existence has more or less cleared up scarlatina, and there hasn't been an epidemic of canker rash in years. We're suffering from something much worse--a wave of universal mild hysteria over nothing very much, that not only is contagious but may be fatal.

Upzoning, for instance; it's one house for every four acres around here; and if you're against that, as I am, you're likely to be greeted in the village by the president of the local garden club, asking, "What do you hear from your Commie friends in Peking these days?"

We have also come out for democratic tooth decay; and now that fluoridation has been defeated, people without cavities are looked upon with almost as much suspicion as Timothy Leary and his cohorts when they were carrying on in an estate up the road from here.

Now that Leary has moved to San Francisco, the estate has been turned over, for the summer anyway, to the Boy Scouts, which is just about as American as you can get. The move to get rid of Leary was led by the Reverend James Dandy, an Episcopalian who is always preaching sermons on "God Is Love," although recently there was one called "Nobody Had to Turn On Jesus." I didn't hear the latter, but if called upon, I could deliver verbatim a treatise I heard in my youth in Marshalltown, Iowa, called "Would Jesus Drive a Chevrolet?" The question is one that haunts me still.

• • •

We are very large in God people around here. The last time I went to the city--as you'll see, it may be the last time ever--there were only two other individuals in my car. One was the preach who carries on a few miles to the leeward of Dandy. Preach is responsible for a number of books that a great many people, none of them close friends of mine, have apparently bought and in some cases even read. Preach is famous for other things as well, among them the fact that in 1960, he was one of the leaders of the crusade to keep the Pope out of the White House.

Anyway, Preach and this other fellow, who also wore a funny collar, were in my car as the train started the hazardous journey to Babylon. Both of them had a mint-fresh copy of the morning Times and they started reading, sometimes hardly moving their lips at all. (I should note that this was the morning after one of the armistices in the Middle East.) Just before the train got to Valhalla, Preach looked up from his paper and said in a loud, clear voice, one suitable for delivering a few words about the Sermon on the Mount, "I can't for the life of me see why they stopped fighting." Look, next time, I may get off at Valhalla and stay.

There wasn't much else in the Times, although I did note, with alarm, that the national marble championship was about to come up again. Myself, I'm still not quite recovered from what happened last year in that odd event. The winner then was a boy of 13 from York, Pennsylvania, named Barry Blum. I have never been much interested in marbles, but as you will see, I am something of an expert on mothers; and I observed that Barry's mom, a Mrs. Augusta Blum, also of York, Pennsylvania, was quoted as having told Barry, "I don't care if you ruin four pairs of pants. Just win the national." (The italics are mine; at least I think they are.)

Barry did wear out the knees of one pair of trousers, and at the time the crown--I'm quoting the Times here--was placed on his head, his right hand was calloused and bruised. He had participated in 95 games in five days. My Webster's Unabridged defines "game" as "sport of any kind; play, frolic, or fun."

But back to Barry and mom. By the way, in case you hadn't guessed, there isn't a Mr. Blum, not in York, Pennsylvania. According to the Times, Mrs. Blum said that Barry's hand would heal, which is no doubt true; but there is no mention of possible harm done to Barry's interior, an area that in my painful experience is far more vulnerable and takes forever to scab over. Not only that; the doctoring lasts longer and is a good deal more expensive.

Anyway, two months before the contest and one month before Mrs. Blum commented on how Barry should play the game, all of the furniture was moved out of the boy's bedroom. It was replaced with a marble shooting ring ten feet in diameter. And from that day on, Barry slept on a couch. He told the Times reporter, "I'll be glad to get back to my soft bed." Then he added, with, I should guess, some rue and regret, that very few of his friends play marbles. They seemed to have what they considered more important things to do, "like going out with girls.... I'd say, put marbles first, rather than spending money on going to a movie with a girl." Everybody got his values straight? Crowns all in place?

The director of the marble brouhaha, a man by the name of Oka Hester, said that the pressure on the boys taking part was a lot like that in the world series. "It would get some kids down," he said, "but not Barry." Hester, who is 54, said that the marble championship is open only to boys under 14. After that, they're past their prime.

The Times reporter didn't describe the crown that was placed on Barry's head. Was it papier-mâché or studded with rubies and diamonds? Was Barry allowed to keep it? Or did he have to give it back to another boy not yet 14 who has put aside childish things like taking girls to a flick? But among the gewgaws given Barry was a plaster bust of John F. Kennedy. And Barry's photograph will be hung in something called the Youth Hall of Fame in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Allentown isn't far from York, which is nice.

After the Times, I was able, trembling only a little, to pick up the paper that is published in my very own village. Politically, this sheet is perfectly willing to let Barry Goldwater prove that he isn't a Communist. As usual--you'll see why in a minute--I turned first to the inside pages and looked at a story the editors didn't think was very newsy. Twenty-two local children--I refuse to call them teenagers--had been picked up by our local defenders of the faith for throwing rocks at the windows of a commuter train. None of the commuters was hurt much--externally, anyway--but the engineer had to be carted off to the hospital to be treated for minor cuts and bruises.

When asked why they had done it, one of the 22, a lad of 17 or thereabouts and, no doubt, an eagle scout, complained that there weren't enough recreational facilities around town. "It's strictly from Squaresville around here," he said, "and what's to do at night?" What about the town issuing a rifle and a few rounds of live ammunition to our leaders of tomorrow? I mean, you have to have some fun, don't you?

Another possible Presidential candidate involved with the rock-throwing said (I felt with some lack of logic) that final exams were coming up in the high school the following week. "The kids get nervous," he added. And one of our local subdebs, apparently the product of at least a few sessions with a shrink, said, "It seemed like a good way to get rid of at least some of our hostilities." Shall we leave it there?

• • •

In addition to the usual ill-tempered bilge about upzoning, the letters page of the paper had a communiqué from one of the founding fathers of our local John Birch Society. He reported that a teacher in our frilly local high school had corrupted the youth by playing a Tom Lehrer record in a music course concerned with the American folk song.

Had the teacher defended her action? Had the school board raced to her rescue? Don't be silly. The teacher apologized for her heresy and said that she wouldn't play that record "or any other of the kind" ever again; and the president of the school board, one of our town's leading hardware clerks, said that the teacher would continue to be under observation. In other words, if a thing like that happens again, it's either the electric chair or a dram of hemlock for the offender.

I always save the front-page headline of any newspaper until last, because, whatever the news is, it's always bad. The morning I'm discussing was no exception. In a type slightly larger than that used by The New York Times to announce the end of World War Two, our paper reported that drug cases in the county "had increased 300 percent."

I then read the story below the headline. As Harry Truman once said, "Reading a newspaper is like reading a contract. What you have to watch out for is the small type." Sure enough. It appeared that last year in this populous county, four (not 40, not 400, four) indictments had been handed down by the grand jury for the use or possession of drugs. And in the first half of this year, 11 people had been charged--not indicted, charged--with use or possession of same. "300 percent." Eleven cases.

As the reporteress responsible for the headline wrote, "The statistics are still small, and one mass arrest, such as the capture of four addicts... may give an exaggerated picture to the total." (All of the italics are mine.) Mass arrests of four. Junkies mingling with the Herefords, switchblades abrandish. Hysterical, everybody? All you kids up tight by now?

As I put aside the paper that morning, I thought, not for long, about my mom, who was (and still is) the most up-tight person I've ever come across. (Readers who are confused about the meaning of the term up tight should consult a person under 30, if they can find one they can trust.) I haven't met your mother, of course, but mine! When I used to do something utterly selfish, such as go to school, my mother would sigh volubly and say, "Don't worry about me, Merle; don't give me another thought. Of course, the fact that I probably have a brain tumor and, in order to dull the excruciating pain, have had to take ten entire grains of aspirin...."

It wasn't until I was well into puberty--35 or so--that I discovered ten entire grains of aspirin is two tablets. But you can see what a wonderful reporter Mom would have been, mass arrests, no matter where you turn. Have you captured your addict today?

• • •

When I got to the city on the morning of the day I'm writing about, I walked from Grand Central to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, a building in which I have spent a good many relaxed and happy hours. My mother has observed with some regularity that nobody ever got rich by reading a book, which in my case cannot be denied; but, as I said, there have in the past been some compensations. In the future? As you'll see, I just don't know.

When I got to the library, I went immediately to the photostating room. I had ordered reproductions of some magazine material to be used in a book I'm writing. There was some delay. The doe-eyed young man in charge was discussing with a friend the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin; and since I hoped the two of them would come up with a definitive answer to a question that has always puzzled me, I didn't interrupt. Eventually, however, the colloquy ended, the issue still in doubt, and the first young man accepted my receipt for the $20 check I had left for the photostats. Happily--I thought--they were exactly where they should have been.

Nevertheless, when the young man came back, he was close to tears. "The bill only came to fourteen-fifty," he said, "and at this time of day, we don't have any change." It was then 10:30 a.m. At that point, I had the kind of inspiration that almost never occurs to me when I'm at the typewriter. For weeks, the library had been broadcasting an appeal for funds; so I said to the young priest, "Look, why don't you keep the change as my contribution to the library."

He looked at me as if I'd just announced that I was the brains behind all those Brink's robberies. "I couldn't possibly do that," he said. "I'm simply not equipped."

The latter statement was one I was eager to delve into; but by that time, the youthful theologian was backing away, toward a table at which sat two elderly wardens whom I believe I remember from some of the Warner Bros.' prison films of the Thirties. The boy--could he have been Ronald Reagan?--and the wardens talked at some length, jingling their key chains and fingering their rifles. As they talked, they would first look at me, then nervously thumb through a book that, I assume, contained the names, criminal records and photographs of those most wanted by the FBI.

Finally, the elder of the two wardens--possibly Pat O'Brien--rose and, his rifle at the ready, walked the last mile to the place I was standing. Then, in a tone usually reserved for the very old, the mentally retarded or those condemned prisoners about to partake of their last supper, he said, "Now, suppose you tell me what this is all about."

Smiling beatifically, as is my wont, I said, "It's very simple. The library owes me five dollars and fifty cents, and you don't have the change, and so I want to contribute it--"

"Who said we didn't have the change?" he demanded. He reached into the hip pocket of his pants, the one on the right, took out five singles and two quarters and slapped them on the desk that, among other things, separated us. After I managed to pick up the money, O'Brien snarled, "If you really want to make a contribution, there's a place downstairs, and that's the only place."

Anxious not to add to my already lengthy list of felonies, I said thanks and dashed for the elevator. And, sure enough, on the first floor of the library, behind some theatrical posters, one of which advertised David Merrick's production of a play called Uncle Tom's Cabin, I did come across a dusty strongbox on the front of which was a cobwebby sign that said, put the envelope with your contribution to the library fund in this slot. I didn't have an envelope. Naturally. So I tiptoed over to the guard who stands just inside the front door, the one who, when he inspects my dispatch case, always seems to be certain that the Gutenberg Bible I've snatched is inside.

"I don't have an envelope," I confessed in a whisper, pointing to the sign. "Do you suppose I could put my contribution in anyway?"

"If it says envelope, it means envelope," snapped the guard, thus closing the matter for all time.

After my escape from the library--and I kept listening for the sirens--I stopped in a nearby bar and had two double vodka tonics in quick succession. I left the change from the $5.50 on top of the bar. The bartender didn't seem to know that it was hot.

I don't think we ought to spend too much time with my friend from Chase Manhattan Bank; but we're discussing uptightness here, and it's my theory that the epidemic is a lot more widespread than the flu trouble we had in my father's War. I dropped into the Chase branch on 42nd between Madison and Park to close my account, for reasons of no consequence here. When the teller pushed the check representing the final balance across the counter toward me, I said, "I'd like to cash this."

"We can't do that," said my friend from, etc. And he closed the mouth that looked like a drawstring purse.

"I wonder if you'd mind telling me why," I asked, wondering if the problem was, like the boy's at the library, inadequate funds.

"Because you're no longer a depositor here," said the drawstring purse. Any other questions?

Look, I don't really blame my buddy at Chase Manhattan. There are certain professions in which a kind of fraudulent solemnity seems to be absolutely necessary. Banking is one; but anybody handling money that isn't his own is likely to have that mouth and that attitude. Paymasters, for instance; C. P. A.'s, persons who turn down the scrupulously honest expense accounts I always turn in; hatcheck girls, especially if they're French; and anybody, even a janitor, who is on the payroll of Internal Revenue.

The list of up-tight professions is, of course, endless, and we don't have time to go into them in any detail here. Embalming, for instance. It's just as well that those people don't start giggling (continued on page 178) Up Tight (continued from page 174) while they're at work. And that last is one of the many reasons I have always thought Richard M. Nixon would make a dandy undertaker's assistant. Not head of the whole shebang, you understand, because he is a very competitive fellow, and I don't like to think what lengths he might resort to just to drum up a little business.

Cops are always up tight. Ever met one with a sense of humor? Judges. Not too long ago in the big city, a criminal-court judge by the name of Shalleck wrote a 29-page opinion of a young woman who had played the cello in a little theater off Times Square without having a stitch on above the waist. Judge Shalleck did not give us his comments on the lady's virtuosity on the cello, but we were favored with his thoughts--if that's the word--on an extraordinary number of other subjects. There were, for instance, quite a few debatable sentences about "the pristine beauty of human female breasts," about Rudi Gernreich and even Yves St. Laurent.

The judge, who appears to be his generation's answer to the Renaissance all-round man, said of Pablo Casals that he would not have become great "if he had performed nude from the waist down." The remarks of the judge cause me to wonder if he has ever heard the sound of a human voice, save his own, let alone heard the music of Pablo Casals. I have listened to Casals many times in Puerto Rico, in this country and in France. For all I know, he could have been nude from the waist down. I wouldn't have noticed. I believe that's what it's all about--music, I mean.

According to the Times, Judge Shalleck is "known among his colleagues as a man with a 'delightful sense of humor.'" What's more, at one time, the judge wanted to be a playwright. And you think the theater's in trouble now?

Generals are almost always up tight--American generals, anyway--and I doubt if either De Gaulle or Chiang Kai-shek is a lot of laughs. On the other hand, during Brazil's most recent bloodless revolution--they always are--two opposing generals are said to have met in a bar in no man's land.

General A said to General B, "How many troops have you got?"

"Twelve thousand," said B. "How many have you got?"

"Fourteen thousand," said A.

"Ok. You win," B replied. "Let's have another drink."

Would it surprise you if I say that, failing to get into Valhalla (and there's a long waiting list), the next time I make it to Brazil, I intend staying?

• • •

But to finish off my day in the city. I had lunch with my oldest friend, a fellow who after Our War went into book publishing because he loved books, good books. He had majored in literature at Princeton, had read in that field during a year at Magdalene College, and his master's thesis--he got it at Yale in 1949--was concerned with that witty and subversive man, the Reverend Laurence Sterne.

"All I want out of life," my friend said at the time, "is enough money to live comfortably on and a job I respect. I don't want to wake up at forty with more money than I know what to do with and an ulcer." Now he is, like me, more than somewhat over 40, and he, unlike me, has his ulcer, much more money than he knows what to do with and a third wife.

The lunch dealt mainly with the faults of number three; and, I must admit, the list was formidable; but I couldn't help thinking of a question my friend once asked, oh, a long time ago, under somewhat similar circumstances. The question was, "Whatever happened to old-fashioned reticence?"

After his fourth martini, two glasses of wine and a giant, economy-size snifter of brandy, my friend said he had to hurry off to see his shrink. His latest shrink; he's had five or six of those but, as I said, only three wives--so far, anyway. "I'll be seeing you," said my friend. "If, that is, I don't murder the little woman. And I'll tell you one thing; if ever murder was justified.... Well, so long, old buddy."

Old buddy said, "Goodbye," and he added, in a voice audible only to his own inner ear, "Trust that man in nothing who has not a Conscience in everything." The latter isn't original; it comes from Sterne; but I doubt if my friend would care to remember.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the streets of the city, looking at the up-tight faces of people hurrying nowhere in particular--those about to become totally paranoid and the far more numerous ones who already were. The day ended, appropriately enough, at a cocktail party. Why and how I got there is nobody's business: besides, I don't remember. I had stopped several times along the way to have a glass or two of life-giving, vitamin-filled vodka. I don't remember the purpose of the get-together, either, and I never met the host or hostess. But, judging by the guests they had assembled, they may have been casting a revival of Murder, Inc. A single example will do. There are others.

At one point, I got caught in the cross fire between warring aficionados of the film. Aficionados of any kind are apt to be up-tight, unpleasant people; but those who fancy themselves experts on the kinema are the worst of the lot. These two groups were doing battle over whether The Graduate was or was not a better flick than Bonnie and Clyde. I felt it incumbent on me to mention that I like Ma and Pa Kettle and that they don't make movies like that anymore. I added, sotto voce, that I had seen Errol Flynn in Robin Hood 19 times, but nobody appeared to be listening.

On the way out, I managed to avoid any involvement with the group that was telling one another what each had said to his shrink and what the shrink had said back. Are shrinks talking more these days? In my brief encounter with one of them, he just sat there and took notes that I knew perfectly well he passed directly on to the hangman.

On the train back to the village just on the other side of Valhalla, there were four transistor radios on, each tuned to a different station; but I asked myself that question again, "Whatever happened to old-fashioned reticence?" And I remembered--I think you'll see why--a trip I took to Pittsburgh not too long after My War. My companion was Eleanor Roosevelt. She was going to make a speech at an A. D. A. meeting, and so, for reasons I cannot imagine, was I.

It was a rough flight. There were thundershowers the whole way and the prop plane was held together with paper clips and Scotch tape. Mrs. Roosevelt read a little; she signed autographs; she asked about and, with apparent interest, listened to the unabridged autobiographies of two stewardesses, a middle-aged salesman from Gary, Indiana, a 14-year-old boy from Bogotá and, I'm afraid, my own.

After our plane made one particularly hazardous drop of several hundred feet, during which Mrs. Roosevelt read, I asked her if she ever got frightened when she was flying. "Oh, no," she said. "I don't allow myself to. I try to concern myself only with those things I can do something about."

Outwardly, Eleanor Roosevelt was the most cheerful and the least up-tight person I have ever known. Even toward the end of her extraordinary life, often when she was in great pain, when asked how she was, she smiled--and she felt fine, thank you very much, indeed. And you?

I believe it was during the flight to Pittsburgh that I asked her how she managed her good cheer. It was really quite simple, she said; she had been brought up by her Grandmother Hall, a woman who was, I gather, even more austere than her mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Grandmother Hall had taught Eleanor that when she felt ill or tired, she was never to say so. That made you unpleasant. "In company," Mrs. Roosevelt said, "one was expected to smile, and if that wasn't possible, you excused yourself."

Once while she was First Lady, she said, she found her young grandson, Buzzie Dall, crying in the second-floor hallway of the White House. "I said to him, 'Oh, Buzzie, we don't cry where people are. We cry by ourselves. Now, you go find a bathtub and cry into it.'"

Maybe that's the trouble. Not enough Grandmother Halls these days, not enough bathtubs. Not enough reticence. One thing is certain: There isn't an Eleanor Roosevelt anywhere around.

• • •

There was one other pleasant moment the night I returned from my most recent and, as I've said, maybe last venture into the city. It happened shortly after I got into bed in the glass house, alone except for a hooker of Scotch and the dog. Everybody I'd met at the cocktail slaughter was just about to take off for Europe and they all seemed to think they'd find peace of mind once they got there. A bluebird, anyway.

I thought then of the couple I'd seen the previous spring in a line waiting to get into the Sistine Chapel. They were from Missoula, Montana, and each wore a sign saying not only that but that each was a member of something called the People-to-People Program. The line outside the chapel was long and consisted mostly of Americans and Germans. All of Germany was in Rome last spring, which caused one to wonder who was back home planning the wars.

The line moved slowly, largely because all of the tickets were being sold by an old man with a face that had never lost its innocence. Mrs. People-to-People turned to Mr. P.-to-P. and, in the voice that is issued along with the passport, said, "We'd have two lines for a thing like this."

"I know," said her husband. "That's why we're ahead of 'em."

Remembering that precious moment, I started laughing, and I went to sleep, still smiling. I didn't even finish the Scotch. The way I look at it is this: A man who has seen Missoula, Montana, as well as the Sistine Chapel, has been about everywhere he needs to go. Particularly if he has also flown to Pittsburgh with a reticent woman.