Out of My Mind (36 page)

The only sense in which anyone could call me sexist is, I don't make my bed. I'll often get dinner or wash the dishes, but I don't make beds. If I were alone in the house, I wouldn't make my bed from one year to the next.

A bed I sleep in really needs making, too. I tend to bring the sheet and blanket with me when I turn over. During the night, I suppose I turn both ways an equal number of times, but by morning, my bed is a rumpled mass of tangled sheets and blankets. Whoever makes the bed always seems to tuck it in at the foot. I'm in no position to complain about how the bed is made inasmuch as I won't make it myself, but I don't want the blanket tucked in at the bottom. Tucked-in blankets give me claustrophobia. At home, my sheets are changed once a week, and I hate the first night in them. After that, the sheets are rumpled and comfortable. I know what I'd like to have, but it would be unconscionably expensive to pay some clean person to sleep in my clean sheets the first night to break them in for me.

While I like clean sheets once in a while, pillows are another matter. Perhaps I'll write about pillows some other time. Perhaps not, too.

Our house is full. There's no longer an empty place to put anything. Whoever designed the house put closets where they thought anyone
living there would need one. But no one can decide for anyone else where they need a closet. A house should be built with places to store things that no architect could imagine anyone needing. Some of the closets need closets.

My clothes closets are hanger to hanger with no room in between to squeeze in so much as a necktie. All my hangers have something hanging on them. If I bought new hangers, I'd buy new clothes.

My dresser drawers are full of clean shirts from the laundry and frayed shirts to wear Saturdays. I have more frayed shirts than Saturdays on which to wear them. I used to wear clean, un-frayed shirts just once to the office, then they went to the laundry. It costs $I.50 to have a shirt washed now so recently I've taken to wearing a shirt twice.

My sock drawer overflows with eight balled pairs and seven single socks for which I can find no mate. Some of them have been single for years. I don't throw them out because I still hold out hope that a mate will show up some day.

I went up to the attic yesterday and it's filled with clothes too good to throw away but too old to wear. There are suitcases I don't dare open up here and boxes of Christmas tree ornaments that haven't been used since I started storing ornaments in the garage eight years ago.

In the front part of the basement, which I use for an office, three of the drawers in the five-drawer filing cabinet are filled with old tax returns. I know I could throw out 1981 without any danger of being hauled in by the IRS for a review. However, I write for a living and there are valuable tidbits in there about my life that year that might be useful in my biography—which I'll be writing any minute now. As soon as I clean out my closets.

The drawers in the dresser in Brian's room are full, although Brian left home twenty years ago when he got a job in Rochester, and there isn't much of his stuff left. I noticed a new pair of pajamas in the bottom drawer, which I think are mine. I forget when I bought them, but I don't need new pajamas. I like old pajamas. I wear my pajamas long after most people would have thrown them out. A missing button in front bothers me but a ragged edge on the sleeve does not.

In casting about for someone to blame for my storage problem, I've settled on architects. Our house was built in 1888, so the architect is long gone. It is apparent that he tried to outguess future occupants about how much stuff they'd have and where they'd put it. Architects think they can plan a place for everything and they think we'll put everything in its place. That's not the way things work in anyone's house.

In my office, there are boxes of scripts I've written over the past fifty years. For five years, I wrote a ten-minute radio show five days a week and the scripts take up five feet of shelf space.

My advice to young people is, when you buy a house, don't ask how many bedrooms there are. Find out how many closets it has.

We all like knowing something other people don't. I take smug satisfaction every year when May 8 is called “V-E Day” from knowing that Victory in Europe came May 7, not May 8. It isn't much but it's mine. Victory in Europe was achieved the minute German Gen. Alfred Jodl signed the surrender papers in a room on the second floor of an undistinguished school building, the Ecole Professionale, in Reims, France.

May 8 got its official status as V-E Day because Dwight Eisenhower, then a four-star General Eisenhower, promised the Russians he wouldn't release information of the German surrender to the Allies until after they had also surrendered to the Russians. That was scheduled for the following day and that's how May 8, not May 7, got to be called V-E Day. If Eisenhower had been in charge, Christmas might be Dec. 26.

After years of war, the whole world was waiting anxiously for the word that it was over. After the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, American soldiers, with help from the British and Canadians, had fought their way across Normandy and into Paris on Aug. 25. The U. S. 9th Division crossed the Rhine on March 7 and headed across Germany for a meeting with the Russian army that was squeezing the Germans from
the other direction. The two forces met at the town of Torgau on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, and it was apparent to everyone that the war was winding down and the Germans would have to give up.

On the night of May 6, 1945, seventeen reporters were flown by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force from Paris to Reims, France. They realized their mission was to report the surrender they knew was imminent. Before being taken to Reims, the reporters were sworn to secrecy. They promised not to write the story until they were given permission by Allied headquarters.

Seventeen reporters came to a large classroom in the school at 2:I0 on the morning of May 7. At 2:40 the Germans and Americans came in for the signing. The meeting lasted about five minutes, just time enough for several generals to sign the surrender papers. There were four cameramen. One had brought a ladder and was perched on top of that to get a better view of the participants at the table. Others were precariously perched on chairs. The seventeen reporters were standing taking notes.

After the brief signing ceremony, the reporters were ushered out of the room, put on a bus for the airport and flown back to Paris with a great story in their pockets they were forbidden to tell.

It was my first exposure to a dilemma that every reporter is faced with at some time in his life. Here they were with great and important information that the whole world was waiting for but they were inhibited from writing it for what was, basically, a political reason—good relations with the Russians.

One reporter, Ed Kennedy of the Associated Press, couldn't wait. He made the decision to break his promise. He wrote the story and dispatched it to AP headquarters in New York from which it was sent around the world. Kennedy later said he thought the story was too important to keep to himself one minute longer. The world read about the surrender in their newspapers in fifty different languages the next morning, May 8.

The sixteen reporters who had lived by their promise were furious. Ed Kennedy was banished from the company of other reporters. His credentials were revoked by the Army, and he was shipped back to New
York in disgrace. But his story was printed around the world while the rest of the reporters sat with theirs in their pockets.

I was as angry as anyone but, wrong as I thought Kennedy was that day when he released the story, I am not so certain today. The world had been waiting five years for the end of that war. There was no element of military security and keeping that information from the worried world for one more day was probably wrong. It is almost always wrong for a reporter to withhold information for any public relations reason. Ed Kennedy may have been right. V-E Day was May 7.

Some days, it seems as though I have so much to do I can't get anything done. It happens a lot around Christmas.

When I left for the office this morning, a red light appeared on the dashboard of my car that said, “Service soon.” I've been meaning to read the manual, but whenever I get in the car I'm going someplace and don't have time. I'm driving to the country this weekend, though, and ought to take the car in before I go but I have some other things to do first.

When I left the house today, I dumped a suit, a pair of slacks and a sweater in the back of the car to take to the cleaners, but I had so much to do I decided not to stop.

My hair is too long and has been for about two weeks. My barber is over near several department stores, so maybe I'll get my hair cut and do some Christmas shopping at lunchtime—tomorrow, though.

I don't even want to think about Christmas. I have to get presents for Martha, Emily, Ellen, Brian, Cecile, Alexis, Ben, Justin, Emma, Katherine, Beryl, Leo, Les and Nancy. Just getting to a store is hard and they probably won't have anything I think is right, anyway. As usual, I'll probably wait until it's too late to have anything sent, so I'll have to take it with me.

I should put the Christmas wreath on the door this weekend and string the Christmas lights on the hedge. I hope I can find the lights. I may have put them in the attic. If I get the chance, I'll go up and look for them. Come to think of it, though, the lights may be on top of that shelf in the garage. I keep the Christmas tree in the garage so it doesn't get snowed on before we put it up in the living room Christmas Eve. I'm worried about the garage because it isn't heated. The automatic garage door caught on some of the insulated ceiling panels last summer and tore off one of them. There are pipes up there that bring heat to the back bedroom and they're exposed now and could freeze. I ought to get that insulation panel replaced and get a plumber to put some radiator pipes in the garage. I'm not sure who does that or how much it would cost. I don't even want to think about that now.

As if I didn't have enough things to do around the house, I've got more than usual to do in the office.

60 Minutes
is going to need two extra pieces next week because they want to get the Christmas and New Year's day shows put together early. I'll have to think of something to do and then shoot the pieces. I should get my hair cut before I do them.

Next to my computer I keep an in/out file tray. There must be twenty-five letters. They're either things like phone bills or messages from old friends I feel guilty about not answering. I've set those things aside for two weeks, though, so I guess another day or two won't hurt.

If I can get my Christmas cards out, that will satisfy some of those letters I should have written. I'm not sure where our Christmas card list is. Last year, I added the names of people who sent me a card even though I didn't send them one.

Some of the things I put off because I've had a cold. My nasal passages have been stuffed up for weeks, so I called my doctor and he gave me a prescription, which I took to the drugstore last Tuesday. They couldn't fill it right away, so I paid for it but I haven't had time to go back and get it.

I love Christmas but I can't wait for it to be over.

We all look for that perfect day when we have enough to do but not too much. There's a fine line and we usually cross it. At this time of year, most of us have so much to do that there isn't time to sit back and enjoy our holiday.

We had a cocktail party for sixty friends and family on the Friday before Christmas, but we think seventy-five showed up. It was good except two of our closest friends were left off the invitation list by mistake. No amount of apologizing helps in a case like that.

I made eggnog with eggs, cream and plenty of nog (I use rum and bourbon). Some people make the mistake of thinking it's a toy drink and it is not. I put nutmeg and a grater next to the punch bowl. I don't know what nutmeg is but I like what it tastes like in eggnog.

We had fifteen family members for most of nine meals and grandson Justin brought his girlfriend, Gayle, which made us sixteen. It was our second Christmas without Margie and we don't get over missing her. I jerry-rigged a board with legs and fastened it to the end of the dining room table so it would accommodate everyone.

Food for sixteen people, three meals a day for three days is a lot of food and a lot of work. Martha, the most organized of the four children, drew up a chart listing who was on duty for what job and stuck it on the refrigerator door but no one paid much attention to it. After the guests left the party Friday, we had two huge dishes of lasagna left. Martha had made them in advance. They were good with a salad and easy.

Emily's daughter, my granddaughter Alexis, had to get back to Washington to be at work for Fox at 6 A.M. the day after Christmas, so we decided to have our Christmas turkey dinner Saturday night so she'd be in on it. Emily brought the turkey from a farm near Boston. Less than half of the stuffing went into the bird and the rest was baked separately in an open pan. It was better than that cooked inside the turkey.

For the first time, Brian carved. I relinquished my role reluctantly because being the carver puts you in a special position of authority, but I
conceded that he did a better job than I would have. I've done it about fifty times over the years but still have a hard time finding where to cut the joint of the drumstick and thigh so that they break off and leave the breast easy to slice.

Ellen made the cranberry sauce and argued with Emily about whether to put slivered almonds in it. Ellen was adamant about not doing that, but I noticed that when it came to the table in the cut glass dish, there were almonds in the sauce.