Dear Mom and Dad,
Now that I’ve turned 73 I thought I’d give you a little update on what things are like down here these days. You may know all about us up there, but in case you don’t, here goes.
For starters, let me assure you we’re doing okay financially. Yes, lots of people are bellyaching about Obama, the economy, jobs and his health care ideas, but the banks are doing a tremendous job of helping the little guy. I looked at our checking account yesterday and saw that in the first nine months of this year we have earned 25 cents in interest. That works out to about three cents a month but that’s only in checking. In our savings account, the bank has given us $24.77 in interest so far this year. Like you used to say, Dad, “Mercy, mercy.” Imagine. Since last New Year’s Day, we have chalked up a total of $25.02 in our two bank accounts for doing absolutely nothing. I love Chase!
We’re sure busier down here than when you left. All of us. We don’t piddle around doing only one thing at a time. We do two things at a time, all the time, sometimes three or four things. We call it multi-tasking. It’s fun and we’re good at it. Irene and I were on vacation in Maine this summer and saw a lady in her car, driving and writing at the same time. She had balanced a yellow legal pad on the steering wheel and was scribbling away as she sailed down the highway. It was a nice smooth road so I suspect when she got home, or wherever she was headed, there weren’t a lot of unreadable squiggles or big jagged lines.
That’s nothing. Early one Sunday morning a few years ago in New Jersey a guy whizzed by me in another car while he sat behind the wheel playing a trumpet. Maybe his wife wouldn’t let him practice at home.
You wouldn’t recognize the car business, Dad. It’s really changed since you were selling them. General Motors almost went under until the government stepped in with wads and wads of money. You can’t buy an Oldsmobile anymore. They stopped making them. Can you believe that?
By the way, I hope you’re proud of us. We have all remained faithful to your sacred credo: “McCoys don’t drive Fords.” I’ve got a VW convertible and Irene has a Volvo. Irene likes the car, although the people at the Volvo dealer talk real funny. I was on the phone with them the other day, and after they put me on hold some woman started serenading me about “Pre-loved cars.” That’s their silly name for used cars. “Pre” means before. A prenuptial agreement is one reached before you walk down the aisle, so to me a “pre-loved car” is one that hasn’t been loved yet. What they’re selling is “post-loved cars.” Things are bound to get even more confusing when the Chinese take over full control of Volvo. You heard me, the Chinese.
It’s hard to describe how strange almost everything is down here. That certainly goes for my old profession. Remember your favorite radio guy, Paul Harvey? Well, he died and the day he did AP said he was a “talk radio pioneer.” Well, they got one out of three words right. He was on the radio.
Most places doing what passes for news seem to have fired all the editors. I saw a headline not too long ago that said “Man frauded out of $399,000.” The guy should be thankful. Being frauded is generally less painful and leaves fewer cuts and bruises than being pistol-whipped during a robbery.
Many newsrooms think that citing a source right off the bat for a piece of information bogs everything down. To keep things moving, they start out stating something as a fact and maybe a sentence or two later get around to telling you what you’ve just heard or read is an allegation made by the FBI or someone. I happened to turn on the radio recently when an anchor began a story with the words “scores of millions of dollars stolen from Medicare by a highly organized scam.”
“Stolen.” “Scam.” Pretty strong stuff. A sentence later the word “charged” was inserted, probably reluctantly.
I write letters about stuff like this. I’ve tried to become a pen pal of Sean McManus, the head cheese at CBS News, but he doesn’t seem interested. The last time I wrote him was when I heard a CBS radio newscast lead with a story about Lindsay Lohan. Don’t confuse her with Lindsey Nelson, the sportscaster who wore what your generation called “loud sports coats” and who always talked about “times out” rather than “time outs.” This other Lindsay gets arrested a lot, and some producer who most likely majored in English Lit or History in college thinks the more times this happens the more exciting and important it is and therefore it should automatically be the top story. Maybe McManus feels the same way because he didn’t answer my letter. I told him that what was presented on the air as news was frequently embarrassing, and that perhaps the solution was to have some rich cuss buy CBS and close the news division to save the employees further embarrassment.
Let me correct that. I didn’t actually send a letter to McManus, at least not the kind you put in an envelope and put a stamp on. I sent an e-mail, a note you type on the keyboard of a computer and which then flies through the air somehow and ends up in the other person’s computer. (Yes, Mom, I know that isn’t very clear, but I frankly don’t understand how it works myself.) Very few people write real letters nowadays. In fact doing so is so old hat that one of the clues in a crossword puzzle in The New York Times the other day was “E-mail predecessor.”
This is getting way too long. You must have something else you need to do, so let me save some stuff for next time. Like how half the people you see on the street have a bottle of water in their hands. The country should change its name to USH, the United States of Hydration. And one of these days, if I have a thousand hours to spare, I’ll make sure you’re up on all the tiny telephones people now have with a billion gizmos on them. You can type and send messages on them, read the news, check the ball scores, take pictures, watch a movie, find a good restaurant – and who knows – maybe even milk a cow.
Hope your digs are all you thought they would be.
Love,
Larry
P.S. Do you have towels where you are? Irene keeps buying these big, fluffy ones from China, and after you dry yourself with them you’re still wet. All over. They just seem to move the beads of water from place to place on your skin. I’m thinking maybe it’s some kind of communist joke. Are there communists up there? I promised a real, real conservative friend of mine that I would ask.