ON THE OTHER HAND
Mayer, Milton
On The Other Hand By Milton Mayer IFEEL as old as yonder elm, I [eel as heavy as yonder stone. Next month I will be 45. The wool on the top of my head, in the place where the hair ought to be, is...
...He's out," said the young lady...
...If I don't make any more Progress than I've made up to now, I'll quit then...
...I dream of friends who are dead and enemies who aren't...
...And I figured that in twenty years the Shaver had come of age...
...Forty-five years old...
...Os-kaloosa's a nice little town, big trees, old houses set back...
...My wisdom consists in knowing that when people say, "It's a great life if you don't weaken," they mean it's a great life if you weaken...
...You said it, Apostle...
...The kingdom of God is within you," said the Apostle...
...No electric alarm-clock...
...No built-in bar...
...He took it behind the counter, polished it with a chamois, and brought it back...
...It's a beautiful country," said John Brown...
...It gave you the sensation of shaving, without the trouble, and without shaving you...
...Why follow the gleam if you don't know where it's going...
...The young lady turned me over— I was done on one side—to a young man...
...There's nothing wrong with plumbing, but you can't use it if it's radioactive...
...I've never seen him...
...Progress toward what...
...I reached for the tobasco...
...Twenty years ago, when I was going on 25, I bought a Shick Shaver for $12.50...
...My ancestors were slaves in Egypt without benefit of indoor plumbing...
...But they were cheaper...
...I want to see Gen...
...I shall be an old bum, loved but unrespected...
...I said...
...You bled and bled and bled...
...You're an adolescent, all right," said Ma, admiring the cleanliness of the curtains...
...No sir-ree-sir, not on your tintype...
...I worked up a new set of more ambitious ambitions...
...Last year in Germany, of all places, I got in on a little white market deal and got a Remington Dyna-flow DeLuxe, wholesale, for $18.75...
...It depends on how much you use it," he said...
...It's no good," I said...
...If he's out, I can't see him, so you can't help me...
...No," I said...
...The answer is No...
...I wouldn't mind living forever right here, but not if I have to become any more greedy, gluttonous, and corrupt than I already am to do it...
...I didn't mind bleeding, but I hated shaving...
...The wool on the top of my head, in the place where the hair ought to be, is salt-and-pepper colored, running rapidly to salt...
...I have realized all my ambitions...
...The garbage cans don't rattle...
...If I was a fool with a blunderbuss then, I'm...
...Springfield, Missouri, Springfield, Illinois, Springfield, Massachusetts, or Springfield, Ohio...
...Ninety cents, plus tax...
...If you use it intelligently, it will last a year...
...Just a throwback...
...An atavism...
...no electricity, no running water, but beautiful country...
...peace in Korea on any terms...
...I want a ticket to Springfield...
...Wakefield...
...How many more people is the kingdom of God within in 1953 than in 1853 or 853...
...doors and hearts unlocked...
...W^hen I pressed down with the Remington Dynaflow, to try to get the whiskers off, it burned...
...Look," and I ran the Dynaflow over my face...
...We have a fireplace in our bedroom, and a great big view, over the Monterey cypresses, of the great big ocean...
...I don't live by my wisdom, but I know I don't live by it...
...No psychoanalyst...
...I want something that saws them off...
...I had realized them all by the time I was 25, and what did I do...
...And I know that knowing I don't live by it is no excuse for not living by it...
...That's what's wrong with ambition, "following the gleam...
...Somebody else wrote a poem about it: Nobody's poor here, nobody's cold...
...I yawn in people's faces and they yawn in mine...
...You cad, you," I said...
...I think you'll find it's all right now," he said...
...No automobile...
...I went on bleeding and shaving, and shaving and bleeding, for twenty years...
...I wouldn't mind living forever, but it depends on the terms...
...Nobody's mean, nobody's old...
...That, too, is wisdom...
...The sensation of shaving was smoother than ever, but I didn't get shaved...
...I still remember Professor Philip Schuyler Allen saying, "Kid, the world is your oyster...
...What's all this about Progress...
...John Brown was traveling through Virginia, on his way to the scaffold...
...a supersonic fool now...
...It works as well this way...
...In three years we have done what it took thirty to do in Germany, away back in the Thirty Years' War...
...Don't talk to me about following the gleam...
...Tell me...
...It smelled nice, after shaving, and, when used Before Shaving, the Shaver flattened the whiskers like Bronko Nagurski, if you remember him...
...Ma says the curtains don't get dirty as fast as they do in Chicago, Illinois...
...How long will it last...
...Can I help you...
...I want my pipe to be where I left it—wherever I left it— and I can't stand my toast too soft or too hard, or the children yelling before breakfast or after dinner...
...The Informer again...
...I wouldn't trade Madison, Wisconsin, Louisville, Kentucky, San Francisco, California, for any place on earth...
...Some Progress...
...Eternal life looks all right to me...
...There's a place called Ansedonia, an old Etruscan ruin, maybe 50 miles north of Rome...
...I like to stay home in the evening, and go to bed early...
...How can I tell until I smell the Carthaginian rose...
...No television...
...My first-born, little Julie, is writing a novel, earning $35 a week as a saleslady, and going to college...
...I could spare $18.75 like, or as, I could spare my right eye, but I was sick and tired of shaving and bleeding...
...Come on, men, do you want to live forever...
...You have to plug it in," said the lady...
...My wisdom consists in knowing that money, fame, and power don't even do good men any good, and that bad men can't put pacifism, militarism, socialism, capitalism, or anything else to good use...
...Either it hasn't or I haven't...
...A crepuscular, cranky, crapulous old fogey, crying out in his dreams, as he sees himself vanishing, oyster in hand, "Stay, thou art so fair...
...No electric shaver...
...Every country is a beautiful country, as beautiful as this one...
...Go ahead and die, then...
...Nobody's selfish, nobody's proud...
...And if there's something wrong with it, it costs you $3.50 just to have the plumber look at it...
...Which is the ticket cheapest to...
...Then I remembered my Remington Dynaflow, which I had in my pocket, and said, "Maybe you can help me, at that...
...Oh," he said, "in that case, I would recommend our Remington Hydromatic Before-Shaving Stick...
...I have grown wise...
...I went to the Remington Company...
...Chlorophyll...
...I like to putter in the garden, but my back crepitates...
...Forty-five...
...I believe I could contemplate the Beatific Vision indefinitely...
...You can't live sober," said Gene Debs, as he came out of the lecture hall in Massilon, Ohio, and handed his lecture fee to a drunken beggar, "in a world like this...
...Eisenhower, Dulles, and Wilson to the General Staff, General Practice, and General Motors respectively...
...The Hydromatic Stick lasted a month...
...We're happy as can be, and it's a beautiful country...
...Try Blue Hills Falls, Maine...
...MacArthur," I said...
...In Carmel, California, in the Village of Carmel-by-the-Sea, where I live, somebody said it's a place where old folks come to live with their parents...
...When the magnolia blossoms, big as pun-kins, come down in Alabama, the azaleas come out, and the place is crawling with Cherokee roses...
...Nobody's envious, nobody's loud...
...You been to Paris in the spring, fellow...
...if I don't do what a wise man does, why go on living...
...The trouble is," I said, "that it makes the whiskers lie down...
...The [lowers don't die...
...and a book as good as The Vicar of...
...The Shick was the first electric shaver...
...Shall we grow old without growing wise...
...No radio...
...With cheap blades you bled worse, especially the second time you used them...
...Forty-five...
...I went back to the safety razor, which shaved you, with trouble, and wasn't safe...
...My wisdom consists in the knowledge that it is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere...
...I've read the great books...
...The Remington Dynaflow De Luxe flattened the whiskers fine, but as soon as you stopped shaving, they stood up again...
...The Dalmatian coast is beautiful...
...if she weren't so busy, I'd be a grandfather...
...The babies don't cry, . The factories don't close...
...My wisdom consists in the knowledge that, as people grow old and see that they can't change the world for the better, they change themselves for the worse, saying, "\ was a pacifist, too, when I was a kid," or, "I was a socialist, too, when I was a kid...
...cheap bacon that isn't so salty...
...And I don't mean A.D...
...I mean both...
...So is Faribault, Minnesota, in the winter...
...My wisdom consists in my knowledge that love conquers all...
...I've got another forty-five good years in me yet...
...You bet it's a beautiful country...
...Look, Ma," I said, "I'm an adolescent again, I'm all over pimples...
...my country poor but honest, and I with it...
...Before that I bought a Rolls Razor for $5, but the hone on the Rolls Razor cracked, and Little Julie lost it...
...Nehru, the Indian Pandit, who isn't even a native-born white American Christian, says that in the guise of helping Korea we have killed one-third of the Koreans...
...Well, I said, gesturing in the mirror with the Dynaflow, if you don't bleed, you burn...
...Wellington, Duke of...
...I have laid the Remington aside, and gone back to bleeding...
...A few of them stayed down and started growing in, raising pimples...
...Dying tonight, dying tonight, dying on the old camp ground...
...We'll adjust it," he said, "and it won't cost you a thing...
...I've tried that," I said...
...I'd like to see a few things before I die: a good electric shaver...
...It's true, too...
...We guess we'll stick it out another year here...
...maybe go to an early movie, any old early movie, once in a while...
...You ought to take the ferry from Seattle to Bremington, boy, if you want to see beautiful country...
...I know all about the horrors of antiquity...
...No ball-point pen...
...the restoration of the button, in place of the elastic band, on men's shorts and the restoration of the Messrs...
...Up on Lake Vasman, in the Vasterbergslagen part of Sweden, the water's so (blue you'd swear Maxfield Parrish painted it...
...My wisdom consists in the knowledge that God cares when you do men good, and if you do men good because men care, you'll pretty soon stop doing it...
...or B.C...
...I just want to see him...
...I know all that a wise man knows now...
...Ah, but the Cross is so heavy, Master, what about a redcap...
...I like detective stories...
...have been a good boy, done what was expected...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
