END OF AN ERA
Mayer, Milton
End of an era A Permanent Probationer sends his regrets to Alma Mater Milton Mayer I hold here in my hand — as the late Joe McCarthy would say — a letter purporting to be from Emmett Dedmon '39,...
...I suppose that this is the way things have to be done these latter days, even by a great university...
...I am turned off by the cold-blooded character of contemporary fund-raising...
...It's been years since I last heard from Emmett...
...Emmett doesn't know it — he addresses me as an alumnus — but I am still on Permanent Probation...
...I mention $100 specifically," he goes on, "because that gift means we can publish your name among the members of the University's Century Fund, in recognition of your generosity...
...A week or two later an Associate did indeed call, long distance across the continent, and, when I told him (with a soupcon of insouciance) that I was given to distributing my largesse without regard to solicitation and that I was, in a word, unprepared, he proceeded, unabashed, undaunted, or uncomprehending, to ask if he could send me a pledge card, and I said he could send me anything or, alternatively, save the company's money...
...old friends...
...I returned some years later (but not in 1932) as Toady to the President, one R.M...
...I left Mother much as Dickie Nixon Milton Mayer, on Permanent Probation at the University of Chicago, is the roving editor of The Progressive...
...he shinnied up the pole and became an editor while I went on hitting the bricks, as I still do, a humpbacked newspaper bum covering trash-can fires and McDonald's ribbon-cuttings and dreaming of the day I'd come steaming into the office with a chemist's report of the arsenic in the old lady's stomach I'd stolen from her at the morgue...
...I would, if I could, give her $500-$999 and, according to Emmett, be a Fellow of the Fund and not just a Member (or give the old girl $1,000 and tell her to keep the change...
...Alumnus, indeed...
...He wants, he says, a "strong 'yes' and a tax deductible contribution of $100 or more...
...Nor would it if I were Croesus...
...But we are (as who isn't...
...I sic transited in 1929, or maybe late 1928...
...And then, on June Something, 1979, it started de novo and ab ovo with Emmett's $100, $250-$499, $500-$999 scam...
...Many years after having turned me out, and back in, Doting Mother, without discharging me from Probation, gave me a very nice plaque...
...Emmett's letter was, actually, preceded by an earlier piece of Dear-Mr.-Mayer junk mail from him informing me that I would soon receive a telephone call from an Associate of his to find out how much I was prepared to contribute to Mother's support...
...In due season — I kid you not — the pledge card arrived indicating that 1 had actually made a pledge by telephone...
...I was on Permanent Probation, with a curricular record consisting almost entirely of Incompletes plus an extracurricular record of contusions and abrasions inflicted on Mother's premises, property, and amour propre...
...Hutchins, who promised me, ever and anon, and ever disappointingly, that he would get the trustees to regularize my status and grant me the degree of P.P...
...Plaques these days are in longer supply than walls to hang them on...
...Mayer," and his letter is dated simply "June, 1979...
...He came along behind me at Chicago, but he was the hare and I was the tortoise...
...He addresses me not as "Uncle Milton," or "Miltie," or "Toots," but as "Mr...
...I was not underwhelmed by the honor, though it was not readily convertible into hard currency, of which I stood (then as now) in mute but murderous need...
...It is a damned bad way...
...Actually, I never heard from him before...
...It is not to be...
...So I am in no position to respond generously — he asks me to respond generously — to Emmett's appeal...
...I wasn't happy in her bosom, but I have never been bothered by being unhappy...
...A sly and sneaky mind like mine discerns other junk-mail characteristics in Emmett's letter but, by golly, it speaks of Mother's not having changed her mission since I was there "in 1932...
...End of an era A Permanent Probationer sends his regrets to Alma Mater Milton Mayer I hold here in my hand — as the late Joe McCarthy would say — a letter purporting to be from Emmett Dedmon '39, written to me in his capacity as National Chairman of The Century Fund of the University of Chicago...
...Helas...
...I have nickeled and dimed Doting Mother down the years, doting on her as I do...
...But times are tight, plaques are off, and I have got to respond to Emmett with a weak "no...
...left the White House — with a dishonorable discharge or Bad Paper...
...It calls to mind the immortal words of the late Gloucester to the late Lear — "My Lord, we have seen the best of our time" — and the immortaler words of the late Hinky Dink Kenna of Chicago's First Ward: "It is," said the Hink when they raided C lark S treet, " the end of an era...
...Best of all I would, if I could, give her a piddling $250-$499 ("keep the change," again) and be a Scholar Member of the Fund...
...Now I yield to no man — and to few women — in my desire to have my generosity recognized and my name published...
...How is that for personal, addressed to me, me, me, and to me alone...
...By virtue of the authority vested in him as National Chairman, Emmett takes this sentimental occasion to put the arm on me in behalf of Alma Mater, or Doting Mother...
...True, I wasn't there in 1932...
...It reduces the Mother-son and every other relationship to that of the adman and the chump, and it is one more desponding indication that the world, Mother included, is in a state of chassis...
...I should like to be able to deck her with pearls — she wore beads of sweat as long as I was on campus — if only times were better...
Vol. 43 • October 1979 • No. 10
