My Old Man Read online

  MY OLD MAN

  MY OLD MAN

  Damon Runyon

  STACKPOLE

  BOOKS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

  Published by Stackpole Books

  An imprint oflie Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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  www.rowman.com

  Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 1938, 1939, by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

  First Stackpole Books paperback edition 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  ISBN 978-0-8117-3755-5 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-8117-6732-3 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  THE CONTENTS

  ON LITERATURE

  ON LOVE AND NITWITS

  ON THE DEAR DEPARTED

  ON PARENTS

  ON SAYINGS

  ON TEETERING

  ON LIARS

  ON GOOD TURNS

  ON COOKING AND FOOD

  ON SINNERS

  ON MATRIMONY

  ON PREACHERS

  ON GROWING OLD

  ON HOMESPUN FELLOWS

  ON SUICIDE

  ON WINDBAGS

  ON DOCTORS

  ON CRYING AND HOLLERING

  ON COWARDICE

  ON BEAUTY

  ON PETTINESS

  ON TRUTH

  ON CUTENESS

  ON THE MALE GOSSIP

  ON SPENDING

  ON ACCUSATION

  ON SNOBS

  ON PARTNERSHIPS

  ON HATING

  ON MRS. AND MR.

  ON NICE FELLOWS

  ON PENSIONS

  ON LADY SPORTS

  ON BANKERS

  ON INDULGING WIVES

  MY OLD MAN

  ON LITERATURE

  MY OLD MAN had read everything you could think of. He was fairly well versed in the classics. He could quote you by the yard from Shakespeare and Milton.

  He was familiar with Rousseau and Plutarch and Rabelais and Homer and Balzac and Dickens. He read all kinds of writers. He said himself his mind was a ragbag of all sorts of literary stuff. He read dime novels and poetry and magazines and newspapers.

  He said he judged he must have read billions of words, though whenever he went into the public library back in our old home town of Pueblo and looked around at the shelves loaded with books he could see that with all his reading he had little more than nibbled at the world’s output of words.

  He said he had often reflected that of all he had read he had found more comfort in just 117 words than in all the rest put together. He said those words were the words of the Twenty-third Psalm. He said he guessed that those words, expressive of David’s confidence in God’s grace, were the most beautiful words ever written.

  He said certainly they were the most consoling to a fellow when he was distressed in spirit. He said he had known a lot of trouble in his day-sickness and poverty and everything else, and that he had never failed to find spiritual comfort in those words. My old man said no music ever played could soothe his mind and heart like a recital of the Twenty-third Psalm.

  He said that as a boy he had had considerable religious instruction and had been read “at” from the Bible by the hour, but that not much of it had stuck with him as he grew up. Then the time he enlisted in the army to go and fight the Indians somebody gave him a Bible and he read it from cover to cover mostly by the light of campfires.

  He said he supposed he started reading it because there was nothing else to read, but he soon found it mighty interesting, and then he kept on reading it as a matter of entertainment. He said he memorized the Twenty-third Psalm one bitter cold night lying by a fire in a dry arroyo after everybody else was asleep, and the only sounds were the snores of his fellow soldiers and the stamping of the horses on the picket lines.

  My old man said that thereafter whenever he was troubled, like when death came to his house and when he thought there could be no solace left for him in this world, he found his spiritual refuge in that beautiful passage. He said that, however dark the night of his despair, it always brought the light to him when he recited to himself:

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.

  He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow.me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

  My old man said he realized that there were many other beautiful passages in the Bible. He said probably other men would differ with him in his opinion that the Twenty-third Psalm was the most beautiful of all, and that he was not of a mind to debate the matter with them.

  He said it covered his own case when he felt in need of spiritual consolation and that was enough for him. He said those few words gave him all the comfort for the present and the hope for the hereafter that he could expect to find in any written or spoken words. He said he guessed the Twenty-third Psalm summed up most of his religion.

  Someone asked him what he thought was the most beautiful sentence in the Psalm and my old man said he had often pondered that very question himself. He said it was so beautiful in its entirety that it was difficult to pick out a single sentence or thought as the most beautiful of all but that he believed it was the very first line:

  The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

  ON LOVE AND NITWITS

  MY OLD MAN used to say that he guessed the greatest disappointment a fellow suffered in married life was when it first dawned on him that his wife was a complete nitwit.

  He said he supposed it could work the other way, too-that a wife could suffer disappointment when she discovered that her husband was a nitwit, but he said his observations had led him to the conclusion that nitwittery was more common among wives than among husbands.

  He said that when a fellow married a girl he loved, and who loved him, he sort of took it for granted that she was possessed of ordinary good sense and that she would adjust herself to his mode and manner of life. He said it probably never occurred to the average fellow that she might have any other ideas. He said when a fellow is in love he never thinks of examining closely into the mentality of the lady of his choice.

  My old man said a fellow might go along for years accepting certain manifestations of his wife as merely passing idiosyncrasies, but some day the fellow found himself confronted by the uncompromising fact that she was a nitwit and that there was nothing he could do about it.

  He said he used the term nitwit because it did not sound as harsh and uncomplimentary as fool. He said that by nitwit in this case he meant a gadder, a gossip, a climber and a snob. He said he meant a wife who was greedy, and selfish, and indiscreet, and tactless, and who was extravagant, and silly, and eccentric in dress a
nd manner, and who talked loudly in public places and created scenes.

  My old man said that it did not follow that wifely nitwittery in any manner encroached upon or conflicted with the matter of marital love. He said that when a husband got over his first shock of disappointment on realizing that his wife was a nitwit he just settled down to taking her for what she was, and probably did not cease loving her.

  He might try to cure her, and my old man said indeed he knew of some cases of cures, but he said that required a sterner hand than most husbands possess. He said attempts to cure led to those domestic quarrels that every husband tries to avoid, because no wife who was a nitwit would ever concede that the charges a husband might bring against her in an effort to cure her, showed her nitwittery. He said the trouble with trying to cure a nitwit wife was she could never be made to realize she was a nitwit.

  My old man said he knew a lot of fellows who had nitwits for wives who seemed to feel rather sorry for the ladies and to treat their nitwittery as if it were some sort of infirmity, but he thought most fellows similarly afflicted were a little ashamed of their helpmeets’ nitwittery. They suffered greatly from embarrassment and were always in an apologetic attitude about their wives.

  He said for example he knew certain fellows right there in our old home town of Pueblo whose wives were inordinate snobs. He said he noticed that these fellows were constantly going out of their way to be nice to people that the wives would pass up cold. My old man said he always felt sorry for those fellows. They knew their wives were in the wrong but what could they do about it?

  My old man said it was all very fine for fellows who were not married or who had nice tractable wives to say how they would handle a nitwit wife like that but he said he guessed they would not talk so big if they had her–and loved her. He said love was the edge that nitwit wives generally had on their husbands. He said that sometimes a husband loved so much that he was blinded to any and all of his wife’s nitwittery, or accepted it as characteristic of all wives.

  He said if you told such a husband that his wife was a nitwit he would probably take a punch at you. My old man said he knew of cases where husbands had permitted themselves to be ruined by their wives’ senseless extravagance just because those husbands loved so deeply that they could not see that they were married to nitwits. He said it was a great testimonial to the power of love, all right, but that he could not see any percentage in it.

  He said that dumbness or stupidity must not be confused with nitwittery. He argued that a dumb wife could not be condemned because she was born that way, whereas nitwittery was generally a matter of development. He claimed that dumb wives usually possessed at least the merit of tranquility and docility and judicious silence, probably because they realized they were dumb and were cunning enough not to parade the fact.

  My old man said he had noticed that fellows who had dumb wives usually seemed to cherish them much more than the husbands of more intelligent ladies cherished their spouses. He said he sometimes suspected that it was because the husbands of the dumb ones knew that their wives were never going to cause them the embarrassment that smarter females brought their husbands through demonstrations of nitwittery.

  ON THE DEAR DEPARTED

  MY OLD MAN used to say he hated to hear of anybody dying but that it made him tired when people took to boosting some departed citizen who was no account when he was living.

  My old man said that he did not think that just the act of dying rounded up a fellow who had been petty and mean. He said the idea that you should say only good of the dead was bosh as far as he was concerned unless the dead was somebody you could say good of in life.

  Naturally he came in for some criticisms back in our old home town of Pueblo, because no matter how ornery a chap might have been our people were inclined to forget that side of him when the undertaker dropped around to his house. They then usually tried to think up a few boosts for the departed.

  My old man could not see that at all. He said he was always willing to join the boosters if they could show him where the deceased prior to shaking off this mortal coil had made any attempt at reparation for a lifetime of mistreatment of his fellow men in public or private, but that nobody ever presented him with such proof but just said he ought not to talk that way about somebody who was dead.

  My old man said he did not see why death should make liars of a lot of the living. He used to make it a point to attend the last sad rites over defunct citizens who had had no popularity in the community to say the least, and were known for traits other than philanthropy or good nature, and he said it astonished him the way even the preachers sometimes tried to make white out of black.

  My old man said he thought that set a bad example to the community. He said he did not claim that the preachers ought always to tell the plain unvarnished truth about every departed citizen, unless it could be nice truth, but he did think they should be more noncommittal.

  My old man said he could see that the unvarnished truth would often get the preachers in trouble with the surviving heirs of the departed, unless of course, the will had already been read and it had come out that the departed had left all his dough to charity and cut them off with the proverbial shilling.

  My old man would have liked the story about the no-good fellow they were burying over in Pennsylvania. A preacher who did not know the departed but had a vague idea that his character was not too hot, read a psalm and, then not altogether at ease over dismissing anybody in this perfunctory fashion, said to the handful of persons assembled at the grave:

  “And now perhaps some friend of the departed would like to say something.”

  There was a long silence and finally a mournful-looking man with a drooping moustache stepped forward, cleared his throat and said:

  “Well, if no one else has anything to say, I would like to seize this opportunity to make a few remarks on the iniquities of the New Deal.”

  My old man said he thought it was downright hypocritical for people to send big bunches of flowers to the funeral of some fellow they knew very well had underpaid his employes, short-changed his customers, oppressed his tenants and otherwise been pretty much of a heel in life.

  He said it was hypocritical to waste time following to some distant burying ground the mortal remains of a chap you disliked and who disliked you when he was alive, and when somebody once told him that it was just a mark of sympathy with the bereaved family my old man laughed right out loud.

  He remembered the time he was in Riley’s saloon taking exceptions to the liberal boosting by a friend of a lately departed citizen of considerable prominence. The friend said it was a great loss to the community and a greater loss to the man’s family.

  My old man said that he would give a small cash reward to anybody who could prove to him that the departed had ever done a lick of good for the community. He said he did not know about the man’s family but that from what he knew of the man he would bet he had his wife and children scared of him and that he was as stingy and mean with them as he was with everybody else and that they were probably relieved that he had left them.

  A good-looking young chap followed my old man out of the saloon and tapped him on the shoulder and drew him into a doorway and said:

  “Friend, I am the departed’s oldest son and I wish you would not go around knocking his memory —but between you and me, friend, everything you said is true.”

  ON PARENTS

  SOMEONE ONCE told my old man that they did not think he was any great shucks as a parent from the way he let us run around loose, and he said yes, he feared that was the truth. He said it was not his fault, however. He said he was just one of those unfortunate parents who was not a born parent.

  My old man said being a parent was a natural gift with which not every parent was endowed. He said he meant by being a parent, one who grasped the responsibilities of parenthood as a matter of instinct rather than as a sense of duty and discharged them gracefully and also gratefully.

 
He said you take his friend Grimes, now. Grimes was a switchman on the Santa Fe back in our old home town of Pueblo, who lived with his wife and seven children of varying ages in a house in Peppersauce Bottoms. My old man said he loved to visit the Grimes’ home just to observe the way Mr. and Mrs. Grimes functioned as parents.

  He said they did it without confusion, giving the impression that it was not the slightest bother in the world. He said the children were healthy, orderly and cheerful and that Mr. and Mrs. Grimes moved among them serenely and effortlessly. He said it was because they were both excellent examples of the born parent.

  My old man said of course that was the ideal combination of parenthood–both sides born parents. He said where just the lady parent was the born parent, things might work out all right, but where only the gentleman parent was the born parent it was a little awkward because as a rule he did not have the time to function properly.

  My old man said the unhappiest situation in parenthood was when neither the lady parent or the gentleman parent were born parents. He said he knew parents of that type who had only one or two children and were more unwieldy with them than the Grimeses with their seven.

  He thought there was a general misunderstanding of the terms bad parents and good parents. He said, for instance, he might not be a good parent in the sense of handling his responsibilities of parenthood easily and efficiently, but that he was not a bad parent, either, from the standpoint of providing for his offspring and in his general treatment of same.

  He said he had never but once in his life resorted to corporal punishment, and that time he got so mad that he never tried it again for fear that in his anger he might wreak serious injury. He said that alone proved he was not a born parent, because born parents know just when to give a young ’un a proper smacking, but without losing temper.

  My old man said that was just a detail, however. He said he guessed that where he fell short was in never being able to appreciate the importance of progeny and to regard them as more than something just incidental. He said he feared that like all parents who were not born parents he felt that adequately feeding and clothing and schooling a youngster completed his duties as a parent.