Andy Rooney_ 60 Years Of Wisdom And Wit Part 8

People often complain about inaccuracies in news stories. They talk as if reporters were deliberately inaccurate or in on some conspiracy, and this is almost never the case. No reporter sets out to write a distorted or inaccurate story. They sometimes come out that way because reporting is hard and some reporters aren't good enough. They also come out that way because a lot of people are very secretive and tell the reporter what they'd like to have printed, not what the facts are.

This all comes to me now, because this morning I got a letter from a boyhood friend I haven't seen in thirty-five years. I knew him as "Bud," but now his letterhead says his first name is "Cornelius" and he's vice-chairman of a big corporation in Oregon. He was a wonderful friend when I was young, but I don't think I know him at all now. After some personal words, he went into a tirade against the news organizations.

Being attacked by businessmen isn't a new experience for most reporters. I heard Lewis Lapham, then editor of Harper's Magazine, Harper's Magazine, attacked one evening by a Texan with huge coal interests in Montana. attacked one evening by a Texan with huge coal interests in Montana.

"You people know nothing about business," the businessman yelled at Lapham.

"You're right," Lapham yelled back, "and it's probably a d.a.m.n good thing for business."

When businessmen say newspapers and television don't cover business very well, it makes me nervous because in many cases I think it's true. It is also true that it is business's own fault. Information about any business in town is almost impossible to get. They say they have a right to privacy, and I agree with that, but they're being stupid by not being more open, and I'll bet they won't won't agree with me. agree with me.

It is possible now, because of the Freedom of Information Act, to get information out of government. It has been a great thing for the American public but, of course, there is nothing like that requiring business to reveal its its business. Some businessmen claim they are secretive so their business. Some businessmen claim they are secretive so their [image]Contemplating a model of New York City compet.i.tion won't find out what they're doing and how, but that seldom stands up to inspection. The compet.i.tor usually knows all all about the business across town. As a matter of fact, the plant manager used to work for Acme and one member of the Board of Directors of Allied is a former vice president of Acme. about the business across town. As a matter of fact, the plant manager used to work for Acme and one member of the Board of Directors of Allied is a former vice president of Acme.

The average business keeps its operation a deep, dark secret mostly out of habit. If the secret is not dark, at least that's the impression they give the American public. It is Mike Wallace standing in front of the locked gates saying, "They refused to talk to us." It suggests there is something evil going on in there, and nine times out of ten there is not. The average businessman in America takes as much pleasure and pride from making a good product as he does from the money, but you'd never guess it from the public image he projects.

You could take the books and the production plans of any good company in America and print them on page one of the local newspaper, and it wouldn't alter the operation one bit. That includes printing the salary of every maintenance man and executive in the place. Business is simply too secretive about everything. They don't have anything more to hide than the rest of us.

The corporate public relations people who do the best job for their company are the ones who lay it on the line. They tell you the truth, even if it hurts a little. The ones who do their companies the most damage are those who try to hide little mistakes or keep information secret that would be better made public even when there is no law demanding it.

The American public is as suspicious of Big Business as it is of Big Government, and what I'd like to say to my old friend Bud is, business would do itself a favor and get better reporting in newspapers and on television if it opened up. If the company is making a good product for an honest profit, the truth won't hurt it.

On Work and Money Procrastination I t isn't working that's so hard, it's getting ready to work.

It isn't being being up we all dislike in the morning, it's up we all dislike in the morning, it's getting getting up. Once I get started at almost any job, I'm happy. I can plug away at up. Once I get started at almost any job, I'm happy. I can plug away at any dull job for hours and get some satisfaction from doing it. The trou Procrastination 119 119 ble is that sometimes I'll put off doing that job for months because it's so tough to get started.

It doesn't seem to matter what the job is. For me it can be getting at writing, getting at mowing the lawn, getting at cleaning out the trunk of the car, making a piece of furniture or putting up a shed. It's a good thing I wasn't hired to build the Golden Gate Bridge. I'd never have figured out where to put that first piece of steel to make it possible to get across all that water.

There is some complex thing going on in our brains that keeps us from getting started on a job. No matter how often we do something, we always forget how long it took us to do it last time and how hard it was. Even though we forget in our conscious mind, there is some subconscious part of the brain that remembers. This is what keeps us from getting at things. We We may not know but our subconscious knows that the job is going to be harder than we think. It tries to keep us from rushing into it in a hurry. may not know but our subconscious knows that the job is going to be harder than we think. It tries to keep us from rushing into it in a hurry.

There is a war going on between different elements of our brain. If I consciously remembered how difficult something was the last time I did it, I'd never do it again. The wonderful thing about memory is that it's just great at forgetting. Every Friday afternoon in summer I drive 150 miles to our summer house in the country. I always look forward to being being there and I always forget how much I hate there and I always forget how much I hate getting getting there. My subconscious remembers. It keeps me fiddling around the office Friday afternoons, putting off leaving. The drive can take anywhere from three to four hours, depending on the traffic, and I hate it so much that sometimes I spend two of those four hours contemplating selling the place. there. My subconscious remembers. It keeps me fiddling around the office Friday afternoons, putting off leaving. The drive can take anywhere from three to four hours, depending on the traffic, and I hate it so much that sometimes I spend two of those four hours contemplating selling the place.

The following Friday, I can't wait to leave the office for the country again but my subconscious puts it off. It keeps me from getting started. It It remembers the drive even if I don't. remembers the drive even if I don't.

One of the jobs my subconscious is best at putting me off getting at is painting. My subconscious is absolutely right. I probably shouldn't start [image]With longtime editor Robert Forte it even though I enjoy it once I get going. Once again, my subconscious remembers what I forget.

I look at a door or a fence or a room and I say to myself, "I ought to give that a coat of paint. It'll take two quarts of paint. I'll need some turpentine and a new brush. No sense fooling with those old brushes."

My subconscious sometimes puts me off the paint job for months but eventually, against its better judgment, I buy the paint, the turpentine and the brush. I put on my old clothes, get a screwdriver to remove the top of the paint can and then I look more carefully at the room. Now I begin to see what my subconscious saw all along.

There are many things to do before I start to paint. I have to move everything out of the room, I have to replace a piece of the baseboard that is broken and I have to sc.r.a.pe and sand the places where the paint is peeling. And I better go back to the hardware store to get some s.p.a.ckle to fill the cracks in the ceiling. While I'm there, I'll pick up some undercoater for the new piece of baseboard and the Fired 121 121 s.p.a.ckled cracks. I'll have to let it dry overnight so I can't start painting today.

It is quite probable that it is this wonderfully intelligent subconscious part of our brain that makes us want to stay in bed another hour every morning. We We want to get up. want to get up. It It knows that just as soon as we get up, the trouble will start all over again. knows that just as soon as we get up, the trouble will start all over again.

Fired T here's something wrong with anyone who's never been fired from a job. If I'm ever in a position to hire someone, I'm going to be very suspicious of anyone who comes in looking for work with a resume that doesn't include the information that he or she got the ax a couple of times either for incompetence or insubordination.

What's all this resignation business? Doesn't anyone get fired anymore? You read the business pages of the paper, and presidents of corporations are always resigning. From a cushy $250,000-a-year job? Come on, fellas. We're not business tyc.o.o.ns, but we're not that dumb. You got canned.

The whole business of resignation is false, and it's part of a new philosophy we seem to have adopted. There aren't any losers anymore.

At children's birthday parties, they play games in the cellar or the backyard, and the parents having the party give away prizes. It doesn't matter how well or poorly a child plays a game, he'll probably get a prize anyway, because the adults don't want to damage his little psyche by making him think he might not always win in life.

Most high school teams in any sport have co-captains now. Sometimes they have more than two. No one wants to hurt the feelings of a good player by choosing someone over him for the job. Sometimes the professional football teams have six or eight men trot out on the field for the coin-tossing ceremonies.They're all co-captains. Not a loser in the crowd. I hope we never decide not to hurt the feelings of one of the presidential candidates by electing co-Presidents. One President is plenty.

Last week I read where someone won $34,000 for finishing second in a golf tournament. Second! Imagine making $34,000 for losing losing a game of golf! a game of golf!

The President is always saying he's "sorry" to have to accept someone's resignation. If he was really sorry he shouldn't have accepted it. All of us are using the word "sorry" too lightly. We're always saying we're sorry when we aren't really sorry at all. It's all part of the same refusal to face things as they are.

We're excusing everyone for everything. A boy of seventeen kills the man who runs the candy store for $1.35 and a Tootsie Roll.

The boy's parents find a b.l.o.o.d.y hammer under his bed and they confront him with it.

"I'm sorry," the boy says. "I killed him, but I didn't mean to do it."

The father looks at the mother with tears in his eyes and says, "At least he's honest."

The next day the neighbors are interviewed by a television reporter. They all say he was a nice quiet boy who always went to church. They don't bother to say that he was a bully, that he'd been stealing all his life and that he was rotten through and through.

We keep letting ourselves off the hook. No one wants to judge anyone else by strict standards for fear he'll be judged by them too. No one wants to say to someone on the job, "You just aren't good enough. You're fired."

Broke Has everyone been desperately broke?

Maybe not. I always a.s.sume that there are very few experiences or emotions that aren't universal. I've been seriously broke twice in my life.

Broke 123 123 It's a feeling you never forget and although it's been twenty-six years since I didn't know which way to turn for money, I never see anyone out of a job and without a dollar in his pocket without knowing how he feels.

There are still times when I think about being broke. At night when I empty the change out of my pocket and put it on top of my dresser, I often recall, in those terrible old days, adding up my change to see if I had two dollars.

There are chronically poor people who would laugh at what I went through because it wouldn't seem very bad to them. My wife and I were never hungry. My father was retired but he had made a comfortable living even during the Depression, and my wife's father was a doctor. They wouldn't have let us get to the point where we were out on the street and without food, but you know how that is. There's an unwritten code. There are people you don't ask for money and my father and my wife's father were two of them.

I don't know who makes those rules but we all know them. Certainly if I'd asked, either would have given me money. Maybe that was it. They'd have given it to me, not loaned it to me. They would have been disappointed that I had to ask.

My father's brother was a salt-of-the-earth lawyer in a small town in New York State, fighting petty political corruption and providing free legal services to people who couldn't afford to pay him. He and my aunt never had children and I was the closest thing to a son he had. When he came to visit us when I was a child he would often slip me a five-dollar bill as he was leaving. You don't forget an uncle like that.

In desperation one year, I went to him and asked for five hundred dollars. One of the terrible memories of my life is that I never repaid him. He died three years later without ever having been able to take pleasure from thinking that his favorite nephew was a responsible person. He didn't need the money but he must have looked for some token payment from me and I never made it. I always meant to but I never did.

About fifteen years ago we were doing better but we needed $2,500 to help pay for one of the kids' college tuition and my wife went to the bank for a loan. Banks are a better place to go for a loan than an uncle is. They aren't disappointed if you don't pay them back. They get you.

By this time I was making enough money so we weren't in desperate need of the loan, so as the joke goes, we didn't have any trouble getting it. The interest was probably 7 percent.

A year or so later I asked my wife if we were going to pay off the loan in a lump sum, or just continue paying the 7 percent interest each year. Being in no way a business tyc.o.o.n, I had the feeling we should pay it off. She does all our bookkeeping and banking, and she didn't think we should. She was right. I'm not sure to this day if we ever paid off the loan.

Now, of course, I appreciate that it's the only good joke we ever played on a bank. We won because interest rates rose. If we have the $2,500, and it's invested, maybe in the same bank's money-market fund, and we get 9 percent interest, we are beating the bank for 2 percent on $2,500. It is not at all like failing to pay back my uncle.

This all occurred to me today because yesterday an old friend asked me to loan him money. Of course I'll loan it to him but I wish he hadn't asked. It breaks the unwritten law. It changes our relationship. I don't want to think about it every time I see him and I don't want him feeling uneasy about it when he sees me but that's what will happen.

Being broke is a terrible feeling but it's probably an experience everyone ought to have once in a lifetime. If you've never been really broke, you can't possibly understand how nice it is to have a little money in the bank.

A Cash Standard 125 A Cash Standard 125 A Cash Standard T here's something about having a thick stack of money in your pocket that gives you a feeling of wellbeing. I smile more when I have money in my pocket. Even too much change will do it for me if the change is mostly in quarters and quite heavy.

It occurs to me to mention this today because I've noticed that the more money I make, the less I use. I'm talking about actual cash, green paper money. Earlier in the week I took an overnight trip from New York to Washington. Before I left, I cashed a check for a hundred and fifty dollars. When I got back to New York late the next afternoon, I still had more than a hundred dollars. The surprising thing was that I had that little left because I hadn't really paid for anything. The fifty dollars went out in petty cash for tips, taxis and newspapers. I charged my airfare, my hotel room and my meals.

Like most people, when I sign for something on my credit card I consider it to be free. Paying for the item is postponed to some indefinite time in the future. The bill will come in a lump sum and will bear no relationship in my mind to any service or goods that I actually got for that amount.

The trouble with doing all these things with numbers instead of with real money is that it takes the fun and the satisfaction out of the exchange process. What's rewarding is to work hard to make money and then to take that money and buy something with it that makes life pleasant or easier.

There used to be a joke about a wealthy recluse who went to his bank once a week and made them show him his money. He wanted to make sure it was still there.

We all know our money isn't really in the bank, it's in the bookkeeping machinery, but I feel the way that old guy did. I'd like to see my money in real life once in a while. Those numbers they send me aren't any fun at all.

I can't get over how little I see of my money these days. One summer when I was in college I worked at a paper mill for forty dollars a week. Every Friday afternoon they gave me my pay in an envelope and I've never made money that was as satisfying to me as that. I don't care how big my check is, it can't match that forty dollars I got in cold cash.

Today the company mails my check directly to the bank. After a while, the bank mails me a slip of paper saying the check has been deposited. When I owe someone something, I write out a check and my bank deducts that from my account. It's all terribly unsatisfactory. Collecting money or paying it out can be a rewarding experience but bookkeeping is no fun at all. If I had my way, I'd have every penny I earned turned over to me in cash and I'd pay most of the people I owe with the money in my pocket.

I understand perfectly well that it wouldn't be practical sometimes but it would be more satisfactory and, furthermore, if the federal government handled its accounts in cash, there'd be a lot less waste. It's one thing for a government official to sign his name to a piece of paper transferring a billion dollars from one place to another, but it would be quite different if he had to show up with the actual money in dollar bills and hand it over. Just counting it would make everyone think twice and there'd surely be cameras around to record the event.

Money ought to be more tangible than it is today, not less. We're treating it too lightly because we can't see it. I don't understand the ramifications of a return to the gold standard but I have a feeling pennies ought to be copper, dimes ought to be silver and it wouldn't do any harm if we had some little fifty- or hundred-dollar gold coins in circulation. We need money that's really worth something.

The money game is being played with numbers that are too big for most of us to comprehend. Only lawyers, bankers, computer experts and government officials understand money as a statistic. Most of us get no kick at all from a computer printout of a bank's idea of our net worth. What we want is that lump in our pocket.

Savings 127 Savings 127 Savings How much of your income do you spend and how much do you save for later?

Some of those people who are always announcing things in Washington announced that Americans saved less of what they made last year than they have in all history. The savings figure the Commerce Department gave was 1.9 percent of income after taxes. That means people saved just $19 out of every $1,000.

The experts have a lot of theories, naturally, on why people aren't saving. They say, for instance, that car prices were low and good deals on loans were available so people bought cars instead of saving.

To use a word that was popular among my cla.s.smates in high school, "Baloney!" People aren't saving money because when they do, they get taken and end up having less than they started with. The trouble is, there is no longer a good way to save money. It used to be that people put it under their mattresses, in the sugar bowl or in savings banks, but none of these makes any sense now. Neither the mattress nor the sugar bowl pays interest and the banks don't pay much more. Not only that, people have learned that by the time they want to use the dollars they've saved, their money is going to be worth less than when they stashed it away.

Banks are smarter about money than people are. People have learned that and they're bank-shy. Even though people aren't saving much money, savings banks and other savings businesses are going to make $5 billion in profit this year. That's because of all that mortgage money they loaned out a few years ago at figures like 14 percent. The savings banks are paying something like 5 percent in interest to the people with savings accounts whose money the banks are loaning out now.

A lot of us have had to relearn what our fathers, mothers and Ben Franklin taught us about thrift. We all grew up on phrases like "A penny saved is a penny earned," "Waste not, want not" and "Prepare today for the wants of tomorrow." Savings these days, we've discovered, are better for the bank than they are for us.

When I made money delivering newspapers, my mother got me to open a savings account. Every once in a while I'd put an amount like $1.70 in the bank, and at Christmas I'd add the twenty-five dollars Uncle Bill gave me. My mother said I'd need it to help pay for my college education. Over a period of years I saved $189. The bank gave me $6.25 in interest. The trouble was, by the time I got ready to go to college, tuition, room and board were $2,000 and I realized I might as well have spent my newspaper money on the expensive Duncan yo-yo and the pogo stick I always wanted.

That's what people are doing now. They aren't saving money, they're buying yo-yos with it because they know it's too hard to save.

How do you save? There are thousands of savings inst.i.tutions keeping a total of $826 billion of Americans' money, but you can bet not many of the executives of those banks keep their money in a low-interest savings account.

I liked the idea of a savings bank. I liked it when I put that $1.70 away with some confidence that I was doing the right and the smart thing. Fortunately for savings banks, they still have $826 billion of our dollars that they can loan out at 10 percent and pay interest on at 5 percent. This is dumb money the banks have, and they have it because it's relatively safe and because a lot of people put it there from habit or because they don't know what else to do.

Many young people today who never had a newspaper route or a piggy bank just say the h.e.l.l with it. They admit they don't know how they should handle their money so they spend it.

Our whole economy is based on spending and borrowing. You just know in your bones that it's wrong. Someone has to figure a way for us to go back to the honest pleasure of saving for our own futures.

Being With People, Being Without 129 129

The Art of Living Being with People, Being Without We're all torn between the desire for privacy and the fear of loneliness. We all want to be part of the crowd one minute and by ourselves the next.

I have wended my hot, weary way back from a crowded convention to the cool, peaceful quiet of my woodworking shop set in the woods one hundred feet from our vacation home.

Today it is unlikely that I will see anyone at all between breakfast and late afternoon, when I shake the sawdust out of my hair and go down to the house for a cool drink and the evening news.

A week ago, I couldn't wait to get to where the action was. Yesterday, I went to considerable trouble and some expense to move my airline reservation up by just two hours.

A week ago, I antic.i.p.ated the warmth of friendship; yesterday, I yearned for the chilly silence of solitude. At the convention, I had enjoyed a thousand handshakes, a thousand snippets of conversation on several dozen social occasions, but now I wish to be alone with myself, perhaps to finish in my mind those conversations; perhaps to put them out of my mind completely. The great virtue of being alone is that your mind can go its own way. It isn't forced to think along the lines of a conversation you didn't start and the contents of which are of no interest to you.

It is amazing how the same brain that juggles words and ideas while fencing with friends in a crowded room can turn its power to figuring the angle of a cut in a piece of cherry wood that will make the sidepiece of a drawer fit precisely into the dovetailed front.

The conversion from convention reporter and part-time well-known person didn't take long once I got into my old khaki pants. These hands with which I hit the keys already have bits of wood chips stuck to the hairs on the back of them. I shook out my shirt before I sat down at my typewriter because I didn't want to get sawdust down in the cracks between the keys. But I am alone now, and after that hectic week, I trea sure these moments of blessed anonymity.

I love being alone. I don't feel the need for anyone. I know it won't last, though. Dangle an event in Los Angeles, in Florida or in Seattle in my face again next week, next month or next year and I'll endure the standing in lines, the crowded transportation, the inconvenience, noise and bustle to get there.

There doesn't seem to be any happy medium between too many people in our lives and too few. We look forward to our children coming home for a visit. They come with children of their own and it soon gets to be a crowd rubbing against itself until there's the irritation generated by friction. They're ready to go; we're ready for them to leave. I admire people who don't feel the need to see friends on Sat.u.r.day night or even to mingle with the crowd in the line at the local movie. I a.s.sociate the desire for privacy with intellect. The people I know who genuinely don't want to go to a party are my smartest friends. We are naturally gregarious creatures and it's the superior people who are so self-contained over long periods as not to need the inconsequential companionship that goes with a party or a night out. We all know a few.

They're either super-human beings or they're a little strange. We need each other and we need to get away from each other. We need proximity and distance, conversation and silence.

We almost always get more of each than we want at any one time.

Finding the Balance This morning I was driving to work at about 6:45, enjoying my own thoughts and the warm red glow just below the horizon, when the weatherman on the radio said the sun would be coming up at 7:14.

Finding the Balance 131 131 "It's gradually getting lighter earlier," Herman said gleefully, as though it were good news.

There's no way to predict what's going to depress us but I suddenly found myself depressed. There were emanations of the arrival of spring in that earlier sunrise. I realized a new season was coming and I hadn't finished enjoying this one.

I savor seasons. I enjoy a good, cold winter with plenty of snow. I don't want a wimpy winter. I don't want winter to last into March but I'm disappointed when we don't get enough cold weather to freeze all the ponds solid or enough snow for skiing and sledding.

It struck me, as I drove with less enthusiasm, that Christmas and New Year's were really over. They'd joined the memories of our past.

We all spend more time preparing for pleasure than we do enjoying it, but still, it's disappointing that we cease to take pleasure from so many things before they're over. Often when I'm in the middle of doing something I've looked forward to doing for weeks, I suddenly realize the enjoyment is over before the event. I'm thinking about what's next.

At a party I'm thinking about going home to bed. In San Francisco I'm thinking about getting back to Connecticut. Monday, I think of the weekend and by Sat.u.r.day night I'm looking forward to Monday.

At dinner, I often get up from the table before the meal is over to make the coffee because I've already started thinking about dessert.

This morning the first thought of the approaching spring was depressing to me because it reminded me, not of warm weather, but of the pa.s.sage of time.

I like spring because, among other good things, it means I'll soon be able to get back to my summer workshop, but please, don't rush me. The idea of spring now, in the middle of winter, does nothing but make me think of how short life is. It seems as though I just left my workshop, went to a few football games, did my Christmas shopping and the New Year's party. I'm not ready for another summer so soon.

Maybe we'll get a foot of snow next week that will put these depressing how-time-flies thoughts out of my mind.

It's difficult to get time to pa.s.s at the right speed. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I think time will never move on to morning. Some days, on the other hand, I can't hold time still long enough to do all the things I want to do.

The trick is to get a good balance of activity and inactivity in your life. You need high points to look forward to and back on but you need plenty of time in between for not doing much of anything. Not doing much of anything can be the greatest pleasure of all, if you know how to do it.

The art of living well has its geniuses just as certainly as music, painting and writing well have theirs. The greatest Old Master in the art of living that I know is Walter Cronkite. You know him as a respected newsman but believe me when I tell you his ability to live and enjoy life exceeds his greatness as a journalist. He fills all the days of his life with events, any one of which would satisfy most people for a year.