Apples and trees and where they fall, I never paid much attention.  I’ll be 81 soon, and I’m still trying to sort out four generations of letters, papers, pictures and such.  Every time I get into it, something brings me up short.  This time a newspaper article fell from a folder that my parents kept, with notes and reminders for my brother Ken and me (more like a volume).  So many memories!!

The piece was by H.I. Phillips, the renowned journalist for The New York World Telegram and Sun, for his column, The Sun Dial.  It chronicles an exchange between father and son around the time of Ike’s election in the early 50’s.

I read and reread the column, a back and forth about college grades and why?  The scenario is familiar to a lot of us.  The father’s reply is classic in more ways than one.  Enjoy the excerpt:

Letter from a college boy to his father…

Dear Dad:

Well, I guess you will be a little disappointed over my marks this term, but I am trying very hard and am two grades ahead of a lot of boys in my class.  I flunked in Advanced Wall Scaling, but passed in elemental Transom Research and will not have to take the course in Door Battering all over again next year.  I am studying very hard, especially nights.  Two nights this week, I studied so hard I sprained a leg on a fire escape and got hit over the head by a couple of coeds for being too slow climbing into their room.  But do not worry.  All I need is one more bra to graduate.

Love,

Donald

The reply…

Dear Son:

Your Mother and I are, of course disappointed that you have not done better in the studies prescribed for classrooms.  However, these are strange times, and I suppose a boy has a right to be just as crazy as adults. I can see that a bad example has been set for you at high places.  The president of the United States has been trying to scare the pants off everybody, the Treasury Department has been snatching our shirts and scores of politicians have been giving justice the big slip.  Looking at the picture you might excusably get the idea that there was a future in such behavior.

I do not approve of your conduct at all, but must admit in a world in which grownups are engrossed in perfecting instruments of manslaughter, ultimatum hurling, singing hymns of hate, leering at honesty, hooting standards of decency, cheating on their own security programs, and crashing through red lights, a little panty and bra snatching can be accepted as a comparatively minor offense.  If nothing more than a few undies were being brazenly seized by some of our more notable adults it would be a break.  Maybe youth is discovering a real solution to the world problem of peace and war.  It is quite possible if we could get all the influential adults of all nations to stop what they are doing now and begin shinnying up dormitory walls and through transoms with demands for nothing more than an old girdle there would be an immediate improvement in the global situation.

However, I am not certain of anything.  Events and trends baffle me. Observing the general college scene, all I can hope is that you show an occasional flash of intelligence and remember there is no genuine future in idiocy.

Love,

Dad

There is a universal quality to this dialogue between father and son that transcends the narrative and leads to a simple and lasting truth!!!

Why I’m reading this for the first time after 60 years, give or take, is not as much of a mystery to me as one might think.  My dad was a master of apocryphal to make a point, occasionally misplaced!  Son Graham might see some of him in this also.  Let’s hope it’s just a good read for his sons: Graham, Bradley, and Duncan with a heads– up for their sister Tory.

Apples and trees!!

George S.K. Rider