P.S. A Column On Things

The End of Checks

Since I am not Jewish, the day I became a man was in my freshman year of high school, when I got my own checkbook. This rite of passage will cease to exist sooner rather than later. My daughters got checkbooks. My grandchildren will not.

A recent story in the New York Times examined a lot of reasons checks are still used in this country, despite being greatly diminished. Curse you print! When I wrote the reporter to mention already checkless countries, he said he didn’t mention them  because there was “no room.” (I remember with the coming of the Internet I celebrated the end of space restraints, a freedom I have been abusing ever since)

Here is a partial list (mostly from Wikipedia) of countries that have ended the use of checks. The U.S., the U.K  and Australia have that as a stated goal, but can’t overcome political opposition.

• Finland stopped issuing checks in 1993, the Netherlands abolished them in 2002, and Denmark no longer uses them.
• China, South Korea, and Japan
• New Zealand

Most of Africa is expected to go straight from cash to electronic payments, with no pause in-between at checks, the same as it did with telephones, moving from nothing to cellphones with no stop at landlines.

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in

One of my favorite shows in high school, and a favorite of my friends, was the Rowan and Martin Laugh-In. Like much 60s humor, it is now cringeworthy (stereotyping gays and women), but it was funny at the time. We must just accept art for the context in which it was created. Everyone at KBPS,  my high school radio station, was in awe of the work of Gary Owens, the on-screen announcer (read about one of his shticks, making up meanings for the acronym NBC). You can hear his voice here, but rest assured the date is wrong. This is late Owens, not early Owens.

For more, catch the Netflix special Still LAUGH-IN: The Stars Celebrate, or any of the original episodes on Amazon Prime. You bet your bippy.

The Usual Gang Of Idiots

Speaking of found families, there was the Usual Gang of Idiots, to which I belonged at MIT. Those of you of a certain vintage will recognize the reference.

I never had an ounce of trouble with my birth family. They backed me 100% in every intelligent enterprise I ever undertook, and guided me away from the stupid ones.

My first year at MIT was tough, albeit it got better towards the end. But in my second year, at The Tech, Norm Sandler, Barb Moore and John Hanzel joined me in an unbreakable lifetime bond. They were all at my wedding, I was at their's.

Jobs and lovers came and went. The UGI (and Edwin Diamond) were the rock upon which I built the church of my wonderful life.

Grateful and thankful. And so much more.

The Old Days

When my grandson saw his first landline phone (at a hotel), he wondered what it was. He wasn’t sure how to dial it or talk into it.

He inspired my daughters to ask about the good old days.

I didn’t walk uphill to school both ways in the snow, because it doesn’t snow in Portland, Oregon. But we were so close to Beaumont Elementary that if we left home at the bell we could be in class before the tardy bell.

My mom remembered movies cost a quarter in the 40s, with another quarter for popcorn and a Coke. Comic books were a nickel.

In the 60s movies were a buck, as were concessions, comic books were a dime, or a quarter for the double-length “annuals” that came out in the summer.

When I arrived at MIT in 1970, the tuition was $2150, and had barely risen in decades. It rose every year I was there; there were performative “Tuition Riots,” in which the chant was “2300 is too damn much,” rising each year until my senior year, when $2900 was TFM (you figure it out). Now it is $62,000.

Homes weren’t $1 when I was a kid, as my daughters speculated. But my childhood home (3/1 with a finished basement) was worth about $50,000 (inflation adjusted) compared to $250,000 today (yes, Portland is cheaper than San Francisco).

Most homes had one telephone, usually in the hall. Because my father needed a phone in his office, we had an extension. Then, when I was in high school we had A SECOND TELEPHONE NUMBER for my brother and myself, undoubtedly one of the few in the whole city. The installer was baffled when he came to install it. I knew what a wireline phone was and how to dial it. Literally dial it, since I lived before TouchTone―which is all there is now.

Wet Fish / Sharp Stick

When I was young, unpleasant events were compared in an “It could be worse” way to a “poke in the eye with a sharp stick” or “a slap on the belly with a wet fish.” This often led me to wonder if a poke in the eye with a dull stick or a slap on the belly with a dry fish would be an improvement. I have no idea what kids today say when they want to make an “it could be worse” comparison.

Death by Any Other Name

My childhood best friend, Tom Kervin, recently congratulated me on “still being above room temperature.” My college buddy Kevin Sullivan suggested we limit our “organ recital,” the part of the conversation where people our age exchange information on our infirmities.

I suspect I will be learning more of these phrases in the years to come.

A Special Episode of PSACOT: Reruns

If your mind, like mine, is a wastebasket, you’ll recall the days when TV had a fall and spring season that added up to 39 weeks. Then they turned out the lights and went home for 13 weeks while playing reruns. This, among other things, set them up for the extinction event of the Internet.

I fondly remember NBC’s 1998 campaign: “If you haven’t already seen it, it’s not a rerun.”

That’s the way I feel about this week’s column. That, and a desire to insure continuity while I recover from my hip operation. I recognize it seems like I am duplicating my year-end double issue feature, “the most-clicked links.” But this week I’m saving you the trouble of clicking.

The World’s Best Groundhog Day The Movie Site

Modesty forbids… oh wait, it doesn’t. I created the best Groundhog Day fan site. You can tell by the URL: groundhogdaythemovie.com.

The two most common questions (among many others) are answered therein:

Why The Loop?

There is one question that has come up several times that I feel I must answer at the top of this tribute site. One of the early drafts of the script explained that Phil was trapped in the loop because of a curse, placed by a jilted girlfriend. Fortunately for the world, director Harold Ramis and writer Danny Rubin decided to drop the explanation, which is one of the major contributing factors to this being a perfect film.

How Many Times?

There has been much speculation as to how many times Phil repeated the loop. There are a few websites that speculate it was fewer than 30. I say to learn how to ice sculpt and play piano like that he repeated the day hundreds if not thousands of times. Some speculate the number is in the 10s of thousands.

Humble Brag 101

I have been dining out on my anecdotes about the Harvard freshman course Humble Brag 101 since 1974. This mandatory course teaches them to say, “I went to school in Cambridge.” And to mention it within 20 minutes of meeting any new person. Turns out I went to school in Cambridge too, and got a better education. Details: False Modesty 

I’m more Irish than I thought

In 1978 I was a business reporter for the Oregon Journal, assigned to cover a series of hearings being held in the four corners of Oregon.

I rode with several Irish staffers. We spent dozens of hours driving in Oregon’s hilly hinterlands. Radio reception was sketchy and there was often no source of sound in the car save the human voice.

Midway through the tour, Dick Feeney, a former reporter who was running an institute at Portland State, turned around from the front seat and said, “Paul, who are your people,” a question I hadn’t been asked since college.

“One-fourth Irish on Mom’s side, pure Swiss on Dad’s,” I answered.

“Well,” he said, “one drop of Irish blood makes you Irish, but you may be more Irish than you think.”

“How’s that?”

“What part of Switzerland?”

“The canton of St. Galen.”

He chuckled as did one of his colleagues.

“That explains it. You’ve held your own in conversation for hours. It is clear you've kissed the Blarney Stone.”

(He meant that figuratively, but a few years later I did it literally.)

“You see Paul, there was a wave of Celtic migration to St. Galen. There is a Celtic Cathedral in the capital. I suspect there’s more than a little Celt mixed into your Swiss as well.”

That may explain something I had noticed for years. I thought of myself as half Swiss, but all my Swiss relatives were taciturn. As Everett Dirksen almost said, Irish here, Irish there, the first thing you know you’re an almost Irishman.