Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin

by Calvin Trillin

  “Sir, when I say this offer is a limited-time offer, I really have to—”

  “I know: You really have to get to the point. Of course. I can see that. The point is this: Uncle Harry has always talked about going to Hawaii, a one-word double. He figured that even if he didn’t get to Tahiti and Fiji and Funafuti while he was out that way, he might spend his time in Hawaii in the town of Kahului on the island of Maui. I think if he did that, Uncle Harry would be a happy man. Although I have to say that Aunt Rosie disagrees with me. She says that no matter where he went, Uncle Harry would be a stubborn, mean-tempered old coot. Of course, Aunt Rosie—”

  “Sir! Sir!”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe your Uncle Harry would like to take advantage of this limited-time offer for a trip to Hawaii.”

  “But Uncle Harry hasn’t been preselected by computer. I’m the one who’s been preselected by computer.”

  “Well, I think just this once …”

  “Oh, he would never be party to anything like that. I guess I’ve told you before what Aunt Rosie always says about Uncle Harry being as flexible as a tree stump. Take his theory that Christopher Columbus’s first New World landing was in Kansas City, near what is now the corner of Eleventh and Walnut. Why, he … Hello? … Hello? …”

  1987

  NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

  “Those who persist in thinking that I don’t take enough interest in my wardrobe are apparently not aware of how much effort goes into the selection of my Halloween costume.”

  Eating with the Pilgrims

  This Thanksgiving, our family was finally able to sit down together and give thanks over a meal of spaghetti carbonara. It has been several years, of course, since I began my campaign to have the national Thanksgiving dish changed from turkey to spaghetti carbonara—I love spaghetti carbonara—but until now invitations to have Thanksgiving dinner at friends’ houses prevented our family from practicing what I preached. This year, nobody invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner—my wife’s theory being that word got around town that I always make a pest of myself berating the hostess for serving turkey instead of spaghetti carbonara. In my defense, I should say that my daughters do not believe that our lack of invitations has anything at all to do with my insistence on bringing the spaghetti carbonara issue to the attention of the American public at any appropriate opportunity. They believe it may have something to do with my tendency to spill cranberry sauce on my tie.

  I’ll admit that my campaign might have been inspired partly by my belief that turkey is basically something college dormitories use to punish students for hanging around on Sunday. I’ll admit that early in the campaign I brought up some advantages that are only aesthetic—the fact, for instance, that the President would not be photographed every year receiving a large platter of spaghetti carbonara from the Eastern Association of Spaghetti Carbonara Growers. As King Vittorio Emmanuelle once said to his Chancellor of the Exchequer, “Spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees.” I’ll admit that I would love to see what those masters of the float-maker’s art at the Macy’s parade might come up with as a three-hundred square-foot depiction of a plate of spaghetti carbonara. I’ll admit that I’d find it refreshing to hear sports announcers call some annual tussle the Spaghetti Carbonara Day Classic.

  My campaign, though, has been based also on deeper historical and philosophical considerations. Nobody knows if the Pilgrims really ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving dinner. The only thing we know for sure about what the Pilgrims ate is that it couldn’t have tasted very good. They were from East Anglia, a part of England whose culinary standards are symbolized by the fact that any number of housewives there are this week serving Brussels sprouts that were put on to boil shortly after the Pilgrims left. Also, it’s all very well to say that we should give thanks by eating the meal our forebears ate, but, as it happens, one of the things I give thanks for every year is that those people were not my forebears. Who wants forebears who put people in the stocks for playing the harpsichord on the Sabbath or having an innocent little game of pinch and giggle? In fact, ever since it became fashionable to dwell on the atrocities of American history—ever since, that is, we entered what the historians call the Era of Year-Round Yom Kippur—I have been more and more grateful that none of my forebears got near this place before 1906. We had nothing at all to do with slavery or massacring Indians or the slaughter of the American buffalo or the assorted scandals of the Spanish-American War. It used to be that an American who wanted to put on airs made claims about how long his family had been here. Now the only people left for a firstgeneration American to envy are the immigrants who arrived in the last half-dozen years. They don’t even have to feel guilty about the Vietnam War.

  Naturally, the whole family went over to Raffeto’s pasta store on Houston Street to see the spaghetti cut. It’s important, I think, to have these holiday rituals. As the meal began, I asked the children if they had any questions about our forebears.

  “Was Uncle Benny responsible for the First World War just because he was already in St. Jo then?” my younger daughter asked.

  “Not directly,” I said. “He didn’t have his citizenship.”

  “Is it really true that your grandparents got mixed up about American holidays and used to have a big turkey dinner on the Fourth of July and shoot fireworks off in the park on Thanksgiving?” my older daughter asked.

  “At least they had nothing to do with snookering the Indians out of Massachusetts,” I said. “Be thankful for that.”

  Then, as is traditional, I told the children the story of the first Thanksgiving:

  In England a long time ago, there were people called Pilgrims who were very strict about making sure everyone observed the Sabbath and nobody cooked food with any flavor and that sort of thing, and they decided to go to America where they could enjoy Freedom to Nag. The other people in England said, “Glad to see the back of them,” and put on some Brussels sprouts to boil in case any of their descendants craved a veggie in 1981. In America, the Pilgrims tried farming, but they couldn’t get much done because they were always putting each other in the stocks for crimes like Suspicion of Cheerfulness. The Indians took pity on the Pilgrims and helped them with their farming, even though the Indians thought the Pilgrims were about as much fun as a teenage circumcision. The Pilgrims were so grateful that they invited the Indians over for a Thanksgiving meal, and the Indians, having had some experience with Pilgrim cuisine in the past, took the precaution of bringing along one dish of their own. They brought a dish that their ancestors had learned many generations before from none other than Christopher Columbus, who was known to the Indians as “the big Italian fella.” The dish was spaghetti carbonara—made with pancetta bacon and fontina and the best imported prosciutto. The Pilgrims hated it. They said it was “heretically tasty” and “the work of the devil” and “the sort of thing foreigners eat.” The Indians were so disgusted that on the way back to their village after dinner one of them made a remark about the Pilgrims that was repeated for generations and unfortunately caused confusion among historians about the first Thanksgiving meal. He said, “What a bunch of turkeys!”

  1981

  Harold the Committed and Halloween

  A couple of weeks ago, Harold the Committed asked me again if I wanted to see civilization as we know it destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, and I had to admit that I didn’t. He always asks me that question, and I always give him the same answer. I can’t imagine what led him to think that my position on the destruction-of-civilization issue might waver. What kind of person does Harold the Committed think I am? Sure, there are days when things don’t go quite the way I had hoped they would. Occasionally I go through what I think of as a multi-motor day: The automobile repairman says we need a new motor, the dishwasher repairman says we need a new motor, the clothes-dryer repairman says we need a new motor. Even on a multi-motor day, though, I don’t sit down with a drink when it’s all over and say to myself, “Well, if that’s the way it�
��s going to be, I would like to see civilization as we know it destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.” I’m much more likely to say something like, “But didn’t we just get a new motor for the dishwasher?”

  I didn’t go into all of that with Harold the Committed, of course. What I said was, “I’ve given this issue a lot of thought, Hal the C, and I remain firmly opposed to the destruction of civilization as we know it in a nuclear holocaust. You can count on me on this one.”

  “What are you doing about it?” Harold the Committed said.

  “As it happens, you’ve caught me at a bad time, Harold the Committed,” I said. “You know I’m not very political just before Halloween.”

  I wasn’t just spinning an alibi for Harold the Committed. Just before Halloween, I always have a lot on my mind. For one thing, I have to decide on a costume for the Halloween parade. Are people getting tired of my ax murderer’s mask? Should I take advantage of my uncanny ability to bark like a dog by going as an unhappy Airedale? Harold the Committed finds it difficult to understand how I can spend so much time agonizing over a costume for the Halloween parade; he goes every year as an unemployed coal miner.

  My Halloween responsibilities go well beyond my own costume. I have to be a consultant to my daughters in the matter of their costumes, since my wife’s attitude toward Halloween, I regret to say, borders on the blasé. I have to take part in serious discussions about the possibility that my daughters and I might encourage my wife to wear something more appropriate than a token witch hat.

  “Daddy, I don’t really think you’re going to be able to persuade Mommy to wear that long, crooked witch’s nose with the warts on it,” one of them is likely to say.

  “Well, how about these individual, rubberized, easy-to-remove face warts?” I say hopefully.

  “Halloween can be approached as an opportunity,” Harold the Committed was saying. “Like any other public event, it can be used as a platform for making a political statement.”

  The last time Harold the Committed started talking about Halloween that way he ended by suggesting that my ten-year-old daughter, Sarah, go to the Halloween parade costumed as Emma Goldman. She decided to go as a chocolate-chocolate-chip ice-cream cone with chocolate sprinkles instead.

  “What’s your daughter Sarah going as this year?” Harold the Committed asked.

  “She’s leaning toward the idea of going as a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Hal the C,” I said.

  “She really doesn’t have a lot of political awareness, does she?” Harold the Committed said.

  “It’s not her awareness she’s worried about, it’s other people’s,” I said. “Last year not everybody was aware that she was supposed to be a chocolate-chocolate-chip ice-cream cone with chocolate sprinkles. A couple of people thought she was a tube of toothpaste. She figures a mayonnaise jar would be a little more explicit.”

  I knew what was coming next, and, sure enough, Harold repeated a suggestion he seems to make every year: “Maybe your daughter Abigail could go as the dangers posed to our society by the military-industrial complex.”

  “We don’t have anybody at home who can sew that well, Hal the C,” I said. “Abigail’s going as an M&M.” Abigail has never been much impressed with Harold’s costume suggestions, particularly since he persuaded his niece to go as a peace dove and everyone thought she was supposed to be Donald Duck.

  “It’s a matter of paying lip service or making a political statement through every aspect of your life,” Harold the Committed said. “Everyone must make a decision.”

  “I’ve decided, Hal the C,” I said. “I’m going as an ax murderer again after all.”

  1982

  Christmas in Qatar

  (A new holiday classic, for those tiring of “White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells”)

  VERSE:

  The shopping starts, and every store’s a zoo.

  I’m frantic, too: I haven’t got a clue

  Of what to get for Dad, who’s got no hobby,

  Or why Aunt Jane, who’s shaped like a kohlrabi,

  Wants frilly sweater sets, or where I’ll find

  A tie my loudmouthed Uncle Jack won’t mind.

  A shopper’s told it’s vital he prevails:

  Prosperity depends on Christmas sales.

  “Can’t stop to talk,” I say. “No time. Can’t halt.

  Economy could fail. Would be my fault.”

  CHORUS:

  I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar,

  Or someplace else that Santa won’t find handy.

  Qatar will do, although, Lord knows, it’s sandy.

  I need to get to someplace pretty far.

  I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.

  VERSE:

  Young Cousin Ned, his presents on his knees,

  Says Christmas wrappings are a waste of trees.

  Dad’s staring, vaguely puzzled, at his gift.

  And Uncle Jack, to give us all a lift,

  Now tells a Polish joke he heard at work.

  So Ned calls Jack a bigot and a jerk.

  Aunt Jane, who knows that’s true, breaks down and cries

  Then Mom comes out to help, and burns the pies.

  Of course, Jack hates the tie. He’ll take it back.

  That’s fair, because I hate my Uncle Jack.

  CHORUS:

  I’d like to spend next Christmas in Tibet,

  Or any place where folks cannot remember

  That there is something special in December.

  Tibet’s about as far as you can get.

  I’d like to spend next Christmas in Tibet.

  VERSE:

  Mom’s turkey is a patriotic riddle:

  It’s red and white, plus bluish in the middle.

  The blue’s because the oven heat’s not stable.

  The red’s from ketchup Dad snuck to the table.

  Dad says he loves the eyeglass stand from me—

  Unless a sock rack’s what it’s meant to be.

  “A free-range turkey’s best,” Ned says. “It’s pure.”

  “This hippie stuff,” Jack says, “I can’t endure.”

  They say goodbye, thank God. It’s been a strain.

  At least Jack’s tie has got a ketchup stain.

  CHORUS:

  I’d like to spend next Christmas in Rangoon,

  Or any place where Christmas is as noisy

  As Buddhist holidays might be in Boise.

  I long to hear Der Bingle smoothly croon,

  “I’m dreaming of a Christmas in Rangoon”—

  Or someplace you won’t hear the Christmas story,

  And reindeer’s something eaten cacciatore.

  I know things can’t go on the way they are.

  I’d like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.

  1994

  Iran for Christmas

  For Christmas, I took over Iran for Alice. I don’t mean I went there with a band of mercenaries recruited from the better Manhattan saloons, took over the government, and presented Alice with all of the rights and privileges accruing to the Peacock Throne. I try to avoid travel during the holiday season. What I mean is that I took over keeping up with what was happening in Iran, giving Alice a little extra time to devote to the Middle East peace talks and the January sales.

  On Christmas, there was a moment when I feared that I had not chosen well. As I watched her open the package containing Iran—I had wrapped it in some rather colorful paper whose print, it seemed to me, suggested a Persian rug if viewed in that spirit—I thought I saw the flicker of a frown on her face. “She was hoping for the SALT talks,” I said to myself.

  I had thought about getting her SALT instead of Iran. I knew she despised protracted negotiations. Once, having heard on a talk show that presenting surprise gifts for no particular occasion was one secret of keeping the romance in a marriage, I had returned from the office on a rainy, uneventful Tuesday and announced to Alice that she need no longer concern herself with a British
coal strike then in its third week. She was ecstatic. SALT, I realized, was a drearier subject than Iran—lacking even the stimulation of a story now and then about some particularly revolting act of conspicuous consumption by the Shah and his family. But the papers had not been carrying much about the SALT talks, and there were thousands of words daily to read about Iran. Somehow, SALT had seemed a smaller gift.

  “Actually, I thought about getting you the SALT talks,” I said tentatively.

  “Oh, no. This is much nicer,” Alice said. “It was just that the wrapping seemed a little tacky.”

  “You said a few weeks ago that you hated worrying about how to pronounce Ayatollah Khomeini. Was that a hint?”

  “Well, it’s certainly true, anyway,” Alice said. “Also, plowing through those oil production figures was a bore, and all of those endless speculations about whether or not ‘American intelligence was caught napping’ just made me sleepy. This is perfect. Really. I love it. Just think of not having to concern myself anymore about knowing whether the Shah is about to leave and where he might go! I was beginning to feel like a travel agent.”

  “Probably the United States, although Gstaad has also been mentioned by informed observers in Tehran,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I was just telling you what’s in the paper this morning,” I said. “The gift has begun.”