Henrietta Hay's Column

With another year about gone, I have been re-reading some of the mail from the past twelve months. I enjoy it all, but the kind I like best, of course, the kind that agrees with me. Occasionally, however, I get a letter that proves that either: (1) I didn't say what I meant; or (2) somebody didn't like what I meant! And that's OK too, because if we all had the same opinions, it would be a very dull world. Actually is a very exciting world.

The column that got the strongest negative reaction was, to my surprise, the one about "Thelma and Louise." I commented that I had resisted as long as I could the temptation to comment on this film, and the writer felt that I should have continued to resist. She had some valid points, but the letter involved political rather than artistic opinion. The writer concluded with, "I will not suggest that you squelch your First Amendment rights, only that you expand your thinking capabilities before you take on an issue so volatile to the movement for which it appears you stand." I still think Thelma and Louise was a great movie.

The column on responsibility struck a chord with a lot of people, especially those of my generation. I wrote about the modern tendency to blame everything that happens to us onto someone else and quoted Harry Truman's famous comment, "the buck stops here."

Once I referred to a game we played when I was a kid, which involved throwing a ball over a shed. I couldn't remember the name of it. Several readers told me that it is called anty-over. I knew that! I did discover that a lot of people used to play it.

One day I wrote that I started driving before it was necessary to have a driver's license in Colorado. A reader called me to tell me that he knows one was required by 1935. He became 18 that year and remembers it well. But I learned to drive several years before that, and I do think that licensing was not necessary then. My reason is pretty solid. My father was the most law abiding of men and I am quite sure he would not have allowed his only daughter to start adulthood as a law-breaker.

And I've had a lot of favorable comments on my tongue in cheek suggestion that we move Thanksgiving Day to March. One woman says that "two trips to grandma's house over mountains in the snow (Grand Junction to Denver) in four weeks time is strenuous." She has written a serious letter to Senator Simpson of Wyoming, seconding the suggestion of a class of third graders that Thanksgiving be moved to the third week in October. Another said, "I would support a campaign to move the Holiday to a time in the year when it would not be crowded or infringed upon. I wish you were serious!" I am, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to take it on as a major cause.

The piece on Albert Schweitzer's lectures in Aspen during the Goethe Bicentennial in 1949 brought lots of response from local people with fond memories of that special event. One reader said that he was twelve that summer and he and his mother spent the entire two weeks of the Festival in a small trailer just back of the big tent. They heard all the wonderful music and attended both of Dr. Schweitzer's lectures. He even had a copy of the lecture, which he loaned me. All of those who were there reported having felt the same kind of awe that I did on seeing and hearing the great man.

One reader wrote about guilt that, "I try to be a middle of the road housekeeper, somewhere between never and always. You so aptly pointed out that it is guilt that keeps us from slipping in the wrong direction." And we had unanimity on one subject. Cleaning the refrigerator is an onerous task that not a single woman - or man - who called me enjoys doing. And I discovered a copy of my column on auctions on the bulletin board at one of the local auction houses. Ah fame!

One of the great things about writing, when I tear myself away from the word processor, is the exchange of ideas. But I still have to take exception to the letter I quoted last year, "You shouldn't be a writer if you're biased." Sure I should. Otherwise there would be nothing to say.