Delivering the Last Writes for a Career Finale

Clickety-click go the keys of The Times’ word processor. Clickety-click. Do you hear what the keys are saying, Dick and Jane? They are saying, “Goodby.” They are saying “Goodby” because this is my final column. I am retiring.

Do you know what retiring is, Dick and Jane? Well, it’s something like going out to play after you’ve worked hard in class learning how to read and write for a long, long time. You know how good it is to go outside to play with your friends after you’ve been working so hard in a stuffy old classroom.

Well, that’s kind of like retiring. Only it’s something that only old people do, like me. It’s going out to play as long I please, without having to go to work again unless it’s something I want to do because it’s fun.

It’s not much fun anymore to run and jump with happiness at my age. My legs and breath are out of practice. But there are other ways of running and jumping with happiness without really doing it physically. When you grow older, you’ll learn of these things.

When you have children and grandchildren and a wife who loves you and you love her, you will run and jump with happiness inside you, and you will see sunsets and rainbows and puppy dogs and leaping porpoises and moonlight lying on the sea in a silvery path and roses blooming and you will hear beautiful music and hear birds singing and smell spring springing, and you will read fine books and look at paintings that go to your heart and you will have friends that go there, too, and you will know how it is to run and jump with happiness inside you--even though your legs and breath are out of practice.

Now, that’s a very long sentence, and I won’t suggest that you write such lengthy sentences at your age. In fact, I won’t suggest you write them at any age. But I’m sure the editor will be kind and not cut that long sentence up into a lot of short sentences because this is my farewell column. I’ve always wanted to publish a very long sentence like that in the 45 years I’ve been writing professionally, but some fussy editor, who has the last word in such matters, has always made mincemeat out of my lovely long, long sentences.

Editors are like your teachers, Dick and Jane. They know best--most of the time. Or if they don’t, they pretend they do. When you get older, you’ll find that most people are like that sometimes--even yourself when you catch yourself unawares. Even presidents of the United States can be like that.

I can’t speak for sure about God. But He did make the giraffe. And if that’s not a horse pretending to be something else, I don’t know what is.

My best advice to you two is to pay strict attention and respect your teachers--to their faces anyway--because they really know much more than you do now. Learn all you can, especially about reading, writing and arithmetic, trust in God, and, as a wise old doctor once told me, keep your bowels open, and someday you also can retire and then go outside into the fresh air and play and play and play, until it’s time to sprout angel wings.

I can’t honestly urge you two to drink plenty of milk, because I never cared much for plenty of milk. When I first got into the newspaper business on the old Long Beach Independent, I had a wise editor named Funkhouser who claimed that good bourbon whisky had virtues that milk lacked.

He said bourbon was an antidote for bad writing, from which I suffered terribly then--and still do. Writing is not easy work, even bad writing when you want to make it less bad, which I’ve been struggling to do all my working life. A little bourbon after a hard day of trying to make bad writing less bad, he said, improved the mental outlook and settled the stomach.

Funkhouser had the most settled stomach of any man I ever knew. It was his best feature, and he died from it.

And so, Dick and Jane, the lesson here is that if you must drink milk, or drink anything at all, drink it in moderation. Learn moderation early in life and it’ll come easier later on. Be moderate in everything you do, except in happiness and in love, and you won’t be likely to die of a settled stomach before you retire.

Well, kids, that wraps it up. After nearly 20 years in this space (since Sept. 3, 1968), the time has come to relinquish it.

And so, clickety-click, clickety-click, Dick and Jane. Do you hear it? Do you hear what it says? . . . Now it’s only an echo.

Be moderate in everything you do, except in happiness and in love, and you won’t be likely to die of a settled stomach before you retire.