In spite of my sage advice you’re set and determined to go your own, misguided way.

I’ve suspected it all along. Now, I’m sure. Because even my own staff, small and loyal as it is, doesn’t seem to get the message through to their families.

I cite you yesterday.

My assistant, whose name is Charlie but whose friends call him Chuck, which I think is very clever of them, came to me with a domestic problem.

“I want to lay my cards on the table,” he said earnestly. “My wife is going to jail. Will that affect my future with you?”

Now, I know the boy’s wife. And she’s not the Bonnie Parker or Ruth Snyder type at all. She’s a meek little girl who was raised in a remote Mexican fishing village under strict parental supervision.

To the best of my knowledge she doesn’t smoke, drink, swear in English or mess around with charge accounts.

Knights in Armor

“What happened,” Charlie told me, “is that I got home from work last night and right in the middle of the living room — big enough to cover half a wall — was a clock. It had knights in armor, electric light bulbs and medieval peasant girls climbing all over it.”

“Your wife stole a clock?” I asked in amazement.

He shook his head. “Worse,” he said. “I asked her who let that thing in. Right away she starts to whimper, ‘I told the man you wouldn’t like it.’ And I scream at her, ‘What man?’

“She tells me,” Charlie continued, ” ‘The man who came to the door selling them. He said they were only $31.25 each.’

” ‘That’s great,’ I yell at her. ‘What a bargain. Why didn’t you order two of them? After all, what good is one clock with knights and light bulbs and peasants all over it? Two would have made a complete set.’ ”

Charlie began pacing the room, pounding his right fist into his left palm.

“Well,” he went on, after regaining some of his composure, “according to my wife, the salesman told her she could pay this monstrosity off at a buck a week. And then, because he could see she was such a nice lady, he threw in a bedroom lamp with roses on the shade that blink on and off.

Blinking Roses

“You hear me?” he shouted. “Roses that blink on and off!”

He collapsed into a chair and breathed heavily a moment. “Then,” he said, “my wife tells me not to worry. She didn’t have to pay anything down. The man just told her he’d come back for the first payment in a week and if she didn’t want it he’d take it back. All she had to do is sign a piece of paper.”

Charlie began pacing again. “I asked her what she signed. She said she didn’t know. The man just asked her to sign, so she did.

“I explained to her that we were not going to pay one buck a week for that
clock no matter what she signed, even if she has to go to jail. And I mean it.”

“Well, Charlie,” I said soothingly, “that’s a little extreme. You wouldn’t really let her . . . ”

“I would so,” he snapped. “She has to learn somehow.”

After a moment, he added:

“It’ll all be for the good, anyhow. When she gets out I’ll take down her story and we can run it as an expose on how innocent Mexican girls are treated in American jails. The Tijuana papers ought to buy it in a minute.”

And that’s what I was telling you about Charlie. Small. But loyal.