Growing Up

Russell Baker was a longtime columnist for the New York Times, known for his sardonic humor about current events, and was also the host of Masterpiece Theater for twelve years. One might think that the host of such a show would have grown up among fancy, educated people, but that wouldn't be true. In fact, his mother got him a subscription to a series of great novels, but he didn't read them.

This is one nugget from Growing Up, Baker's memoir, written in 1982, and which won a Pulitzer Prize (Baker is the only person to win a Pulitzer in the journalism and arts and letters categories). He died last year, at the age of 92.

Baker was born in rural Virginia. Both of his parents had many siblings, so there are a variety of aunts and uncles, mostly uncles, such as Charlie, who never worked, and Harold, who was full of tall tales. His grandmother, Ida Rebecca, was a tall imperious woman who was at odds with his mother, who of course is the most important person in Baker's life. It was real "Waltons" type living: "They had no electricity, gas, plumbing, or central heating. No refrigerator, no radio, no telephone, no automatic laundry, no vacuum cleaner. Lacking indoor toilets, they had to empty, scour, and fumigate each morning the noisome slop jars which sat in bedrooms during the night."

Baker's father died when he was very young, and his mother took him and his younger sister to live with her brother in Newark, New Jersey (there was another daughter whom she gave away to relatives). She was determined that Baker make something of himself: "The flaw in my character which she had already spotted was lack of “gumption.” My idea of a perfect afternoon was lying in front of the radio rereading my favorite Big Little Book, Dick Tracy Meets Stooge Viller. My mother despised inactivity. Seeing me having a good time in repose, she was powerless to hide her disgust."

She made him get a job selling the Saturday Evening Post, and he worked steadily, if not always successfully. He had a distinct lack of ambition, and thought that being a writer would be a good job because it didn't seem like work.

The book covers his birth up to his service during World War II, when he never left the states, spending the whole war in flight school, and then the comical courtship of Mimi, whom he would one day marry. But he dated her for years, thinking she would not be the right woman for him. "It's not in the cards," he would tell her about marriage. His mother didn't approve of her, giving her the backhanded compliment, “Mimi wouldn’t be a bad-looking girl if she didn’t use so much makeup.”

What makes this a great book is that Baker does not sentimentalize his youth. There are good things and bad things, sad and funny: "If anyone had told me we were poor, I would have been astounded. We ate well enough. There was always a bowl of oatmeal at breakfast, a bologna sandwich for lunch, and a cup of coffee to wash it down with. For supper the standard menu was chipped-beef gravy on bread, or macaroni and cheese."

He is also quite honest about his own shortcomings, especially when his mother remarries. He goes into detail about how he tormented the poor man who became his stepfather, mostly by completely ignoring him. He also discusses his dogged the fruitless attempts to lose his virginity while in the service. It seems he had his chances, but blew them by being too nice a guy. But he did take Mimi to a burlesque house on a date: "I took her to the Two O’Clock Club. It was a dimly lit fleshpot where the strippers worked on an elevated platform just behind the bar, so close to the customers you could hear their stomachs growl."

Growing Up is excellent, one of the best memoirs I've read. It's not as dramatic as some others--he lived a pretty good life, but he invests the stories with sweet humor and nostalgia. Highly recommended.