Remembering Paul Crume

On February 17, 1952, a column entitled “Big D” appeared on the front page of the Dallas Morning News. Every Sunday through Friday for the next 24 years, “Big D,” by Paul Crume, graced the front page of the morning paper. Paul Crume, with his unique blend of wisdom and whimsy, was a breakfast-table tradition for thousands of Dallas families.

Born in Alpena Pass, Arkansas in 1912, Crume arrived in Texas with his family in a covered wagon and settled near the town of Lariat. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1936, he went to work for the News, his lifelong employer. During the 24-year life of his column, he never missed a deadline – and never made one with more than a few seconds to spare. He never read his column in the paper the next day. His last column appeared on November 13, 1975; three days later, Paul Crume died. “Big D” died with him. No one tried to fill his place on page one.

Herein are a few prized pieces from the several thousand he wrote. (Excerpted from The World of Paul Crume, edited by Marion Crume, to be published in May by the Southern Methodist University Press. All selections appeared originally in the Dallas Morning News.)



An Open Mind Already Made Up

The only man I’ve ever known who was never wrong was Throckmorton Jenkins, who lived in a half dugout and farmed 320 rich acres in the Lariat country.

He was a tall, enormous, square-looking man. His great, square hands, his great, square face, and his clodhopper-shod feet made him look as rudely made as a Karloff Frankenstein monster. His demeanor was always grave. He was never known to laugh or make jokes. His eyes were always thoughtful.

Asked his opinion about anything from the President of the United States to the bog where the water drained into Main Street during a rain, he had one invariable reply: “Well, I been thinking about it.”

Like Miniver Cheevy, he thought and thought and thought about everything.

He had never finished grade school, but what he had learned he knew. He could still parse a sentence and decline a verb. He was expert at figuring the area of an odd patch of ground or the angle that a rafter had to be cut, and he was much admired for his ability to estimate the probable weight of an animal.

Throck never got caught in any of the quarrels which shook our town. He was just thinking about it all during the schism at the Baptist church, when the members siding with their resident minister threw the dissidents out of the church house. He refused to take sides in the argument over whether the young high school coach and the girl English teacher ought to be fired because they were so brazen as to have a date and go to the movies in Clovis, traveling the whole ten miles together without a chaperone.

Pressed for an opinion on these serious matters, Throck always replied gravely, “You got to consider the pros and cons.”

All except once. The druggist once tried to make conversation by saying, “Throck, what do you think of the World Series this year?”

“World what?” he exclaimed. Nobody knows yet whether he was a very wise man or a very timid one. He was never adequately tested.

Throck was not a fence-straddler, really. He was known to believe strongly that school should be turned out two weeks at cotton-picking time so that the kids could be put in the fields and be made to do something useful for a change. He was against tobacco in any form and the use of strong drink, whether it be whiskey or Coca-Cola.

Once the county judge decided to make votes in an election by proposing that the county put caliche on the town streets. When he found out the country districts were going to snow him under, he switched sides. Throck was disgusted.

“If they’s anything I can’t stand,” he said, “it’s a man that can’t make up his mind.”

A town wit summed him up pretty well. “Throck,” he said, “has an open mind that has already been made up.”

– January 4, 1970



How to Shame the Politicians

They say there is a lot of immorality today in politics, which is probably true, politics being generally a pretty good mirror of the human animal. The human animal never accepted morality until he was herded into it, and he is always trying to escape. An immoral thing is usually some-thingdone by somebody else who got caught. Immorality in another man is likely to be your own lovable quirk of character.

Years ago, out on the high baldies of West Texas, Bully Means was accused of not handing out the trading stamps he had advertised to his customers unless they demanded them. Bully’s argument was that if the customers didn’t ask for them, he had no right to force the stamps on the customers.

The Primitive Baptist minister, who was the only man who could bring Bully to his knees in repentance once a year, asked Bully whether he didn’t think holding back the stamps was immoral.

Bully was incandescent in his indignation.

“Immoral?” he roared. “What has my holding back the green stamps on people got to do with girls?”

Since the touchstone of morality to him was girls, he was a very moral man. He had a large, possessive, and angry wife who managed to keep tabs on him just about all the time. She once called the county sheriff and had him arrest Bully, the town banker, and two prominent merchants for playing penny ante in the back of the filling station after midnight. Considering Mrs. Means, Bully had more compulsions to be moral than most men.

I have already decided that I cannot change up morality on the national level and that I will just try to rearrange my own morality, painful though that may be. If enough of us do this, maybe we will shame these politicians into practicing our saintli-ness.

First, I have resolved never again to use the company’s paper in the pursuit of private projects except in emergency circumstances where I have a chance to make five dollars or more quick. When it is necessary for me to use this paper, I will mail the company an anonymous letter enclosing a quarter and saying that I took a newspaper from an honor box. This takes care of the morality of that.

Also, I will never again give the managing editor inflated reports about all the work I have done in a given period. I just won’t mention it, and he will usually be too busy to ask.

I will not again tell anybody that I taught John Galsworthy how to write.

When I join the Boy Scouts again, 1 will not weasel about the Scout Law except that part that says a Scout is brave. This always was a lie so far as I was concerned. I am an authentic coward. These are stringent reforms, but stringent moral measures are needed now.

In return for my stringent sacrifices, I would like people to notice my morality more and to compliment my new halo. I would appreciate it if people didn’t come around saying, “Sir, this credit card you offered us is two years out of date.”This isn’t a matter of morality. It deals with chronology.

Also, ducking out on my part of a tab is not morality. It’s economics. And walking a red light when no policemen are around isn’t morality. It’s irresistible.

– June 10,1974



Strange Bedfellows



lady who wishes to be signed “Anon” says that she has racked her brains over what it is that makes strange bedfellows and still does not know what it means. This is no wonder. It comes from the credibility gap of Charles Dudley Warner.

Politics make strange bedfellows. That’s what Charles Dudley Warner wrote in 1870 in a book called My Summer in a Garden. People have been repeating it ever since. The trouble is that nobody believes Charles Dudley Warner ever said anything.

For instance, Charles Dudley Warner said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” The populace decided that Charles Dudley Warner couldn’t have said this, and everybody attributes it to Mark Twain, Warner’s friend.

As a matter of fact, their only collaboration was a novel called The Gilded Age, a kind of disaster. Neither man could write a novel, but old Sam Clemens was a genius who could overcome by sheer power whatever he lacked in technique. Charles Dudley Warner was not a genius.

As a result, people nowadays think Charles Dudley Warner never said anything. But Charles Dudley Warner said a great deal, part of which he probably should have thought twice before saying.

Warner apparently was a scholarly looking man, slim, handsome, craggy of head and face, and endowed with a good mane of gray hair. He is supposed to have titillated the ladies as much as decorum would allow in those days.

His mother’s people came over on the Mayflower, and the family apparently never fully recovered from the voyage. Warner never had enough money, but he went to Hamilton College. Later, he tried working as a lawyer and surveyor without much success. Having decided that he was going to fail at everything else, he became a newspaper columnist.

He got his job with the Courant in Hartford, Connecticut, because a friend owned the paper. This is still as good a way as any to get a job.

In the phrase of that day, he was always in delicate health. In the phrase of our day, he was lazy.

But Warner turned out to be a really fine personal essayist, warm, witty, genial, and imaginative. He was perhaps too urbane for his job. He would write an essay on the joys of camping, for instance. Any ex-soldier or Marine could tell him that this thesis is of dubious value. He also wrote about the joys of gardening, which is all right if you have a yardman.

But he did say that politics make strange bedfellows. People still don’t want to believe it. They say that a man named Shakespeare used the phrase in an obscure work called The Tempest.

But Shakespeare hadn’t any idea of some of the political combinations we run into today.

– November 29,1973



Controlling the Comma

That Paul Crume must be a real ’rugged’ individualist,” writes a North Texas reader. “He leaves commas out of where they are taught to be absolutely required – and puts them in where he damn well pleases.”

I thank my North Texas friend for this expression of high admiration.

It took several years to master the comma, but by now I have got it pretty well cowed. A great many people think that all dogs and all commas behave alike. Actually, each comma is an individual and is inclined to do willfully whatever it wants unless it is controlled. Furthermore, you can teach a comma to do a lot of tricks besides those listed in the grammars if you catch it young and train it intelligently.

Most people never learn this, but I learned it early. Now, when I say “frog,” a comma better sit up and beg. This reader’s letter indicates that he has allowed himself to be “taught” instead of grabbing control of the comma. It is a common tactical error.

Actually, commas are rather docile, but they are not as docile as most English teachers say. At any moment, one of them is likely to rear up and do something in a sentence that you hadn’t expected. You can control them fairly easily.

The semicolon is a different breed of animal. You would be well advised not to get caught in the same sentence with one unless you have a whip. I have occasionally received spectacular results with a semicolon, but they are treacherous and unreliable. Sometimes they won’t perform at all for you, and you have to throw them out.

In contrast, people have often said my work with commas has been of circus quality.

Most people never master punctuation because they get scared of these marks the minute they see them. No matter how ferocious punctuation looks, never fear. Wade into the sentence. Throw commas, semicolons, colons, and periods in all directions. Establish your authority. If you wade right into them, these punctuation marks will never bite.

For the person who has not learned to train punctuation marks to do his bidding, there are a few simple rules of composition which will help him to begin.

When you are writing something and the typewriter stops, put in a period. You are probably going to start off in a different direction or on a new subject entirely, and you don’t want to be trailing anything behind you.

If you haven’t quite stopped when the typewriter does, put in a comma. It will permit you to turn 360 degrees and still not come unglued.

Never use a semicolon. You’ll find yourself rewriting the whole sentence so the semicolon will fit in.

Never use an exclamation mark. It isn’t really that important.

– July 3,1962