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It Used To Be Said That You Had To Know What Was Happening In America Because It Gave Us A Glimpse Of Our Future. Today, The Rest Of America, And After That Europe, Had Better Heed What Happens In California, For It Already Reveals The Type Of Civilisation That Is In Store For All Of Us.

-Alistair Cooke

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It Used To Be

Alistair Cooke

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It Used To Be Said That You Had To Know What Was Happening In America Because It Gave Us A Glimpse Of Our Future. Today, The Rest Of America, And After That Europe, Had Better Heed What Happens In California, For It Already Reveals The Type Of Civilisation That Is In Store For All Of Us.

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People, When They First Come To America, Whether As Travelers Or Settlers, Become Aware Of A New And Agreeable Feeling: That The Whole Country Is Their Oyster.

It Is A Wonderful Tribute To The Game Or To The Dottiness Of The People Who Play It That For Some People Somewhere There Is No Such Thing As An Insurmountable Obstacle, An Unplayable Course, The Wrong Time Of The Day Or Year.

Hollywood Grew To Be The Most Flourishing Factory Of Popular Mythology Since The Greeks.

New York Is The Biggest Collection Of Villages In The World.

Cities In The World

Cocktail Music Is Accepted As Audible Wallpaper.

Texas Does Not, Like Any Other Region, Simply Have Indigenous Dishes. It Proclaims Them. It Congratulates You, On Your Arrival, At Having Escaped From The Slop Pails Of The Other 49 States.

America Is A Country In Which I See The Most Persistant Idealism And The Blandest Of Cynicism And The Race Is On Between Its Vitality And Its Decadence.

I Think It Was Roger Fry Who First Coined What He Took To Be A Final Definition Of A Work Of Art, Whether It Was A Painting, Building, Poem Or Hepplewhite Chair. He Said That The Best Works Of Art Are Finished Products That Preserve 'a Valuable State Of Mind'.

They Have Been Playing Golf For 800 Years And Nobody Has Satisfactorily Said Why.

I Believe Hollywood Is The Most Effective And Disastrous Propaganda Factory There Has Ever Been In The History Of Human Beings.

So The British, Of All Ages, Still Walk The Course. On Trips To Florida Or The American Desert, They Still Marvel, Or Shudder, At The Fleets Of Electric Carts Going Off In The Morning Like The First Assault Wave At The Battle Of El Alamein. It Is Unlikely, For Some Time, That A Briton Will Come Across In His Native Land Such A Scorecard As Henry Longhurst Rescued From A California Club And Cherished Till The Day He Died. The Last On Its List Of Local Rules Printed The Firm Warning "a Player On Foot Has No Standing On The Course."

The Masters Is More Like A Vast Edwardian Garden Party Than A Golf Tournament.

I Hasten To Say To Snobs From The Surrey Pine-and-sand Country That No Invention Since The Corn Plaster Or The Electric Toothbrush Has Brought Greater Balm To The Extremities Of The Senior Golfer Than The Golfmobile, A Word That Will Have To Do For Want Of A Better.

Like A Christening, A Wedding, A Graduation Ceremony, A Holy War, A Revolutioneven?a Fireworksdisplay, Agaudy Promise Of What Life Ought To Be, Not Life Itself.

These Doomsday Warriors Look No More Like Soldiers Than The Soldiers Of The Second World War Looked Like Conquistadors. The More Expert They Become The More They Look Like Lab Assistants In Small Colleges

Liberty Is The Luxury Of Self-discipline, That Those Nations Historically Who Have Failed To Discipline Themselves Have Had Discipline Imposed By Others.

It Rose Slowly Like A Gull Sensing A Reckless Blue Fish To Close To The Surface, And Then It Dived Relentlessly For The Green, Kicked And Stopped Three Feet Short Of The Flag.

To Watch An American On A Beach, Or Crowding Into A Subway, Or Buying A Theatre Ticket, Or Sitting At Home With His Radio On, Tells You Something About One Aspect Of The American Character: The Capacity To Withstand A Great Deal Of Outside Interference, So To Speak; A Willing Acceptance Of Frenzy Which, Though It's Never Self-conscious, Amounts To A Willingness To Let Other People Have And Assert Their Own Lively, And Even Offensive, Character. They Are A Tough Race In This.

Las Vegas Is Everymans Cut-rate Babylon. Not Far Away There Is, Or Was, A Roadside Lunch Counter And Over It A Sign Proclaiming In Three Words That A Roman Emperors Orgy Is Now A Democratic Institution. 'topless Pizza Lunch'.

Curiosity Endows The People Who Have It With A Generosity In Argument And A Serenity In Their Own Mode Of Life Which Springs From Their Cheerful Willingness To Let Life Take The Form It Will.

But Afterall It's Not The Winning That Matters, Is It? Or Is It? It'sto Coinawordtheamenitiesthatcount: Thesmell Of The Dandelions, The Puff Of The Pipe, The Click Of The Bat, The Rain On The Neck, The Chill Down The Spine, The Slow, Exquisite Coming On Of Sunset And Dinner And Rheumatism.

No Myth Dies Harder, And None Is More Regularly Debunked By The Facts, Than The One About International Sports Contributing To International Friendship.

[golfers] Are A Special Kind Of Moral Realist Who Nips The Normal Romantic And Idealistic Yearnings In The Bud By Proving Once Or Twice A Week That Life Is Unconquerable But Endurable.

More Than Anything Else, Though, To Anyone Who Would Write About It, Golf Offers A Four-hour Drama In Two Acts, Which Becomes Memorable Even In The Tape-recorded Reminiscenses Of Old Champs, And Which - In The Hands Of Someone Like Herb Wind - Can Become A Piece Of War Correspondence As Artfully Controlled As Alan Morehead's Account Of Gallipoli.

In The Best Of Times, Our Days Are Numbered Anyway. So It Would Be A Crime Against Nature For Any Generation To Take The World Crisis So Solemnly That It Put Off Enjoying Those Things For Which We Were Designed In The First Place: The Opportunity To Do Good Work, To Enjoy Friends, To Fall In Love, To Hit A Ball, And To Bounce A Baby.

To The Goggling Unbeliever Texans Say, As People Always Say About Their Mangier Dishes, 'but It's Just Like Chicken, Only Tenderer.' Rattlesnake Is, In Fact, Just Like Chicken - Only Tougher.

Between A Quarter And A Third Of Los Angeless Land Area Is Now Monopolized By The Automobile And Its Needs-by Freeways, Highways, Garages, Gas Stations, Car Lots, Parking Lots. And All Of It Is Blanketed With Anonymity And Foul Air.

A Professional Is Someone Who Can Do His Best Work When He Doesn't Feel Like It.

People In America, When Listening To Radio, Like To Lean Forward. People In Britain Like To Lean Back.

As Always, The British Especially Shudder At The Latest American Vulgarity, And Then They Embrace It With Enthusiasm Two Years Later

I Talk To My Typewriter And That Is What I've Been Working On For 40 Years-how To Write For Talking.

It Used To Be Said That You Had To Know What Was Happening In America Because It Gave Us A Glimpse Of Our Future. Today, The Rest Of America, And After That Europe, Had Better Heed What Happens In California, For It Already Reveals The Type Of Civilisation That Is In Store For All Of Us.

It Has Been An Unchallengeable American Doctrine That Cranberry Sauce, A Pink Goo With Overtones Of Sugared Tomatoes, Is A Delectable Necessity Of The Thanksgiving Board And That Turkey Is Uneatable Without It.

Sir Guy Campbell's Classic Account Of The Formation Of The Links, Beginning With Genesis And Moving Step By Step To The Thrilling Arrival Of 'tilth' On The Fingers Of Coastal Land, Suggests That Such Notable Features Of Our Planet As Dinosaurs, The Prairies, The Himalayas, The Seagull, The Female Of The Species Herself, Were Accidental By-products Of The Almighty's Preoccupation With The Creation Of The Old Course At St. Andrews.

Golf Is An Open Exhibition Of Overweening Ambition, Courage Deflated By Stupidity, Skill Soured By A Whiff Of Arrogance.

[in 1889] The Last Big Tract Of Indian Land Was Declared Open For Settlement, In Oklahoma. The Claimants And The Speculators Mounted Their Horses And Lined Up Like Trotters Waiting For A Starting Gun. The Itchy Ones Jumped The Gun And Were Ever After Known As Sooners-and Oklahoma Was Thereafter Called The Sooner State.

The Emblem On The Necktie Reserved For The Members Of The Royal And Ancient Golf Club Of St. Andrews - The Vatican Of Golf - Is Of St. Andrew Himself Bearing The Slatier Cross On Which, Once He Was Captured At Patras, He Was To Be Stretched Before He Was Crucified.only The Scots Would Have Thought Of Celebrating A National Game With The Figure Of A Tortured Saint.

Man Has An Incurable Habit Of Not Fulfilling The Prophecies Of His Fellow Men.

In Golf, Humiliations Are The Essence Of The Game.

Curiosity Is Free-wheeling Intelligence.

The Best Compliment To A Child Or A Friend Is The Feeling You Give Him That He Has Been Set Free To Make His Own Inquiries, To Come To Conclusions That Are Right For Him, Whether Or Not They Coincide With Your Own.

Canned Music Is Like Audible Wallpaper.

When Television Came Roaring In After The War (world War Ii) They Did A Little School Survey Asking Children Which They Preferred And Why - Television Or Radio. And There Was This 7-year-old Boy Who Said He Preferred Radio "because The Pictures Were Better.

It's An Acting Job - Acting Natural.

To Get An Elementary Grasp Of The Game Of Golf, A Human Must Learn, By Endless Practice, A Continuous And Subtle Series Of Highly Unnatural Movements, Involving About Sixty-four Muscles, That Result In A Seemingly Natural Swing, Taking Two Seconds To Begin And End.

All Presidents Start Out To Run A Crusade But After A Couple Of Years They Find They Are Running Something Less Heroic And Much More Intractable: Namely The Presidency. The People Are Well Cured By Then Of Election Fever, During Which They Think They Are Choosing Moses. In The Third Year, They Look On The Man As A Sinner And A Bumble And Begin To Poke Around For Rumors Of Another Messiah.

There Is Even - As With No Other Game - A Fascinating Detective Literature, A Wry Commentary On The Human Comedy, Implicit In The Book Of Rules.

When That Happens [the Demise Of Golf], Old Men Will Furtively Beckon To Their Sons And, Like Fugitives From The Guillotine Recalling The Elegant Orgies At The Court Of Louis Xv, Will Recite The Glories Of Portmarnock And Merion, Of The Road Hole At St. Andrews, The Sixth At Seminole, The Eighteenth At Pebble Beach. They Will Take Out This Volume From Its Secret Hiding Place And They Will Say: "there Is No Question, Son, That These Were Unholy Places In An Evil Age. Unfortunately, I Had A Whale Of A Time."

I Have An Insane Desire To Shave A Stroke Or Two Off My Handicap.

Washington's Birthday Is As Close To A Secular Christmas As Any Christian Country Dare Come This Side Of Blasphemy.

The Best Thing About Eisenhower's Presidency Was His Jeffersonian Conviction That There Should Be As Little Government And As Much Golf As Possible.

It Has Always Been Cited As An Irrepressible Symptom Of America's Vitality That Her People, In Fair Times And Foul, Believe In Themselves And Their Institutions.

The Day Of Judgment Is Either Approaching Or It Is Not. If It Is Not, There Is No Cause For Adjournment. If It Is, I Choose To Be Found Doing My Duty. I Wish Therefore That Candles May Be Brought.

I Prefer Radio To Tv Because The Pictures Are Better.

Authors Are Now Marketed Like Promising Movie Starlets And Must Rattle Around The Nation's Television Stations To Try To Assert A Salable Identity Different From That Of The Other Starlets.

Although The Jeffersonian Law ("all Men Are Created Equal") Is The First Article Of The American Faith, The Facts Of American Life Have Demonstrated For Some Time Now That It Is An Irksome Faith To Live By.

The South Is One Of Those Kingdoms Of The Mind, Like India Or Scotland, That Are Neat And Understandable Only To People Who Have Never Been There.

Every Sport Pretends To A Literature, But People Don't Believe It Of Any Other Sport But Their Own.

The Scots Say That Nature Itself Dictated That Golf Should Be Played By The Seashore. Rather, The Scots Saw In The Eroded Sea Coasts A Cheap Battleground On Which They Could Whip Their Fellow Men In A Game Based On The Calvinist Doctrine That Man Is Meant To Suffer Here Below And Never More Than When He Goes Out To Enjoy Himself.

Americans Are Less Mystical About What Produced Their Inland Or Meadow Courses; They Are The Product Of The Bulldozerm Rotary Ploughs, Mowers, Sprinkler Systems And Alarmingly Generous Wads Of Folding Money.

If Computers Take Over, It Will Serve Us Right.

I Wrote To Mr. Mcenroe, Senior. I Said: "here Is The Sentence Once Written By The Immortal Bobby Jones. I Thought You Might Like To Have It Done In Needlepoint And Mounted In A Suitable Frame To Hang Over Little John's Bed. It Says, The Rewards Of Golf - And Of Life, Too, I Expect - Are Worth Very Little If You Don't Play The Game By The Etiquette As Well As By The Rules." I Never Heard From Mr. Mcenroe, Senior. I Can Only Conclude That The Letter Went Astray.

For Many Years I Had An Impression Of My Golf Swing, Which Was That I Vividly Resembled Tom Weiskopf In The Takeaway And Dave Marr On The Downswing. Unfortunately, There Came A Day When I Was Invited To Have My Golf Swing Filmed Via A Video Camera. Something I Will Never Do Again. When It Was Played Back, What I Saw - What You Would Have Seen - Was Not Weiskopf And Marr But A Man Simultaneously Climbing Into A Sweater And Falling Out Of A Tree.

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