<< Back 11/27/02 Like his dad, Eli is hooked on excess By Jay Hardwig I will admit to a certain fondness for proverb. I admire anything pithy and succinct. I have a store of good lines in my head running from Jerry Clower to Karl Marx and back — try connecting those dots — and hold Yogi Berra in particular esteem. For all of their collective quotability, however, those three cannot beat the basic wisdom of a man named Richard Leggett. Leggett was a philosophy student and family acquaintance who was quoted with some authority around my childhood home. Chief among his pronouncements were three short maxims that came to be known as Leggett’s Laws: 1. Beer is a bargain at any price. 2. There is no such thing as a bad seat at a football game. 3. Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. It is no accident that I bring these laws up now. There is cold beer in my fridge, football season is in full swing, and Thanksgiving is right around the corner: anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. Thanksgiving is not the only holiday that I associate with excess — Mardi Gras qualifies, as does my birthday — but it is the only one that comes with paid leave from work. I am already looking forward to the moment, come Thursday, when I push myself back from the table, unbutton my pants, and call for more wine. Halloween has its witch hunts, Christmas its Grinches, but there are few who are willing to speak out against Thanksgiving. In theory, it is a beautiful holiday — we give thanks for the bounty we share — and in practice it is a delight. Who in their right mind would protest the profusion of pie and potatoes that we find on this Thursday, the abundance of hot buttered rolls, the embarrassment of turkey, ham, and cranberry that piles upon our plates in the form of miniature ziggurats reaching for the stars? “Tonight, we feast!,” I am fond of shouting whenever a good meal is close at hand. On Thanksgiving, my words strike their truest chord. It is a simple calculus: eating is a pleasure, so eating lots is a lot of pleasure. “If it doesn’t hurt,” claims another epicurean aphorism from my youth, “you haven’t had enough.” I expect to hurt on Thursday night. I wish the same for all of my readers. In the bellies, that is, in the bellies. I know that there are some for whom Thanksgiving recalls not warm memories of green beans and gravy, but the sad strife of wounded families. Every holiday season brings a few tales of icy silence and dysfunctional fury. I do not tell these tales, because I do not live them. Going home for me is a treat and not a trial. I’ll give thanks for that even before the table is set. Amen and pass the gravy. This year, we head for Washington, D.C., where I’ll eat three kinds of pie and do my level best to follow Leggett’s Laws. And here the fuzzy family picture might be complete except for the 9-hour car ride. I dread the 9-hour car ride. By the time this paper hits the street, I will likely be stuck in traffic somewhere between Roanoke and Front Royal. Yea, by the time you read this — presuming you are early to the stacks — Clan Smardwig will be tired of life in the car. My butt will be numb and my back will be sore. I will have drank five cups of coffee, we will have made seven stops for potty (three for Eli, four for me), ice may well be forming on the roads, and the traffic will be starting to ooze and thicken as we get closer to the D.C. beltway. We will have listened to a little CD called “Playtime Favorites” three times, and another called the “World of Pooh” three more, and I will have a look of quiet defeat in my eyes. I am used to it by now. As a new father, I vowed never to buckle to the pap of children’s music. There would be no Raffi in my house. No, my son would grow up on the likes of Hound Dog Taylor and Mamie Smith, Dr. John and Danny Barnes. Schooled at a young age in the fundamentals of great American music, he could not go wrong. The simple-minded sing-song of such children’s classics as “Bingo (Was His Name-O)” and “Five Little Ducks” would never pollute his mind. Once again, I have eaten my words. I eat a lot of words these days. Most of my fatherly edicts have fallen by the wayside, proving that I’m not the one in charge here. We have listened to “Bingo” and “Ducks” — and all of their furry rhyming friends — many more times than I can count (and I can count pretty high). What can I say? Eli loves them. They keep him happy. When he’s happy, we’re happy. So it goes. Particularly on long car trips. Once upon a time, Nita and I chose our traveling CDs with the utmost care. Only 48 could fit in our CD wallet, and their selection was an art. We aimed for just the right balance of voice and style and song, intent on constructing a brilliant pastiche of American music to accompany our travels through the heartland of our country. We rarely failed. We still pick out traveling CDs, but it’s largely a formality now. They are destined to sit untouched in their wallet, gathering dust as we wear out our copy of Playtime Favorites. Dr. John and Danny Barnes will have to wait. Mamie Smith does nothing for my boy. I am toying with the idea that the flatted third is an acquired taste, that an appreciation of syncopation and a dropped beat are later milestones in a child’s development. When he’s 4 he’ll dig it, I tell myself, or 7 or 10 or 20. But the truth is, I don’t know if he’ll ever listen to the music I hold dear. Time will tell on Hound Dog Taylor, but for now, it’s “Playtime Favorites,” again and again and again and again. Eli doesn’t drink beer, and he’s never been to a football game, but this much I can say for sure: he follows Leggett’s Third Law to the letter. Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. Play it again, Sam. (Jay Hardwig is a writer and teacher who lives in Asheville. He can be reached at smardwig@charter.net)