This Great Festival of Consumerism - 23 June 2000

One hot morning during the prohibition era of the 1920s in the steaming, swampy state of Louisiana, a veteran, southern politician was consulted by a solid citizen who was new to politics but was about to run for a state office.

He said to the veteran: "There's so many issues disturbing our beloved state that I don't know what I shall pick out to run on."

And the veteran barely paused to re-light his cigar and said: "You can't go wrong if you come out against taxes and for mother."

The newcomer was grateful. He went away, campaigned and he won.

And shortly after he took his seat in the state legislature he voted for a certain measure which involved a small additional tax on the sale of what the old law books called "spirituous liquors" which, remember, were forbidden.

In this case a tax was on the illegal distilling of rye whisky. No sooner had the measure passed, then the man went home well pleased with himself for his constituency was made up of pious, abstemious Baptists.

But next morning he had to receive in his office a delegation of outraged citizens. He put them off while he said he would take counsel with his mentor.

He went off to the old senator and said: "I did like you said, I came out for mother and against taxes and now they're mad at me because I voted that itty bitty tax on the whisky - and they're all Baptists."

The old man drawled: "They may all be God-fearing Baptists and strong for prohibition but they're also human beings."

"What," asked the helpless man, "do I do now? They said: 'You promised no new taxes and you just passed one.' "

"What you do brother is what I did in similar circumstances, you say: 'Well then, I just lied didn't I?' "

No politician ever had to lie in promising to honour his mother or swearing on oath that she made the best apple pie in the nation.

Mother's Day was never like Thanksgiving or Independence Day declared a national holiday by solemn proclamation of the president. Its origins lie deep in the mists of sentimentality.

But, at the moment, I think there's no doubt that Mother's Day was, in reality, an invention of the florists and telegraph companies.

But, by now, there is not a living politician in this country who would dare oppose the inventors' bright suggestion that the second Sunday in May be henceforth celebrated as Mother's Day.

And there it is in the calendar Sunday 14 May is marked as Mother's Day as certainly as Sunday 23 April is inscribed Easter Sunday.

And I was going to say "more recently" but I thought I'd better to check and I was amazed to discover that since 1935 a nationally organised society has sacredly dedicated the third Sunday in June to Father's Day.

So last Sunday throughout millions of American homes I'm sure there was a ripple of sighs and ooh and ahs for good old pop, accompanied, I'm sure, in more places than I'd care to count by a rumble of soft groans from sons who realised too late they ought to have sent a card at least.

One brave young man was seen last Sunday in the huge crowd at Pebble Beach in California. He was, of course, behind the ropes and wearing round his neck a big scrawled sign. It said: "Sorry Dad, I had to watch Tiger."

I don't know how long the ordinary American family's been paying attention to Father's Day but I can only say that people who regard themselves as upper middle class families, especially progressively-educated families, have consistently spurned Father's Day.

They used to ignore Mother's Day, but as progressivism along with the hula hoop and psychoanalysis began to fade from fashion and the silent conservative majority found its voice and gave thumping majorities to Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the sales figures of flowers, telegrams and other celebratory baubles soared enormously.

I, myself, was excused from making a decision on both days since my parents were long gone.

But I discovered that today "oh you shouldn't have" comes as easily to my lips as to any flag-waving, tub-thumping American. My son sent me the video tape of a favourite old movie that's long been missing from the huge list of films available at retail.

My reverend daughter sent me a box of folded personal notepaper, brightened on the cover by her elegant sketch of the old elegant colonial church up in the mountains of Vermont of which she is the pasteur.

I can only say this: when you're on the receiving end I believe the most progressive curmudgeon would find it an agreeable occasion.

Well, last Sunday morning before these goodies had arrived I was brought up short, astonished and sent into a head-shaking mode when I turned a page of the New York Times and there was a half-page advertisement with some such line as "Help Dad putter around."

The illustration was a photograph of a putter, such as many dads would have been using or about to use that Sunday, or rather I should say not this putter.

It was a silver putter, flat-bladed, simple - and it was priced at $785.

Now apart from its being a meaningless present for any golfer - as distinct from someone who, yes, plays golf - the designing and choosing of a putter is as delicate a business as choosing a wife - but apart from the pointlessness of a silver putter and the staggering vulgarity of it, what brought me up sharp out of my improving view of my son and daughter was the silver putter as a frightening symbol of the current rollicking American economy.

What that silver putter reminded me of at once was the late 1920s, the heyday of the great Coolidge prosperity, the headlong pleasure cruise of the characters in F Scott Fitgerald, and in life.

I was very much alive to all that and during that dizzy summer of 1929, marvelling at the wild forms of spending in America and at the prophetic powers of the American president, one Herbert Hoover, and his impressive announcement that the United States had once for all achieved a plateau of permanent prosperity.

Of course I didn't know then, nor did anybody, that he spoke one month before Wall Street crashed and that murky cloud way off on the horizon and coming our way was a worldwide slump, to be known as the Great Depression. A slump cured only 10 years later by the making of the weapons of war and by war itself.

I remember being shocked then to read that, and this is still the summer of 1929, that a famous American department store was offering for sale at a stupendous price twin model Rolls Royces with the promise that the licence plates, whatever numbers they contained, would also have on one car the word "his" and on the other "hers".

A venerable American institution is lapsing. A national survey says that the old custom of college boys getting a summer job is "falling out of favour" - they'd rather have fun.

Well this week I read too about a new American pursuit, a pursuit of hotel managers, called "elite napping". Let me elaborate.

A youngish businessman, an accountant, discovered that he'd spent 195 nights in hotels, always at the hotels of a single chain.

I should have said that this staggering statistic was also discovered by the manager of another chain and this manager immediately called the accountant and offered him, from then on, always his own suite with lots of wines and the most unctuous service that his hotels could supply.

His old hotel chain begged him to return to the fold, a fold that would now be equally luxurious.

But the second chain jumped in to add that, of course they would give him at all times, from now on, his own, what we used to call, head porter and everybody now calls concierge.

When the 20s prosperity came to its abrupt, brutal end and we all began to read a philosopher economist who explained and deplored the passing period of what he called "conspicuous consumption" - we're back in it again.

So what is the chief or rather the most conspicuous concern of this happy prosperous American people?

A huge howl out of the Midwest, half the size of Europe, at gasoline, petrol's, going up from a dollar 65 - which is the equivalent of a British pound - going up to almost 40% more.

An outrage, and it disturbs every kind of person and all the Congress because when you look for the cause, the culprit, every source from Opec to a local tax man give different answers. I have counted up more than a dozen culprits.

What riles everybody about the rising cost of gasoline is they don't know for sure who to blame.

And is there in this spending spree, this great festival of consumerism that we're going through, is there a discernible note of fear, apprehension, recall of 1929 and beyond?

Not that you'd notice. Maybe it's because I was there throughout the long, dark 30s. Maybe because I was born a Methodist.

But my spontaneous response to that question is the recollection of the first time I went out alone to play St Andrews.

It was a rare, dazzling Scottish day, a clear day, sparkling sea, balmy air.

"Goodness," I said to my old caddy as we swung off down the first fairway, "it's a most beautiful day."

He sniffed and said: "Aye, but there'll certainly be a price to pay for it."

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