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Life-changing advice

Cindy on September 7th, 2009

Grace must find expression in life; otherwise it is not grace.” — Karl Barth

On vacation in northern Michigan two years ago, I visited a secondhand bookstore and stumbled on a copy of Home Edition, a collection of “Experience” columns by Nancy Brown (a pseudonym for Anne Louise Brown). One of the first advice columnists in the United States, Brown launched her column in The Detroit News in 1919 and kept at it until 1942.

Unlike most advice columnists of the era, Brown wrote “Experience” from the seasoned perspective of middle age, counseling her readers on everything from financial worries to marital woes. Her responses were always compassionate — and considerably longer than the bite-sized paragraphs spooned out in newspaper columns today.

Having been a columnist several times in my own writing life, I’ve always taken a special interest in the work of other  columnists, past and present.

Until recently, though, my yellowed copy of Brown’s Home Edition simply occupied space on my bookshelf, a quaint reminder of how column writing has changed over the decades.

Then, one morning last week, I was somehow drawn to the shelf where I’d placed Brown’s book. At that very moment, I was thinking about a recent talk radio program on our country’s financial crisis. The show’s host had focused on the emotional (and spiritual) aspects of losing a job, asking her unemployed callers to share how they’ve been forced to redefine the meaning of success. Their answers were humbling — and inspiring.

So, grabbing Home Edition from the shelf, I felt my heart race when the book fell open to a letter from a desperate middle-aged man who identified himself as “Crowding Fifty.”

Writing in 1938, Crowding Fifty told Nancy Brown that he was once employed by “a large Detroit outfit” that had been forced to liquidate during the Great Depression. Before the bottom fell out, he said, he had enjoyed a life of relative prosperity that included Saturday night dances and a golf club membership. (He added that he and his family had lived within their means — albeit comfortably.)

When “the large Detroit outfit” went under, Crowding Fifty scraped together his remaining resources and tried to start his own small business. But despite his hard work and determination, that business failed, too. He’d nearly hit rock bottom.  Describing his own financial crisis, Crowding Fifty wrote: “The present so-called recession has raised havoc with my plans….By the time my insurance premiums are paid, my car expense of $25 monthly and other incidental items are cared for, there is just about enough for food and a few clothes.”

Worst of all, Crowding Fifty’s wife began shaming him in front of their kids — and soon withdrew her emotional support. His whole family, as he put it, “belittled” him.

Crowding Fifty went on to say: “It is beginning to look to me that perhaps I am a washout and a detriment to my family and, looking at it from a bystander’s viewpoint, that to avoid all future scenes and arguments and to promote content to my family, it will be the proper procedure to quietly arrange to cease living — to have my wife collect that $20,000 insurance before it is lost, too.”

While the letter was written more than 70 years ago — and its style seems formal or wooden now — the pain it expressed is still raw on the page. I fought a wave of tears while reading it. It was, if not an official suicide note, a plea to the columnist to convince him that his life still mattered; that there was some way out of the private hell that had swallowed him.

In 13 paragraphs, Brown gave Crowding Fifty a heartfelt answer, which contained some practical solutions as well as words of encouragement and comfort.

“Take a firm hold of yourself,” Brown wrote. “Square your shoulders. And tell yourself that you — are — going — to — make — good — again — and you will. I know it.”  Concluding her response, Brown asked Crowding Fifty if he would please send another letter — “ten days from now” — telling her that he had decided to start over instead of taking “the desperate step that would bring nothing but unhappiness to those who love you best.”

For several days now, I’ve been wondering if he ever wrote back.

– Cindy La Ferle

– The photo of Nancy Brown working in her office is from The Detroit News archives –

Tags: advice columnists, Anne Louise Brown, economic recession, financial crisis, Great Depression, home and family, journalism, money and family, Nancy Brown, newspaper columns, The Detroit News
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