JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

I’ve been mulling over this charge from the editors of the Daily Pilot

to its readers--of which I am one--to send in an account of “whatever

you’re thankful for.”

I found that trying to single out any one person or event for special

gratitude on this day of Thanksgiving is almost impossible because I have

been blessed by so many people and events. But the exercise did set me

reflecting, and in that state two things happened to illuminate my

search.

First, I was part of a restaurant dinner party that included two young

people who were bored with adult conversation. So I showed them how it is

possible to flip a spoon high in the air by propelling it with another

spoon. In the process, I remembered that I had learned this trick from a

genie named Stuart Standish, who for many years appeared periodically and

unexpectedly in my life when I most needed some perspective.

A few days later, I read in the TV listings that KCET-TV Channel 28

would be offering a 90-minute tribute to Chuck Jones--the animator who

gave us Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Road Runner--on Thanksgiving Eve.

I realized that these two men--in quite different ways--showed me how

to make life enormously less stressful and enormously more fun. First, by

not taking myself--my work but not myself--terribly seriously. And,

second, by removing the guilt from my built-in sense of irreverence.

Reverence is defined in Webster’s as: “Deference; profound respect

mingled with love and awe.”

The irreverence I learned--first in the military, then from these two

men--has nothing to do with God but rather is a healthy effort to see

human hypocrisy, arrogance, self-aggrandizement, incompetence, piety and

overstuffed ego for what it is.

Neither Bugs Bunny nor Stuart Standish bought into such nonsense, even

when they saw it in themselves.

I met Standish when I moved my family to a suburb of Chicago. He was

the real estate salesman we blundered onto when we began the search for a

home. He simply took us over, refusing to sell us a house we were

considering that he properly thought was all wrong for us and finally

losing a commission when he directed us to a new development that was

absolutely right.

After that, he would show up periodically at my office in downtown

Chicago or at our home with wondrously wise talk or games to play. He

delighted my children and made my wife and me take a fresh look at

matters that seriously needed to be examined through the prism of

irreverence.

We saw him only infrequently after we moved to California. I would

always look him up when I passed through Chicago, and after his wife

died, he grew restless and would appear on our doorstep without warning

on some quest or another. He would only stay long enough to bring his

brand of fresh air into our lives.

The last time we saw him, he was burdened down with diving equipment

while on the way to Hawaii. We never heard from him again. Repeated

efforts I made to track him down in Chicago failed. But the fresh air

remains.

I grew up with Chuck Jones’ various alter egos--a smart-aleck rabbit,

a cynical duck, a “wily” coyote, among numerous others. Most of them

appeared in delicious cartoons called Looney Tunes that I watched in

cavernous movie theaters in the midst of the Great Depression. They

helped us survive through laughter. They also helped a whole generation

of Americans who soon would be fighting a global war to leaven their

courage and dedication with a sense of humor, of irony, and--yes--of

irreverence.

So my long acquaintance with Jones was through his animal

characters--until two years ago. Then I discovered he lives in Newport

Beach after he wrote me a strong letter in support of the sentiments

expressed in one of my columns.

That led to a meeting, some delightfully irreverent conversation,

another column and a signed pencil drawing of Daffy Duck frowning at me

and saying: “For Joe, who loves and detests the same things I do.”

Jones wrote in his book “Chuck Amuck” that cartoonists use animals

because “it is easier to humanize animals than it is to humanize humans.”

That may be true of everyone but Jones, who told me he wouldn’t get a

dog until he was 91 “because then I can be reasonably sure the dog will

outlive me, and he’s the one who will have to grieve.”

Where he once lightened my early life with his cartoons, he is now--at

87--illuminating the other end of my life with comments like this: “I

don’t pay much attention to age. I didn’t know how to act 6 when I was 6,

and I don’t know how to act 87. I feel like a young man who has something

the matter with him. It all adds up to how good you feel about the life

around you.”

I’ll be watching KCET for more comments like that--and to relive some

of those Looney Tunes. And I’ll be thanking Chuck Jones and Stuart

Standish on Thursday for helping me for so many years to feel good about

the life around me.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column is

published Thursdays.