The Saturday Evening Post May/June 2018

Patrick Perry, our Executive Editor, celebrates his 40th anniversary this July. For all that time, he has been a mainstay of our company and an indispensable member of The Saturday Evening Post team. Pat’s wisdom and expertise have been vital to shaping the magazine and helping make it an important part of readers’ lives. From his first day in 1978, Patrick realized he had found his calling at the Post. “I love being immersed in the world of ideas,” he says, “constantly learning new things.” One of those things was how to be a first-rate reporter. Then-editor-in-chief Cory SerVaas, M.D., taught him to overcome his natural shyness in order to ask tough questions. “I learned to press hard for the truth.” Pat’s family’s story epitomizes the Post’s mission of celebrating America. His…

Wings! The painting of the sandhill crane on the cover of the March/April issue looks so real I can almost feel the rough surface of the canvas every time I touch it. Marcia VanDenBerge, Mount Vernon, Illinois Aldo Leopold, the great conservationist, once warned that one day there might be a “last crane.” The fact that 80 percent of sandhill cranes pass through that small patch of Nebraska sure seems scary. Thank goodness someone is preserving that bit of marsh for the cranes. Thomas J. Straka, Pendleton, South Carolina The Fighter Margie Goldsmith’s essay “I’m Still Here” about her battle with cancer (My Word, March/April) has the rhythm, personality, and detail of a true blues song with melancholy and humor gorgeously mixed! Unforgettable. Sherry Suib Cohen, online comment I am wiping away the tears as I read “I’m…

We arranged care with a hospice provider, but the most they could schedule was one visit a day from a nurse and once a day from a caregiver. My father was a farmer. He was rugged, hardworking, not afraid to get his hands dirty. On most days, he was up and in his work truck before the rest of us opened our eyes, while the skies were still dark. And after a long, hard day, he came home and fixed the house and coached my softball team and attended church every Sunday without fail. To him, going to a doctor was something you did if you had a bone sticking out or needed stitches. Otherwise, you took care of your own problems — either with a shot of something from the…

Where once kids coming out of college aimed to be hedge-fund traders, some of today’s grads actually see comedy as a legit option. The comedy gods have not been kind to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Nitwits, Funny Bone, Wacko’s — the city’s three top clubs — all shut down in the last year or so, the yuks yielding to economic reality. But a new venue, called Boss’, has leapt in to fill the void. It’s situated inside a chicken-and-pizza joint. Seriously. That’s almost funny — possibly even to the itinerant comics who count on the country’s club circuit for their livelihoods. It’s a peculiar bunch, these touring stand-ups. If they’re good enough, every weekend they climb on stage to deliver a set of jokes to a crowd that’s alcohol-primed and rowdy. It…

When I was 14, I read Huckleberry Finn and realized, even at that tender age, that no man should die without at least one epic journey in his repertoire. A woman in our town recently told me I should run for president, which of course would be flattering had she not also told me Elvis was alive and farming in Iowa. Nevertheless, it made me think what I would do if I were president, and I decided I would have the government buy everyone a motorcycle. I’ve been riding motorcycles since 1977 and in that time have not committed a single act of murder, theft, or treason. From this, I can only conclude that the average motorcyclist is a model of rectitude. I’ve owned 13 bikes, a mix of Japanese and British…

This was not, it hardly needs to be said, an era when women easily became professionals. Thursday, 11:45 p.m. Leftovers I am visiting my mother at her New York City apartment. Tomorrow, we’ll go to her 60th Vassar College reunion, just an hour and a half north in a chartered bus. We’re sipping beer, and she’s telling stories about old friends and cherished college moments. Finally it’s bedtime. But first, we must boil the strawberries. “They could go bad,” she explains, dumping the clinging dregs from the green plastic pint container into a saucepan. My mother, Jean, is a lot of things — fiercely intelligent, archly funny, and sometimes a bit nutty — but she is never wasteful. She seals up her strawberry mush in a recycled mayonnaise jar, puts it in the fridge. Then…