Jon Tevlin -- Can't Wait to Read Your Columns

If you've ever wondered how far back my filing cabinet goes, this is your chance to get an idea.

In today's Star Tribune, the editor, Nancy Barnes, announced the names of two new columnists. Both have been at the paper for a number of years as reporters, but each had an earlier career at the local weeklies or monthlies before joining up with the Strib.

Gail Rosenblum did a wonderful stint as editor of the monthly Minnesota Parent. Jon Tevlin was on staff at the now-defunct weekly Twin Cities Reader when I first became aware of his writing. I look forward to what both of them will have to say each week.

Here, from the filing cabinet (in a folder labeled "Great Writing/Art in Media," which has now morphed into the blog's Media Goodness category) is this story by Jon Tevlin from the December 13-19, 1995 Twin Cities Reader:

Toy Story
Being a toys-for-tots kid brings joy, embarrassment and weird presents
By Jon Tevlin

In the days before Christmas they'd come dressed in long gray car coats and fedoras and rubbers that they slid over loafers. They smelled of Aqua Velva and talked in the small, measured voices that I used to hear in the back pews of the church.

I never recognized them. Later I heard that church and charity groups preferred anonymity; I guess they were doing it for us. We were on the list of local poor families who got presents and food at the holidays, and such was the shame of poverty, at least in the 1960s, that it should be handled quietly, behind closed doors and away from the curious gaze of the rest of the congregation.

If the church thought it was protecting us kids from the bitter truths, they should know that most poor kids are veterans of shame. I had years to practice the humble-yet-grateful face of a child beholden to whatever kind favor someone chose to bestow on me. I was embarrassed when my mother sent me to the store the first time with food stamps (under instruction not to buy anything conspicuous), for example, and when she sent me to pick up the government cheese, rice and honey they doled out periodically as symbolic alms to the poor.

After a while, the shame was so strong and I was so proud that I chose not to participate in our poverty. I refused to bring food stamps to the nearby Penny's Market, or pick up the free blocks of cheddar. Whenever I saw the church men coming up the steps with a bag full of Christmas presents, I did what my older brother and sister did: I hid.

It's not that we didn't appreciate the gesture. We did, and still do. They were kind people with righteous intentions doing the good deed. But the holiday charity rituals, from the receiving end, are more complex than the obligatory smiling-kid shots you see on TV at holiday time. To us, these strangers left more than gifts; they left an indelible mark about the holidays, our poverty, the nature of giving in America and the glaring discrepancy between the haves and have-nots.

Getting a few gifts was probably better for us as kids than not getting a few gifts, but, for me at least, the kindness of strangers was a kind of further evidence that somehow in this great country one of two things had happened: My parents failed me, or my country failed me. Neither option was terribly uplifting. To this day it has shaped the way I receive gifts -- awkwardly and reluctantly -- and to a certain extent the way I see the world.

The gift-getting ritual was even harder on my parents, particularly my father. He had worked the same factory job for 25-odd years before being knocked out of work by illness. The stress of the holidays was actually compounded, I think, by the sight of good-hearted people giving the gifts he could no longer give to his own children. Every knock on the door was another reminder that he could not provide. So every year he'd get depressed, go into the hospital and thus avoid the pressure.

In the early 1960s, we were probably the typical poor family, struggling to make do on a small pension and Social Security. We were not unlike a lot of our neighbors. Like a lot of them, we got care packages every Christmas from people we would never see the rest of the year.

One wealthy old friend of my father used to drive up to our small apartment building (which was across from a homeless shelter, where we volunteered for the people my parents considered truly needy), in his Cadillac and drop off a box of apples and a ham. He wore a topcoat, and his wife wore a mink. They patted me on the head, hugged my parents, said kind words and then retreated to a world my parents would never know, leaving a world they never cared to know.

In contrast was the person who every year sent a crisp $50 bill in the mail. For years it came, unmarked, unsigned, unaccompanied by a letter; a symbol of anonymous generosity without strings. I still wonder who they were, and can't help but think well of them; I'm sure the money they gave away helped them think well of themselves.

But most of all I remember the men from church, the ones with the gifts, wrapped in paper with pictures of Wise Men and cards that read: Boy, 9; Girl, 14. We were the generic poor kids, the kids without names, the kids whose faces you see on the news Christmas Day, who make you so happy and warm.

The gifts themselves were odd, funny, sad. I remember only a hideous pair of green knitted slippers with red tassels -- given to me as a teen -- and one of those snow globes, which if I recall correctly, came from the Wisconsin Dells. At age 14, my sister got a plastic Indian doll like ones you see in phony Native American stores. We still laugh uncomfortably at the presents. Or perhaps we laugh uncomfortably at being in a position to receive such odd expressions of charity.

Every year, as I grapple with my own charity, I think of what impact my gifts will have and how the recipients will feel. I think of the strangers who passed through at the holidays, bearing weird gifts. To me they possessed an alluring, mysterious aura; they were the Christmas People, consistent yet ephemeral. They came, they gave, they left. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't cherish them, either. We owed each other nothing. They were simply visitors in my own odd little winter wonderland.

(Copyright 1995 Jon Tevlin)

At the time I first read this essay, I was involved in a reading group about class consciousness, and found this piece challenged a lot of my assumptions. I had never thought about the idea of charity from the point of view of the receiver. Rereading it now, what strikes me is how balanced Tevlin is, in spite of the strong emotions that motivated him to write.

John Scalzi's blog Whatever, which I've belatedly discovered and caught up on via his compilation book Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, includes several short essays along similar lines: Being Poor, from September 2005, and Shaming the Poor from March 2008. Both of these pieces reminded me of Tevlin's essay, and I had planned to write about them, possibly referring to Tevlin, when lo and behold, today Tevlin was announced as a columnist.

As people who grew up poor, Scalzi and Tevlin share a background that is somewhat unusual among writers in America's land of theoretical plenty. I hope Jon Tevlin will use his new position to write columns that add nuance to the Strib's coverage of regular people's lives.

He's clearly got the gift of words, and I look forward to this new chance for him to share it with all of us.