Will Stanton, author

Reader's Digest; August 1968

"June 28 was my birthday and I remember waking up with the feeling that life was good. It was sunny for a change, and from my bedroom window I could see the cars crawling along the Golden Gate Bridge. I had reason to feel satisfied. I owned the apartment as well as the music shop below it - the whole building, in fact. Warren Plowright was a name people respected. I was 34 years old and had everything I had ever wanted. If there was even a small cloud on the horizon, it wasn't apparent.

Three days later outside of New Burton, Utah, I set fire to a house and drove away in a stolen car with a mobster shooting at me. Life, as someone has observed, moves in mysterious ways. Or is it the Lord that moves in mysterious ways? I guess they both do."

A LIKELY STORY, the story of Warran Plowright, who went from being too boring and predictable for his girlfriend to want to marry to chased across country by the Mob and the FBI, all while the American public rooted for his success in finding Truth and fighting for Justice.

Available in paperback and as e-books.

KEEP CLAM EVERYBOYD
by
Will Stanton
© circa 1975

A lot of people are worried about machines – afraid they’re going to take over the country. A few more years and they'll be running our lives, so the theory goes. This is the bunk - a form of hysteria brought on by reading the Sunday Supplements. A little sober reflection ought to assure anybody that we have nothing to fear from machines. American-made machines, at least. Foreign machines are something else. I found this out when I bought my imported typewriter.

Now, I've never been a great typist, but I’ve always gotten by. Then I began to notice that my new machine was playing little tricks – transposing a couple of letters here and there – little mistakes that would slip by unnoticed (like writing acreful when I meant careflu.) And it is not true, as my wife suggests, that I need glasses. My eyes are as good as ever. Better in fatc.

Of course, anybody can make a mistake, but these seemed to fall into a pattern. In casual letters the machine gave me no trouble. It was when I was making a special effort to be dignified and formal - like making a crushing retort to my bank - that's when the mistakes would rceep in. Naturally this takes some of the starch out of your remarks. It's like laying down the law to a bunch of children when you have the hiccpus.

I could type a dozen friendly notes without an error and then when I most needed a tone of condescending assurance - that's when it would get in its drity work. For instance there was my correspondence with the people at the Internal Revenue. I mentioned that I had friends at the highest levels of government and if they thought they were dealing with some noboyd they could thnik again.

I sometimes wonder why I ever bought the machine. I suppose at the time I thought of it as a sort of status smybol. And now it double crosses me every chance it gets. It will go along fine, lulling me into a sense of false security and then when I least expect it – opw!

There's this wise guy that lives next door. I must have asked him politely a dozen times to keep his hi-fi turned down. This got me exactly nowhree. So I wrote him a note and he answered riqht away. Said he was sorry he'd been playing his hi-fi too lodu. Said he’d keep it turned dwon in the future. That's the worst of the situation - it opens the door for a lot of cheap humro. I have it on good authority that a lot of these people have been posting my letters on the bulletin board. Big edal.

My wife thinks it's all in my imagination. “You actually believe your typewriter is in some kind of conspiracy against you?” she asked.

"Not just the typewriter." I said, ”all our foreign stuff."

She said if I believed that I was in bad shape. I needed help.
She was wrong. They're all in it. Take my daughter's imported radio. She can understand it fine and I can't make out one word in ten. This is their technique – widen the generation gap - cut family ties - divide and urle.

"How about our Japanese camera?" I asked. ”All those pictures we took out on the patio? You mentioned yourself how squinty I looked.”

"That has nothing to do with the camera," she said, "I've been telling you all along you need glasses."

"The other night when we were cooking on the hibachi," I said, "you didn't notice anything unusual?"
'You almost asphixiated everybody,“ she said, "but I wouldn't call that unusual."

She missed the point completely. It wasn't the amount of smoke that bothered me, it was the mushroom shape.

Now I’m not suggesting that these foreign machines are going to come out in the open and attack us. It's more insidious than that. They like to discredit the head of the household, shake his confidence, snigle him out and make him look sutpid.

"All the foreign built cars," I said, "you"ll admit they're nothing but trouble?”

”No, but a lot more of them have been running into us," I pointed out.

It all fits - all part of the pattern. These machines have never been Americanized. Their loyalties lie elsewhere. And they’re out to get us, mrak my words. Fortunately a few of us have been alert to the danger, and forewarned is forearmed as the saying oges.

Above all we must keep calm and not apnic. It is not too late. If we stand together we have nothing to fear but fear itslef.

And time is on our isde.

STOPPING BY THE BANK ON A SNOWY AFTERNOON
By
Will Stanton
(Based on Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening")
circa 1990

Whose bank this is, I think I know.
His house is in the country, though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his vaults fill up with dough.

The corner cop must think it q***r
To stop without a tavern near
Between the bank and pizza shack
The coldest Friday of the year.

He gives his holster flap a whack
To let me know he's keeping track.
The only other sound's the flit
Of Datsun, Olds and Pontiac.

The bank's employees all have quit,
But I have grounds for watching it,
And bread to make before I split.
And bread to make before I split.

Countries Will Stanton's FB page followers live in. One in India teaches English as a second language and has used Will's stories in his classes.

Revised second edition of A LIKELY STORY is available now through online book sellers, in paperback, Nook and Kindle formats.

When Warren Plowright asked his girlfriend to marry him, she said no, that he was too boring, safe and idealistic. That was on his birthday. Three days later he was racing across the country with the FBI and the Mob chasing after him. A villain to some; a hero to many, as the American public listened to updates on the search for him and began to root for him, that he would be able to find the evidence he needed to clear his name.

Will Stanton entertained America for fifty years with his humorous short stories and articles that appeared in numerous magazines, including the Reader’s Digest, which made him a staff writer, and Woman’s Day, which sent him and his family on several trips to get story material for travel articles.

Born and raised in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Will graduated from Princeton University, served as a glider pilot in World War II, became an avid gardener, woodcutter and tree feller, and a skilled igloo-maker for his children.

He died in 1996 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and left seven children and his wife, Betty, all of whom had generously supplied ample material for his family-based stories.

"Bedloe was right, the country is in bad shape - corrupt, cynical, power-hungry and small-minded. But, my god, it's the only country we've got. You don't abandon something you love just because it's in trouble." - A LIKELY STORY, Will's last novel. Available through online booksellers.

THERE'S NO FOOL LIKE AN APRIL FOOL
By Will Stanton
©Will Stanton 1975
Reader's Digest, April 1975

I don't think people really understand April Fools' Day anymore. Maggie says what's not understand? Well, for one thing, there are two kinds of jokes – good to bad and vice versa. The first is when somebody offers you a piece of candy (good) and it turns out to be chocolate-covered soap (bad). The second is when somebody tells you something terrible has happened (bad) and after you've stewed for a while they say April Fool (good).
"This is your idea of a joke?" Maggie asked. "Telling somebody his wife has run off with the garbageman?"
"Of course not," I said. "It has to be something believable."
"Tell that to Karl Beckenbach."
"Who's he?"
"The man that has the electric repair shop – you know. His wife ran off with the garbageman almost a year ago."
"That still doesn't mean the next fellow will believe it, just because it happened to – what did you say his name was?:
"Beckenbach," she said.
"Funny I never heard about it."
"April Fool," she said.
"That's not fair," I said. "April Fools' Day isn't until next week."
I called our two boys in. "Next Thursday is April Fools' Day," I said. "Have you made your plans?" They just looked at each other.
"You're supposed to play tricks on people – jokes," I said. "For instance, you phone the drugstore and ask if they have Prince Albert in the can. When the man says yes, you say, "Why don't you let him out?'" The boys were staring at me blankly. "Prince Albert is a kind of to***co," I said. "Comes in a can."
"That's a joke?" Sammy asked.
Sometimes I have the feeling that children today have no sense of humor. I described the old favorites – the wallet on a string, the chocolate soap. The one they like best was the mouse. I showed them how to bend a paper clip into a horseshoe and put a rubber band across with a button threaded on it. Then you wind up the button and put it in an envelope to hold it flat. When somebody opens it, the button spins, making a noise like a mouse trying to get out, and scares the pants off them.
"Remember," I said, "these things may work now, but on April Fools' Day everybody is on guard, so you have to be extra tricky."
The boys looked thoughtful. Maybe there was some hope.
When I got home Thursday, I found a wallet by the garage door. There was a cord tied to it and going around the corner. It was so clumsy and obvious it was sort of touching. I peered around the corner. The cord ran up over the edge of the roof. There was a ladder just beyond it. I climbed up until I could see over the edge. The cord was fastened to a pan of water. "Very clever," I said, "But not quite clever enough."
When I got down, I discovered that the back of the upper rungs had been freshly painted – red on the left, blue on the right. I found some turpentine in the garage to clean my hands and went in the house.
Later the boys came in. They said all the kids were out playing April Fool jokes on each other and nothing worked. "Like this." Roy held out the wallet. "There was a string on it, but nobody pulled it like you said."
"And it had two dollars in it," Sammy said. "Who would play a trick like that?"
I looked over at Maggie, busy with a magazine. "Somebody pretty devious," I said. To myself I added that it was a game two could play.
"I almost forgot," I said. "I got tickets for the ice show on Saturday. There's in my jacket. If you'd like to go, just reach in the breast pocket and bring them here – what's this?" Roy had his hand held out.
"The tickets," he said,
"Well, great," I said. "It's April first. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Anything could have been in that pocket pins, a mousetrap – anything."
"What was in it?" Maggie asked.
"Just the tickets," I said. "That was the point. Roy should have suspected something fishy and refused to reach in. Then I would have taken out the tickets and said okay I'll take somebody else. That was the trick. Why wasn't he more alert?"
Sammy asked if I'd show him how to make a mouse again. "It's really very simple," I said, and showed him. "Now if you'll get me an envelope to put it in –" I opened the envelope and found there was already a mouse in it.
Maggie ran in from the kitchen. "What happened?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said. "The boys just played an April Fool trick."
"Well," she said, "isn't that what you wanted?"
"Of course it is," I aid.
Sammy passed me the candy dish. It contained just four very dubious-looking chocolates. I said no thanks. "You sure?" Maggie said. 'You always like chocolates," She took a piece. The boys each took a piece. The three of them stood there chewing and looking at me.
"All right," I said, "let me tell you where you made your mistake. The candies looked very funny – a little too funny in fact. I was supposed to think there was something wrong and not take any. But I didn't fall for it – I just pretended to be fooled to see how far you'd go."
They exchanged sheepish looks. "If you expect to fool an old dog with new tricks –" The phone rang, and for once neither boy moved to answer it – a giveaway right there. I picked up the receiver.
"Hello" a woman said. "Do you have Prince Albert in the can?" Her voice sounded strangely like Maggie's sister's.
"Yes, we do," I said innocently.
"How much is a one pound can?" she asked.
"How much?" I said. "Well, I'm not sure –"
She said, "This is Vogel's Pharmacy, isn't it?"
"Why, no," I said. "This is a private home."
"Really?" she said. "How do you happen to carry to***co?"
"We don't," I said. "But, you see, today is April Fools' Day."
"And you wanted to play a trick."
"No, no," I said. "I thought you were playing a trick. You see, I thought you were somebody else, maybe even a relative of my wife's. You're not, are you?"
"I couldn't say," she said. "I don't even know who your wife is."
I said it wasn't important and hung up. "Wrong number," I said. There was something about the way Maggie looked – "You wouldn't happen to know anything about it, would you?"
"What's to know about a wrong number/"
I said skip it. Going back to my chair, I took the last of the candies. It was chocolate-covered soap.