For those of a certain age, good manners make the man

The Boston Herald

He didn't know me from Adam. We'd just met, talked a little, exchanged the usual pleasantries. He used to write sports for the Herald, he said. He was originally from Somerville. He was married for 43 years. He was man of a certain age.

We left the university together because we were both going home instead of staying for a dinner. He was taking the T back to Melrose. I was hailing a cab back to the paper.

He didn't have to test the ice first, literally. The street was plowed, but he, being a man of a certain age, would never let a woman walk down a street alone. So he led the way, placed his hand under my elbow and said: "Be very careful. It's so easy to slip and fall."

At the end of the street, I turned and said, "Thank you." But he wasn't quite finished with me. He made his way over a snowbank, hailed a cab, made sure it stopped and only then turned to walk away.

If he'd been wearing a hat, he would have tipped it. And if he'd been wearing a hat, he would have remembered earlier, when we were indoors, to take it off.

Young men have manners but their manners are more practical, like pottery - durable and dishwasher safe. When his baby cries in church, a young man will pick her up and try to get her to stop crying and if necessary take her out of the church. Older men only watched as their wives tried to comfort their children, stepping outside the pew to make it easier for their wives to leave, their manners beautiful like china, but hardly functional.

Different times, different needs. Why would a man today hail a cab for a woman when she is capable of hailing a cab for herself? Why would he hold a door, or stand up when she enters a room or wait to start eating until she sits down, or position himself on the street side of a sidewalk so that a runaway car or water splashed by a car would hit him first?

Why? Because, like a table set with fine china, these things are special and they make a person feel special.

My father always walks me to his door and stands and waits and watches as I drive away. I've never seen him close the door, not even on the coldest day. Neither have my daughters. He is a man of a certain age. He waits at a bar if we want a drink. "Women don't wait at bars," he says. He insists that beer be poured into a glass, not drunk from the bottle. A few summers ago, we took him on a night cruise of Boston Harbor and he disappeared for a while and came back with teddy bears "for all his girls."

Men of his age are like this.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were in Key West, Fla., touring the small house where Harry Truman vacationed when he was president. "Do you see anything different about the dining room chairs?" the guide asked. No one did. "Every other one is a lady's chair," he explained, showing the neat cut in the wood at the top of the chair designed so that a gentleman's hand could fit into the hole, making it easier for him to pull out a chair for the lady beside him.

Men of a certain age pull out chairs for ladies, and light cigarettes for them even if they don't smoke themselves, and say, "Let me carry that," no matter what "that" is. And they automatically, at a house party, at a bar, on a bus, stand up and give you their seat.

Joe Curran, who used to work for the Herald, is the ultimate man of a certain age. When I first came to the newspaper, I knew no one. Joe introduced me to everyone. Every time there was a function, he made certain that I had a seat. Every time I thought I was alone, he would appear and smooth the way. He must have hailed a dozen cabs for me. He must have given me his seat a million times.

A younger man doesn't offer his seat. But how can he? His baby is seated next to him if he isn't carrying it. He's a professor but he's a parent, too, his wife at work somewhere else.

It's a different world today, better in some ways, worse in others. Everything is changing. When there are no more men of a certain age, consummate gentlemen, we will miss them.