McDowell's First Column About February

On Feb. 4, 2014, Heather Moon wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: Charley McDowell wrote a series of columns about the month of February that became quite well-known. This was the first one that I could find. It was part of the Capital Sidelights column, printed on Feb. 26, 1967.

Farewell, February, And Good Riddance

By Charles McDowell

Washington

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November;

All the rest have thirty-one

Except February, which is endless …

An editorial writer from the Washington Daily News contrived that last line as the title of a tirade against February. With the great clarity, righteousness and restrained ferocity for which editorial writers are famous, he went on to denounce February as “a whole month of dismal Monday mornings.”

It was just a little filler near the bottom of the page, but it should win a Pulitzer prize. There was more truth – more insight into the world as it really is – in that editorial than in any written in all of February on Vietnam, the budget, anti-missile missiles, Adam Clayton Powell, miniskirts or any of the other paramount problems of our time.

You see, people just don’t like February. They never have. An ancient Italian proverb says: “February, the shortest month of the year, is also the worst.”

February lacks the new hopefulness of January, the windy excitement of March, the sunny promise of April. February depresses.

It litters the landscape with dirty, clinging snow. It sabotages the automobile battery. It brings man into bitter conflict with his furnace,

February is a month of contention with snow tires, ice on the sidewalk, the broken snow shovel, the late car pool, the mysterious but frigid draft in the downstairs hall, and the guerrilla flu that picks off members of the family in grim rotation and then picks them off again as soon as all the chicken broth is gone.

The Christmas bills, which could be tolerated in January, get testy in February, and now they are in the same emergency pile with the snow-tires bill, the new-battery bill, the wonder-drug bill and the perfectly astonishing bill run up by a furnace gone wild.

The news on the front page is almost all depressing. You turn to the sports section for relief, edging a little closer to the fireplace and out of the draft, and there are the baseball players preparing for a new season by cavorting casually in the Florida sun.

One young baseball player is shown languishing on a golf course. He has refused to sign his contract until he is promised $60,000 or $70,000 to play baseball in the sunshine.

February has a bad effect on statesmen. But is it any wonder, really, that Sen. Everett Dirksen (salary: $30,000) doesn’t know where he stands on the consular treaty with the Soviet Union? His water pipes keep freezing at his country home in Virginia, commuting to the Capitol is a daily trial, and his record sales are sagging in the February doldrums.

Is it any wonder that some of the big talkers about ethics in the Senate refused to vote for legislation requiring financial disclosures by senators and Senate employees? Nobody should be asked to be consistent in February.

Is it any wonder that some of the Southerners in the House think the Select Committee was too easy on Adam Clayton Powell? The committee recommended the most severe punishment and humiliation ever imposed upon a misbehaving member except in cases of treason. But that isn’t enough for some of the louder Southerners.

Perhaps the point is that they are here in bleak and dismal Washington in February, and Adam Powell is on the sunny beach in Bimini.

There is one thing to be said for February, however. It is almost gone.

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