It’s one of those small wooden frames you often see in antique shops or second-hand stores. Wooden, crisscrossed at every corner with a small leaf carving to mark the crossing. It was given to my mother by her mother-in-law, my grandmother Cruikshank. It framed a motto that belonged to my mother’s mother, my grandmother Pierce.

My mother told me that it had hung on a wall in her house as far back as she could remember. It certainly hung on the wall in my parents’ house from as long as I can remember and still hangs on the wall in my house.

It’s a plain little motto. Dated 1878, it is embroidered in red, small flowers and swirls and under the title line, &uot;The Saints Creed,&uot; reads &uot;Strive to mind your own Business.&uot;

I’m not sure that anyone in our family ever did. I think we were dedicated to the principle of the motto, but lenient with ourselves on the concept.

I’ve been thinking about this a great deal these past weeks because of the outpouring of advice in regard to our mayor’s problem. I understand that she has a good lawyer and is therefore receiving all the advice she needs.

Indeed I remember that my wise and witty father, when confronted with the same sort of such, whom he referred to as &uot;the anvil chorus,&uot; always listened to them patiently. Then he would lean forward, and with a twinkle in his eye, would pronounce benevolently, &uot;You know you ought to be a lawyer. Those fellows get paid for minding other people’s business.&uot;

He was a man who wanted the facts and refused to accept hearsay. The town we lived in had some wonderful people in it. It also had a large and loud Ku Klux Klan.

My father, active in all the Masonic lodges, and top officer in all except one, was a joiner. He liked people around him and joined almost every fraternal organization that crossed his path.

A committee made up of outstanding citizens &045; lawyers, physicians and a number of his Masonic

buddies &045; invited him to a secret meeting and begged him to join the Klan.

It was all right with him. He liked drama. He became a member and stayed long enough to blast them when they questioned his friendship with his two best friends, our neighbor, Mose Goldberg and the priest of the Catholic Church.

A few threats were made against him, but without enthusiasm. He had three brothers and learned early to take care of himself. No one was eager to mix it up with him.

For years, there was no hospital in my hometown. Attempts were made to obtain one, but they failed. Eventually one was established and has been doing well for almost 80 years now. From our house you could look out of the kitchen window and see it fairly clearly.

Because it was a Catholic hospital, though, and the town was largely anti-Catholic, the hospital was regarded with suspicion. There came a day when a patient was seen fighting, screaming and trying to lunge out of a second story window, but was held back by two stalwart nuns.

By the time my father came home from work, word had gone around the town that the hospital

was torturing a Protestant patient in order to make him convert to Catholicism. A crowd was gathering around the hospital and things were beginning to look ugly.

My father glanced out of the window and immediately left the house to make his unhurried way to the hospital. Casting a questioning look at the mob, and mob it was, he went to the hospital desk and asked what was happening.

What was happening was that the patient, waiting to undergo surgery, was given a stiff drink just before he went to the operating room. The drink, smuggled in by a relative to give him courage, didn’t harmonize with the ether given him.

Result? He went berserk. But for the courageous nuns the man would have flung himself out of the window and probably have broken his neck.

Dad came out and explained what had happened and somewhat reluctantly the crowd drifted away. It was pointed out to me from earliest childhood that you should believe only half of what you see and nothing at all that you hear.

Outside of rape or murder I can think of no sin so dark as judging our neighbors unfavorably.

None of us is perfect enough to do that and destructive criticism is a form of murder.

(Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column runs Thursday.)