Book Review: The Doctor's Walking Book

A Fair Trade Book (excellent!)

Title: The Doctor's Walking Book

Author: Fred A. Stutman

Date: 1980

Publisher: Ballantine

ISBN: 0-345-28764-9

Length: 111 pages

Illustrations: some black-and-white graphics

Quote: “We are under-exercised as a nation. We look instead of play. We ride instead of walk. Our existence deprives us of the minimum of physical activity essential for healthy living.”

President Kennedy said that. By 1964 few people seemed to want to remember that he'd ever been a controversial politician—he had—but everyone had had to admire his physical fortitude. Undoubtedly he'd be disappointed today to see that, although “physical fitness” has grown from a fad into an industry, masses of Americans are still couch potatoes. Ashamed to be seen walking three blocks to the store, many consume food as conspicuously as they do gasoline, and what conspicuous hiplines they develop.

Fred Stutman, reportedly a family doctor in Pennsylvania for 54 years and holding, tried to offer help, telling the public how walking instead of driving could help them “Add years to your life; lose weight and improve muscle tone; ease everyday tensions and stress; lower blood pressure; increase energy and physical endurance; reduce risk of heart disease.” And a few people did buy this book...but...

The reason why some simple, sensible ideas aren't more popular than they are is that they lack sex and snob appeal. How do you live on a lower income, even an impossibly low income? You just ignore all the items and ideas that are being marketed so hard as having sex and snob appeal, and do simple, sensible—boring--old­fashioned--dowdy things. Like walking instead of driving. The actual walking can be a pleasure in its own right. You still have to have a stronger than average personality to ignore the social pressure: “Why are you walking? Did your car break down?”

To The Doctor's Walking Book I suspect we need to add a campaign to add sex and snob appeal to walking, to get young people asking, “Why are you driving...all by yourself, not hauling furniture or anything? Do you have an injury? Are you...ill?”

Speaking as one of what P.J. O'Rourke conveniently identified as “the freshman class of baby-boomers,” I cordially invite the young to discover that driving to work or school is something for old people to do. Pathetic, broken-down old people whose elephant ankles puff out over the tops of their ugly pointy-toed shoes, who probably smoke, who certainly eat a lot of saturated fats, very likely from pork, and whose idea of conversation is blurting out what they believe to be their friends' secrets—as if they had friends, as if the stories they repeat about their acquaintances were secrets, or as if those things were even true. The “need” to drive three blocks instead of walking is definitely part of the syndrome that contributes to that kind of repulsive old age, so it deserves to be stereotyped with the ugliest aspects of that syndrome.

Anyway: I was not aware of The Doctor's Walking Book before 2015, but if I'd read it in 1979, even then it would have told me absolutely nothing new. In 1969 my parents were telling people:

“When we walk,the skeletal and muscular systems perform together.” (Oh, right, so they would have phrased it as “When we walk, our bones and muscles work together to build each other up.”)

“Walking can lower blood pressure, thus reducing or eliminating the need for drug therapy...Walking is one of the best ways to get rid of hostilities and reduce tension.” (They would have said, “Walking clears your head and helps you feel better.”)

“Walking increases the elasticity of the blood vessels...” and is “one of the factors that...decrease the likelihood of clot formation.” (They would have said, “Walking stirs up the circulation, keeps blood from clotting and blood vessels from hardening.”)

“Walking is the body's built-in mechanism to slow or retard the aging process.” (They might have said, “Look at poor old A who doesn't walk or have a garden. Look at B, who walks, gardens, is twenty years older than A, and looks twenty years younger. Which one do you want to grow up like?” Even that, they would have said to their contemporaries not their children...but somehow their children got the message just the same.)

“Walking is fun. You don't have to push your body until every muscle aches and you're gasping for breath...you don't have to make an appointment or book a special place to walk...you'll be relaxed by the sense of being at peace (instead of constantly at odds) with the world around you.” (That my parents might actually have said, at some time in the 1970s. They said similar things.)

You've probably heard those things too. So why are you still driving everywhere—or, if your spouse, children, or local traffic police have absolutely forbidden you to drive, waiting for someone else to drive you everywhere you go? Stutman does not address the real obstacles that keep many Americans from walking: roads with narrow shoulders (sidewalks? what's that?), hostile motorists, phony-friendly motorists who ever so sweetly ask if your car broke down, the perception that dusty shoes and sweaty shirts aren't “professional,” the tendency many people have to assume that any male pedestrian is a drunkard and any female pedestrian is a prostitute.

Rarely, one celebrity steps forward to make a public statement in favor of walking...I think what we need might be a phalanx of celebrities. Michael Moore's web site has had a “Walk with Mike” web page, that promised to share stories and pictures from people walking off their flab all across North America. What happened to that page, Mike? We remember how these celebrity statements go. President Carter did walk. He made that statement. (I loved it.) And then in order to be able to keep his guards on duty, he let it drop. Maybe Michael Moore also found out that he'd become too rich and famous to be allowed to walk.

Because, really, in many parts of the United States anyone who starts walking to work or school or the store...may not be rich, but will certainly become locally famous, as in “that weirdo who walks instead of driving everywhere.” In some neighborhoods people in search of “peace with the world,” and also “narrow waists and hollow cheekbones,” and also time to process the stress they're dealing with at work (or at home) in order to leave it outside the door when they go home (or to work), and so on, find themselves being reported to the police as suspicious characters. And baby-boomer women made a fair bit of noise about “taking back the night” in the 1990s, but...did we, really? Are we walking together at night, or are we still pressuring each other to be home before dark?

New Yorkers walk. Londoners walk. The hipper, cooler kind of Washingtonians walk. Unfortunately, in too many cities and small towns, people who want to be considered for jobs, protected by their police, maybe even covered by insurance, etc., are not allowed to walk.

With his white lab coat and “M.D.” degree on, Stutman probably didn't feel qualified to address the blatant discrimination against people who admit on job interviews that they want to be able to walk to work, or the hostility—really small-scale terrorism—with which motorists throw garbage at male pedestrians and solicit sex from female pedestrians (even if they are, I've seen this firsthand, eighty years old and dressed like the grandmothers they are, complete with white hair pinned up in a bun). And I suspect that even in 1979 the reason why people weren't walking was not that they couldn't see that walkers look and feel better, for longer, than non-walkers; it was that they didn't feel prepared to cope with the harassment and discrimination.

What does it take to make walking...chic? I wish I knew. Doctors recommending walking to prevent, relieve, or reverse various diseases have not been enough. Maybe if corporations and government offices adopt policies that give a positive preference to people who walk to work...

But that doesn't make The Doctor's Walking Book useless, by any means. In fact, in my home town, it's actually been used. Thusly: As those who made a formal vow never to support “the motorcar mania,” in the 1940s, have died out, a few well preserved women have continued conscientiously walking around my little town. In fact I've heard two of the younger ones call their daily practice “street walking.” Some say that, whenever “beautiful women” align with a cause, the cause is won. I suspect that the people I've seen and heard saying that defined “beautiful women” as “girls, ages 18 to 25,” but for any eyes that are satisfied with thick hair, thin thighs, narrow waists, and positively craggy cheekbones, those we have. The one who is now about 70 years old was the one who bought The Doctor's Walking Book, used to carry it around like a shield, and handed it down to me. From a distance, with only her figure, posture, and pace to go by, you could still think she was 30 years old. (When she really was 30 years old, she was not a blonde.)

The Doctor's Walking Book is still an excellent book for a young woman to carry around like a shield. Show it to the not necessarily so well-meaning people who say “Aren't you afraid...?” Because, if you think in actuarial terms, there are reasons to be afraid of every possible course of action. Driving, you're in constant danger of being killed or of killing someone in a crash. Staying home, you're a sitting duck for cardiovascular disease. Walking, despite the hate and harassment, you're actually raising the probability that you'll avoid several of the hazards—from mugging to broken hips—that people cite as excuses for not walking: walkers build stronger hip bones, and mature, confident women scare the livin' daylights out of rapists. Speaking of which, only a small minority of men even want to commit rape, so the ratio of rapists to women is low, but the supply of cases of brittle bones, hardened arteries, diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness is close to one (each) to a non-walker. And you can cite The Doctor's Walking Book when explaining to “friends” that you're walking to protect yourself from the things that are most likely to harm you.

If you can't trust somebody who's been a family doctor for more than fifty years, whom can you trust? Buy a copy from this web site and, although we're sure he doesn't need the money for himself, out of the $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, we'll send $1 to Stutman or the charity of his choice. At least eight, likely ten, copies of this slim book will fit into one $5 package and if you order eight copies, for $45 (or $46), Stutman or his charity will get $8.