$ 5.00
(Cheap) *
The Best of the
Old Coot II
2008 Issue
2008 Issue
A compilation of
“Old Coot” articles
By,
merlin lessler
* (cheap it is; you’d pay a lot more if we didn’t use recycled paper and
staples to hold things together.)
CONTENTS
Page 1 The old coot loves places where
they call you honey.
Page 2 Male
mating rituals have to go!
Page 1 Trying isn’t good enough!
Page 2 What’s in a name?
Page 3 The old coot doesn’t want to know.
Page 3 The old coot is at war!
Page 4 The old coot hates the big
squeeze!
Page 5 The old coot is not a cutting edge
gut!
Page 5 The old coot doesn’t blow his own
horn.
Page 6 The old coot doesn’t fit in.
Page
6 The old coot can’t get in!
Page 7 The old coot comes of age.
Page
7 The old coot is in a
lather!
Page 8 The old coot takes a dive!
Page 9 The
old coot knows when to say goodbye.
Page 9 The
old coot is out of line.
Page 11 The
old coot is knocked down a peg or two.
Page 11 The
old coot is jealous of the tattoo generation.
Page
10 The old coot is an outlaw!
Page
12 The old coot & wine
don’t mix!
Page
12 Ouch, the perfect word.
Page
13 The old coot pans the
experts
Page
14 The old coot discovers the
“um” people.
Page
14 Unearth an old coot if you
dare.
Page
15 The old coot goes left on
red!
Page
15 The old coot helps a new
recruit.
Page
16 The old coot springs for a
big screen TV!
Page
17 The old coot joins the mole
people.
Page
17 Because I said so!
Page
18 Old coots know how to beat
the heat!
Page
19 You can count on an old
coot!
Page
19 The old coot says you’re as
old as you feel, “Ouch!”
Page 20 The old coot is green (and cheap)
Page
20 The old coot got booted out!
Page
21 Parking lot personalities.
Page
22 The old coot is training for
the Olympics.
Page
22 The old coot pays his
respects.
Page
23 The old coot is ready for an
invasion.
Page
24 The old coot gets a French
lesson.
Page
24 The old coot wants to know
who to blame.
Page
25 The old coot doesn’t get the
dozen.
Page
25 The old coot can’t stay
silent.
Page
26 The old coot is cool on
global warming.
Page
26 Old coots need special care
on Independence Day.
Page
27 The old coot adds a little
color to the sex offender debate.
Page
28 Where’s the terlit?
THE OLD COOT loves places where they
call you “Honey”
I went to a local restaurant the other day. I had never been there before, but it felt old coot friendly the minute I walked through the door. I grabbed a stool at the counter where I could watch the short order cook. He had the grill going full blast, a pile of home fries were heaped at one end, pan cakes bubbled at the other and in between, a dozen eggs cracked and sizzled. The morning paper was sprawled along the Formica at my elbow. A waitress came over with a menu under her arm and an ironstone coffee mug in her hand; strong black coffee was steaming and slopping over the side. "Do you want a menu, Honey? Or, do you know what you want?"
I love places where they call you "Honey." You know right away it's the real deal: good food, low cost, no frills. She wrote up my order and handed it to the cook. "This is for the old guy over there and he's in a hurry," she told him, though I'd never said anything of the kind. She gave me a wink and wove through the tables dangling a coffee pot, topping off patrons’ cups throughout the diner. I reflected on what a nice atmosphere this was as I waited for my eggs. It was so much better than the restaurants with a name like La Tratoria or Lamones Bistro, where a red vested waiter stands in front of your table and announces, "I'm Phillip, I'll be your server,” and then goes through a litany of specials the chef has prepared, “especially for me,” not just naming the entrees, but listing the ingredients. When he's done I usually order coffee and make plans to escape.
You know you're in a good place when the waitress uses restaurant codes: Adam & Eve on a raft, BLT - hold the mayo, cup of joe and make those eggs do the tango. You know you're in a good place when the waitress complains about being on her feet all day, "My dogs are really barking today." You know you are in a good place when the waitress insults you, "Do you want a regular spoon for your oatmeal or one as big as your mouth?"
The food critics never review these places. They don't know who makes the best hot roast beef sandwich, the tastiest meatloaf, or where you can depend on a clam chowder special on Friday, a throw back to the era when meat was taboo for Catholics. The only places the food critics venture are those with white suited chefs not t-shirted short order cooks, servers with an attitude not waitresses with “tired dogs” and fancy gourmet names conjured up by ad writers not namesakes of the owners, like “Bill’s” or “Sam’s.” It’s still an American truism, follow the truck drivers; they know where the food is good and where the waitresses still call you “Honey!”
TRYING ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH!
"At least you tried." I never heard a teacher say this, nor a coach, nor any adult when I was a kid. Our society used to teach kids in a different way, before "feel good parenting" took over. It was the results that counted, not the effort. It's what made us go back again and again after we failed, to work harder. It's an ethos that created greatness; it’s one that's slipping away.
Today’s report cards say it all. "Gets along well with others, participates in class, is industrious." That's the language of educators. When I see a report card like this I translate it to, "His marks are a disaster, but he doesn't drive me nuts in the classroom." It's even worse at home. "Why did you get an 'F', son?" "The teacher hates me!" "Well, at least you tried." Tried my foot. The little slacker gave it the least effort possible. And why not, he knows the standard is “to try,” not to do well. We do this to bolster our kids’ self esteem, or so we tell ourselves, but we've taken self esteem away from the individual and parceled it out to the parents, the teachers, the neighbors, everyone but the person capable of doing something about it. It's "self" esteem, not group esteem. It's how a person views himself and it can't be positive if he is constantly rewarded for a half hearted effort, knowing full well he can do better. He becomes intoxicated with the false compliments of his so-called nurturers who keep saying, "At least you tried."
I'm not a social scientist; I’m an old coot and an observer. I’ve been watching this phenomenon for years. It's why when you dial an 800 number you’re connected to a call center in India or Malaysia. Those cultures don't work toward a goal of "trying," their goal is to "achieve". We've got congressmen, presidents, school administrators and parents scratching their heads, wondering why we are losing the tech wars, wondering why the eighth grade English and Math scores keep falling in spite of the billions of dollars poured into the educational system.
The problem isn't with the teachers, the administrators or the politicians, nor is the solution change. The problem is with us. We've got to raise the standard, to toss out the concept of trying hard and replace it with "achieving the objective." It will be tough. It's much easier to say, "Nice try," to a kid than it is to say, "Go back and do it over and put some real solid effort into it this time." And if we do, their self-esteem will go up along with their performance. They know when they are doing a good job, really working at it; they feel good about themselves when they do. Their self-image goes up when they know they’ve earned it, not when they get false praise from their parents or teachers.
I probably could have done a better job getting this message across, but at least I tried.
Male mating rituals have to go!
It's time for a new playbook, a new set of male mating rituals. The old ones don't work, they never did. They just make men look stupid.
Take the scene I witnessed the other day as I walked into town. A young woman was walking in the same direction, but a block ahead of me. A male in a pick-up truck honked as he passed. She didn't wave; she just looked down at her feet. A few minutes later another guy came by and rolled down his window and yelled, "Hey baby; need a lift?" Her head went down again and her pace quickened. Then a little white Honda drove up with four "young adult" males in it. The radio was blaring; the base notes were so loud that the whole car vibrated. I thought it was going to explode.
I noticed the windows go down as the car came alongside the girl; it slowed to a crawl. All four guys leaned out and began yelling. "Hey baby!" "Do I know you?" "What's your name?" "What's your sign?" They screamed and banged their fists on the side of the car, whooped and yelled, but to no avail. She kept her head down and increased her pace. They kept at it for two blocks before launching a final volley of whoops. Then they peeled out and tore down the street. A few minutes later they came back in the opposite direction. Two guys were on the roof and one was on the front hood. They unleashed another round of male mating calls and then sped away. The guy on the hood almost slipped off as the driver performed a fancy skid.
Men have been whistling, honking, pinching and otherwise harassing women in a failed attempt to get noticed for eons. Cavemen invented the technique and it worked for them, but only because they used a club. Construction workers have developed the ritual to world-class levels, but their success rate is no better than the guys in the white Honda. I'm not sure what they expect. Do they really think a woman who is being hassled by a group of whooping, yelling, drooling primates is going to turn around and come up to one of them and say, "Boy, I like the way you whoop and yell; pick me up at six, big boy, we’ll go out to dinner!"
It's time to get a new playbook, fellows. The caveman technique doesn't work; even in its modernized version on the TV sitcom, "Friends." If you were a fan of the show you know that Joey made his move with a hard stare, his chin pulled back into his neck while releasing these flattering words through a leering smile, "How you doooin?" It works on the show, but not in the real world. I know; I tried it on my wife the other day. She responded with, "I'm doooin’ just fine, now get back outside and finish putting up the Christmas lights so we can go to the mall.
This is a public service announcement: If you are out there whistling, yelling, whooping, pinching, blowing your horn and otherwise making a spectacle of yourself to get a woman's attention, give it up. The guy taking her to dinner is the one who talks to her, and more importantly, listens. He loves it when you cruise by in your car with your friends and go into a courting frenzy; it makes him look good.
Don't take my word for it. Ask any woman. Just go right up to her, look her in the eye, smile and say, "How you doooin?"
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
I ran into a woman in the grocery store. My wife and I met her at a cocktail party the previous evening. "Hi Laura," I said. "Hi yourself, Old Coot." she replied, and then added, "By the way, my name is Lynn, not Laura." I was perplexed, so I asked, "What's your point?" She told me her point was that I called her by the wrong name.
It's obvious she doesn't know the rules for dealing with old coots. I'm to be praised for even remembering that I met her. I'm to be congratulated for picking a name that started with the same letter as her name. And lastly, she should realize that old coots are held to a different standard. We are graded on a curve just like school kids when the whole class flunks a test.
A person in his or her twenties can be expected to greet Lynn with, “Hi Lynn Jessica Franklin from 325 Main Street. How's Bill feeling today? He looked great with that lampshade on his head last night."
When in you are over forty all you should be expected to say is, "Hi, Lynn."
After sixty, the bar is lower. All one should expect is, "Do I know you?" or "Hi, Laura."
It's nothing personal. Lynn, Laura or whoever you are; you should not be offended. Most of us old coots can’t even remember which Bush is president, George W or George H. We can't name one actor in a hit movie ten seconds after the credits run. It's not that our brains are defective; they're selective. We've stored names and facts in them for decades and decades. It gets hard to keep it all organized so we only let critical information enter the clogged gray mass under our thinning hair. Everything else is rejected. We have filters that block new people and their names. We can push one through the portal, but it’s hard work. We have to say their name three times and then put their face with the other people we’ve met with the same name. We create a group photograph, with the new person in front. I have a collage of "Mikes" in my head. It has 34 people in it. I love it when a guy I meet says his name is Mike. Zip, in he goes with the other Mikes.
If his name is Greg, I have a problem. I can't keep the Craigs and the Gregs straight. Can't we eliminate one or the other? And from my experience, the Craigs are really offended if you call them Greg. The Gregs are more tolerant. I've solved my problem I greet them with, "Hi, Mega, Grega, Crega, ha ha." They never figure out that my jocularity is a cover up.
All I’m asking for is a little tolerance. I should be allowed to call my daughter by her sister’s name, my newest grandson by my first grandson’s name or a stranger I just meet, “Kiddo.” I want partial credit, like that given by my 10th grade math teacher when I got the wrong answer but used the correct method. I deserve a D if I remember I met you at all, a C if I venture a name that’s sort of like yours or starts with the same letter and a B, if all I do is mispronounce your name, the Craig versus Greg thing. After all, what’s in a name?
The Old Coot Doesn’t Want to Know!
When you’re a kid you want to know everything. “Why is the sky blue? How do airplanes fly? Why? Why? Why?” Not true when you are an old coot. You don’t want to know anything. “What kind of gas mileage do you get on that?” someone will ask, pointing to my car at the gas pump. “I don’t know,” I reply; (I don’t want to know! I say to myself. I’m sure it would be disappointing). When I was young and wanted to know everything, I checked the mileage every time I filled-up. It always was a little less than what I’d hoped for. It was a downer. I finally gave it up. I make up a number and stick with it. If you ask, I’ll tell you my little two-seater gets around forty miles per gallon. “I haven’t checked it lately,” I’ll confess. You won’t hear me say under my breath, “I’ve never checked it.”
It’s the same thing with the price of gas. The country is in a frenzy over skyrocketing gasoline prices. Not me! Gas is the same price as it was ten years ago: ten dollars. Every time I pull into a gas station, I get ten dollars worth. The cost hasn’t varied one cent in ages. I will admit, it’s harder to get the pump to stop exactly on $10.00. The dial seems to spin faster than it used to. Maybe the price per gallon has gone up over the years? I don’t know; I haven’t checked.
I live in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” world. It’s nice here. You should try it. What’s the weather supposed to be this weekend? I don’t’ know. I don’t want to know. It will be what it will be. You and I will be able to adapt to it. It’s something our species has done for millions of years. When I was young and hadn’t moved into the don’t ask- don’t tell world, I would get upset when yet another wet weekend paraded through town. I’d blame the company I worked for. “Darn. It was nice all week; now that I’m off, it’s raining! It’s not fair. It’s their (the company’s) fault!” Not anymore. I avoid weather forecasts. They’re wrong most of the time anyhow. People cancel things on a forecast - a snowstorm that misses us - a thunderstorm that mysteriously never materializes. Why dread things in advance?
It’s an old coot thing, this “don’t want to know” business, but it works for people of all ages. Why burden yourself with a load of negative stuff that you can’t do anything about? Here’s an old coot tip to test the concept: move back from the bathroom mirror when you look at your face. The older you are the farther back you should be. I’m about three feet away these days. I don’t see wrinkles, baggy eyes or age spots from that distance. And for heaven’s sake, lose the fluorescent lights. They even make a beauty queen look horrible. An incandescent bulb will do wonders, one with a pink or reddish tint. When I was a kid my mother always cautioned me about looking at life through rose-colored glasses. She was sort of right, at least about the important things. But for the stuff that doesn’t really matter, the stuff you can’t do anything about, put on the glasses, rose colored, light orange, bright red, whatever you come up with to make things look better than they are. It’s why nature weakens our sight and hearing, as we grow older. It’s a kindness, built into the genetic code. “What did you say? Gas prices are going up? I couldn’t quite hear you! It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know.”
The Old Coot is at War!
The war continues. That’s what it is, WAR! It starts in your thirties. You show off in front of the kids and do a running flip on the lawn. CRASH! You don’t make it all the way around. You land on your back, instead of your feet. You chalk it up to lack of practice but deep down inside you know,you’ve lost the edge you had when you were twenty. It comes back again in your forties: sore muscles, creaky knees, failing eyesight. You buy the ointment, start an exercise routine and get your eyes checked. It’s a tough era. You are forced to face an ugly truth. You are mortal.
Somehow you limp ahead, make it into your fifties. If you’re lucky, you’ve gotten there without surgical intervention. Your knees, hips, liver and kidneys are the ones you started with. But now, at last, you know you are in a war. The enemy is you, your body. You learn more about anatomy in your fifties and sixties than when you studied science in high school and college. It’s not that you seek the information. Your doctor provides it along with the treatment for the numerous war injuries you present to him. “When I go like this doc, it hurts my ribs.” And then the explanation follows. You learn how the ribs connect to the sternum and the effects that aging has on the flexibility of the connection. Every time you turn around you are force fed another anatomy lesson.
Eventually, you get it! You figure out that you are in a losing battle. You try to find a way to retreat with honor. “My toes tingle a little bit, like they’re half asleep,” you report to your doctor. “Oh, that’s nothing unusual. It’s just nerve damage that comes from years of jogging. People who walk a lot also experience it.” Then he gives you the technical term, neoro-foot-o-tingle-o. “Just ignore it,” he advises; he doesn’t know what he’s asking. You’re ignoring so many things that your mind is unable to concentrate on the task at hand. It’s why you walk into a room and wonder what it was that you came to do, or get.
“I need an emergency appointment!” you tell your optometrist’s receptionist. “Something is floating across my eye! I think my retina is detached!” She then calmly asks you, “What color is it?” You wonder how she can get so frivolous with your dire condition, not knowing that a lot of minor eye ailments result in this symptom. “Black, I guess,” you mumble. She sets you up with an afternoon appointment. You prepare for the worst and make arrangements for someone to drive you to Syracuse or Rochester for retina surgery. “What is it doc?” you ask, when you finally get it looked at. “Just a floater,” he responds. “No big deal, you’ll get used to it.” He then gets out an eyeball diagram and shows you what went awry. The floater is just a tiny clump of gel inside the vitreous, the clear jelly-like fluid that fills the inside of the eye. What you are seeing is the shadow of the gel clump. He’s right, of course; you will get used to it. That’s what life is, for old coots, getting used to it. And boring everyone within earshot with all the gory details!
the old coot HATEs THE BIG SQUEeZE!
I went to a luncheon the other day. There were 14 of us. We called ahead for a reservation. When I walked in the table was set up: 14 placemats, silverware sets, napkins and water glasses graced the surface. Fourteen chairs lined the table. There wasn’t an inch between them. I took a seat. I had to pull the chair out, get in front of it and then go through a few contortions in order to pull the chair from behind while lowering my body to meet it as it came forward. I felt as awkward as a new colt gaining its feet for the first time. Thankfully, I was the first one there and nobody saw the graceless maneuver. Old coots are always the first ones there. We’re the only people left who think being on time is good manners.
The rest of the gang straggled in and went through similar contortions to get themselves seated. I chuckled each time. Some were a lot less agile than I was. Eventually all 14 of us were seated. We looked like a collage of artificial people. Our arms were at our sides, our backs erect and our faces forward. We didn’t have enough room to be anything but erect and proper. The lunch was brutal. I don’t know how the food was; I was intensely focused on the chore of using a knife and a fork while keeping my elbows from crashing into my neighbors. I looked like a praying mantis with his front paws pulled together in prayer.
It took me five minutes to spear a French fry, dip it in ketchup and maneuver it up to my mouth. One of my fellow diners wasn’t quite so polite. He dug in as though there was all the elbowroom in the world between us. My left arm and side sported black and blue marks for a week.
Even the conversation was affected by the lack of space between us. When you sit at a table with your elbows pulled in so they are almost touching each other as you maneuver food on the plate in front of you, your whole being feels pinched. It limits your thought process and forces you to speak in a high-pitched squeaky voice. I said something to the guy across the table from me and wondered. “Who said that?” I didn’t recognize my own voice. The lunch ended early. We all wondered why we thought it was such a good idea for old friends to get together for a few laughs. I’d managed to eat three French fries and take two bites out of my hamburger. It was all I could accomplish in a straight jacket.
The next time I phone for a reservation I’m going to call it in for a party of eighteen and then remove four chairs when I get there. I’ll tell the maitre d’ the other four couldn’t make it.
the old coot is not a cutting edge GUY!
People brag about being on the cutting edge, light years ahead of the rest of us. They buy the latest stuff: flat screen televisions, hybrid cars and satellite radios. I’m thankful for them. New products make it to the marketplace because of their daring. My father was a cutting edge person; that’s why I’m not. It’s a genetic thing that skips every other generation. He was the first guy in the neighborhood to buy a power lawn mower. It was designed for an adult, not a skinny, 12 year-old kid. It pulled me across the lawn like a speedboat pulls a water skier. One day he read an article in Popular Mechanics about building a camping trailer using state of the art building materials and modular construction techniques. I was his unfortunate assistant the day he tried to join the two halves together. They didn’t match up and my vocabulary of forbidden words was expanded.
Then he heard about a new car coming out in the fall. He picked up every auto magazine in sight. He was hooked. Finally he bought it, a 1958 Edsel. That did it for me. I backed away from the cutting edge the day he parked it in front of the dealer’s showroom and decorated it with lemons. I became a “Trailing Edge Society” guy.
I like the trailing edge. It’s a perfect place for an old coot. I just bought a 26-inch TV. It’s big and boxy, but it only cost me $149; a few years ago it went for over $600. When I replaced my computer in December they threw in a flat screen monitor for free. Two years ago it was $700 extra. I never get a recall notice. All the bugs have been ironed out by the time I buy a product. I never go to the repair shop. Trailing edge products have been recalled, re-engineered and perfected.
I don’t do research on products either. The losers are off the market by the time I make my move, or I call my friend Roy. He knows the ins and outs of every electronic or mechanical product on the market. He’s a cutting edge guy. I just tell him what I want the product to do for me – say a camera. He goes to work and sends me a recommendation: the brand, the model and 3 places to buy it at low cost. He should go into business. He makes “Consumer Reports” look like a bunch of pikers.
I never buy cars from automobile dealers. I buy them from my friend, Carl. Unfortunately he left the area so now I’m on my own. Carl buys new cars. He researches them to death, makes a deal that brings tears to the eyes of the sales manager, and then works the warranty like it’s a disarmament treaty. By the end of the first year he usually has forced the dealer to install a new rear end, (Carl hates the slightest rumble sound in the back). The shocks, brakes, universal joints and portions of the interior are redone in a Carl car. No dealer will sell him a second car. They put his picture with a big X across it in the sales department break room. He washes his cars every week, doing a thorough inspection in the process. He changes the oil every month, even when he only drives 200 miles. He sucks crumbs out of the inside with a hurricane force shop-vac. His vehicles are “operating room” clean. I buy Carl’s discards, or did until he moved to Forida. When he was done with them they were better than new.
When I see ads for new technologies and new products I cross my fingers and hope either Carl or Roy are watching. I’ll want to buy one in a few years. I won’t be able to unless they pave the way. I guess it explains why my favorite book as a kid was The Pokey Little Puppy, a story about a little puppy that was always late for dinner.
THE OLD COOT DOESN’T BLOW HIS OWN HORN!
A few years back, I was walking down the street and somebody beeped their horn. I waved. The guy in the car gave me a funny look. I can’t read lips, but I can read faces. His said, “Why the heck are you waving at me, you old coot?” It wasn’t his horn that beeped; it was the horn in a car parked across the street. Nobody was in the car. The owner had beeped it with his remote door lock.
It has taken me years, but I’ve finally gotten used to it. Now, when I hear a car horn I assume it’s someone locking their car. It will probably get me killed. If statisticians notice a rise in pedestrian fatalities they can attribute it to the automobile manufacturers. Nobody pays any attention to car horns anymore.
The carmakers have messed up the horn in other ways too. They’ve made it so hard to toot that I’m ten seconds late when I use it. Here’s how it goes - I push the center of the steering wheel, nothing happens. My wife looks over at me and rolls her eyes. “Push it harder,” she says with words and then adds, “You old coot,” with a sideways look. I give it a harder push and it lets out a little squeak. I push it for all I’m worth and it finally blasts out a warning. It’s too late; the guy on the bike who was crossing in front of me is now sitting on somebody’s front lawn a few hundred yards back. His mangled bike is lying in the ditch. I don’t stop. Let him take it up with the designers in Detroit who decided to cram an air bag in the horn compartment of the steering wheel. It protects the driver, but puts the rest of the world at risk.
And it makes us seem rude. You can’t get the horn to emit a polite little toot to let a driver know you are behind him, so he doesn’t back into you. You either get nothing when you press on the horn or you get a loud blast that startles him and activates his road rage response mechanism. I’d be better off if I just reached down to the key ring and pushed the lock button on the remote. It would produce the exact toot-toot that I want. Maybe the smart thing is for me to detach the remote from the key chain and give it to my wife. I’ll drive the car and she can alert the public to the errant ways of an old coot.
THE OLD COOT DOESN’T FIT IN.
My wife and I went to the Binghamton Forum the other night. Tim Conway and Harvey Korman were performing live. The place was full of old coots. We got there early, everybody got there early; old coots are like that. I wanted to find our seats and get settled before the show started. Trying to find section A - row L - seats 18 & 20 can be difficult in a theater full of old coots doing the same thing.
I like to get there first, so I can claim the armrest. I wonder who designs the seating for these places? Maybe it’s a race of miniature people. They design the seats to fit themselves. What else could explain the narrowness of the seats, the shortage of legroom and armrests the width of razor blades? Irish blood flows in my veins. It has cursed me with toothpick arms, but even they are too big for the armrests in modern theaters. I feel like a gorilla when I plop them down.
We lucked out this time; we beat most of the old coots into the aisle. Sure, it meant I had to knock over an old guy with a cane and a bluehair in a walker, but we got to our seats first. I scrunched down in mine and took possession of the armrest. It was mine; I wasn’t moving, or so I thought. I hadn’t planned on a leg cramp. When I’m stuck in a seat made for a 10-year-old, with my knees higher than my hips and scrunched into the back of the chair in front of me, my legs are destined to undergo a circulation problem. It’s mostly physical, but somewhat psychological. When I’m in the middle of a row in a theater, or an airplane, my subconscious plays games with me. It slows down the flow of blood to my leg. It likes to make me look foolish. “Get the old guy comfortable and then a cramp into his leg,” it boasts. “Watch him leap to his feet and try to kick the cramp out of his leg!”
My subconscious loves to mess me up. It got me good the first time I underwent an MRI. It conjured up images of being buried alive and flooded my frontal lobe. It got me good. It did it again when I was trapped in an elevator on a cruise ship during a storm. It’s no fun being an old coot with a subconscious that’s a practical jokester. You can easily spot me when it’s on the job, like in the theater. I’m the guy in the middle of the row with beads of sweat on his forehead and a pained expression on his face, sitting next to an exasperated woman who is hissing at him through gritted teeth, “What on earth are you doing now?” “Nothing,” he says. “I’m sitting here with a bear trap on my leg. I’m trying to ignore it and have a good time.”
We’ve got a crisis on our hands with this space thing, this lack-of-space thing. Our bodies are getting bigger and bigger; the seats are getting smaller and smaller. MacDonald’s is being sued for the obesity wave that’s sweeping across America, yet the miniature-sized architects who design our living spaces are cutting more corners every day. Each new project has less and less elbowroom. Architects are awarded jobs by how many people they promise to squeeze into a given space. “I can get 1000 seats into that theater!” “I can get 1500!” The contract goes to the highest bidder. I think we need a new law. Only people who are 6 feet 5 and weigh 300 pounds can apply for an architectural license. Then maybe the rest of us can fit in.
THE OLD COOT CAN’T GET IN!
I went to the Pennysaver office the other day to see my friend Daphne. She was manning the front desk and I wanted to know the deadline for placing a happy ad. I reached for the door, but it was locked. Then I tried the other door; it opened. I hate double doors. Usually one is locked, the one I try first. After entering the vestibule I was faced with another set of double doors. Daphne sat there with a big grin on her face. She knew what I was thinking, “Now what door should I try?” And she knew I’d pick the one that was locked.
I reached for the left side door and indeed, it was locked. I reached for the door on the right. It opened, but I had to step back to enter it, which is why I tried the left door in the first place. I did the logical thing, from an old coot perspective, but the building owner had a different view. He thought that the door on the right should be unlocked since most people are right handed.
He’s wrong; both doors should be unlocked. Why have two doors if you are only going to use one? Schools do the same thing. When my son went to the middle school I had to drop off his forgotten lunch once in a while. The school had two separate entrances, one with six doors, one with three. There wasn’t a sign to tell you which entrance to use. They teach the ABCs there, but they don’t use them to make signs.
After a visitor decides which entrance is most likely the way to get in, he has to then figure out which door to use. Some times it’s the door on the left. Sometimes it’s not. At the Apalachin school, where he has basketball practice, it’s usually the door to the right. Just when I get used to it, they switch to the one on the left. After I suffer through the door lottery and finish my business in the school I go back to my car, but I don’t leave. I sit and watch how other people do on the door lottery. It’s like watching rats in a maze trying to find the route to the cheese. It’s very entertaining, especially if you read lips.
I’m tempted to use a score sheet, to keep track of how many people go to what door. There must be a trend, a pattern. Maybe I could sell the information to building managers so they could maximize the number of people they frustrate everyday.
The situation isn’t limited to the Pennysaver and the school system. I sit on the bench next to the veterans’ memorial in front of the courthouse every once in a while. There is a huge set of doors at this end of the building. I’ve watched countless people trudge up the stairs and reach for the door, only to find it unyielding. I heard it’s been locked for 100 years, but there aren’t any signs to prevent people from making the climb. The county could make a sign if they wanted to. They have a sign shop on Temple Street and they do make a lot of signs. There are seventeen signs at the parking lot at the 56 Main Street complex. They tell you how to enter the lot, where to park and how to exit. My favorite county government sign is on the front door of the county clerk’s office. It warns, “Door pushes hard.” I guess it was easier to make a sign than fix the door. It has been like that for years.
I think the county government and the school board should get together. First, they need to adopt a new policy. If a building is open to the public, all the doors in a set must be unlocked. Then they need to make some signs. The school can provide the wording, the correct use of the language. The county can provide the sign making capability. They might even install a few markers around town to help strangers find things in the community. Then maybe when I take a walk I won’t get stopped every few blocks by a frustrated out-of-towner trying to find the high school.
tHE OLD COOT COMES OF AGE.
I was in Awakenings the other morning. I’m in Awakenings every morning. Someone asked Darcy (the owner) how old her daughter Valerie was. (Valerie was “helping” mom run the place; she was sorting the silverware). “She’s 21 months,” Darcy replied. I was eavesdropping. I’m always eavesdropping. I couldn’t figure out what 21 months meant. I had to convert it to old coot terms. “She’s almost 2,” I said to myself. I wish new parents would use terms we understood. I bet they wouldn’t like it if old coots used months to measure things. I wonder what they’d think if I said I was 746 months old. Would they know that I was old enough to collect social security?
I blame it on the pediatricians. They track a baby’s progress by age, measured in weeks. After a year they switch from weeks to months. For some reason, new parents never unplug from the monthly measurement system. They don’t make the transition to years. My youngest grandson was a year old in February. Now he’s 15 months, if you use pediatrician talk. In coot years, he’s a little over a year old. My daughter, his mother, doesn’t get caught up in pediatrician jargon. She even rejects some of the doctor’s advice; she uses her own common sense. I guess she’s an old coot in training.
I shouldn’t criticize without offering a solution. To that end, I’ve jotted down a few rules, a conversion table. It will help new parents communicate with the rest of us. For the first 6 months they must convert from the baby’s age from weeks to months. They can use weeks with the doctor and other new parents, but not with the rest of us. At 6 months they should answer the question of how old their kid is by saying, “He’ll be one in July.” We’ll convert to months, if we choose to, and reply with, “Oh, he’s a little over 6 months.”
After 1 year it gets easier: The parents can say “He’s just over a year old” - “He’s almost a year and a-half” – “He’ll be 2 in December.” They can use years, and half-years, until the kid turns seven. At age 12 they should start lying about the kid’s age; keep him at twelve for as long as they can. It gets him in the theatre at half price, cheaper meals in restaurants and discounts at amusement parks. After that, the parents are out of the picture. The kid will lie about his age on his own. At 16 he’ll probably say he’s 18, to get into “R” rated movies. At 19 he’ll swear he’s 21 so he can buy beer at college. When he’s forty he’ll lie in the other direction. He will swear he’s in his thirties.
After 50 he will reverse direction again. He’ll do what we old coots do. He’ll add a year or two to his age, to get a feel for what’s to come. When someone says, “Oh you don’t look that old.” He can fess up, “Well, I’m really not, but I will be before long.” It’s what we old coots do to warm up to the next fireball on our birthday cake. Eventually, we end up shifting to another measurement system, one that uses scores and decades. It’s confusing to young mothers and fathers who brag that their little darling is 27 months old. It’s our way of getting even. When I’m 3 score and a decade old I’m going to buy myself a Mini Cooper convertible. I can just see the young parents at my party converting my age in their heads. “Honey, do you realize that today he’s 840 months old?”
Old Coot’s in a Lather!
I miss soap. I miss bar soap to be specific. We have liquid soap at our house, even in the shower. It’s a revolution that’s taken over the country. I don’t know how it happened. I wasn’t paying attention. One day the soap dish was gone; in its’ place was a liquid soap pump in a decorator jar. I feel like I lost a good friend.
Bar soap is a hapless victim in the war between the sexes. Apparently, it irritated millions of women over the past several centuries as it sat in soap dishes covered in grime and handprints. Male hand washers never learned to clean up the soap after using it. We never even noticed that it was filthy. We washed, we dried, we went on our merry way. First our mothers and then our wives cleaned up after us. It took ten seconds to rinse off the soap and put it back in the dish, but we never caught on. Now it’s too late; our bar of soap is gone.
I hate liquid soap dispensers. I get my hands wet and then reach over to the pump, hoping against hope that some soap is left in the container. You can’t tell by looking. This was never a problem with bar soap. A quick glance was all it took to know there was enough soap to get the job done. Now it’s a crapshoot. I pump, nothing happens. I pump again, nothing. Six more pumps and a dribble of soap finally makes it to the tip of the nozzle. Now it’s primed; a few more pumps and it’s flowing. I can wash my hands. The pump is filthy from all the contact with my wet dirty fingers. I scrub and shrug. The soap isn’t as good as bar soap. You can’t dig your nails into it to do a good job on the dirt that gets trapped underneath. It smells funny too, like lilacs or oranges or something pleasant. Soap should smell awful. It shouldn’t make you want to eat it.
I find that half the time the pump is clogged and half the time the soap settles in the bottom and gets too thick to make it up the tube to the nozzle. I’ve got a bar of soap in a plastic holder in my gym bag. I use it at the YMCA. I’m thinking of carrying it with me when I’m at home and using it instead of the pump. I heard about a group that does this; they have a meeting every month in the basement at the bank. I was shocked at my first meeting. A guy stood up and said, “I’m John Doe, I’m addicted to bar soap.” I couldn’t believe he said it out loud, and in front of other people. The evening was filled with bar soap stories: Octagon used with a scrub board to get out stubborn stains; gritty Lava for grease laden hands; good old yellow soap that we had to bite down on when we were kids and swore in front of our parents; Palmolive, Dove, Dial, Camay, Ivory and all the old brands that are slipping out of our hands. It was a bar soap concert. Soap nostalgia ran rampant. We all went into the bathroom to wash our hands several times over the evening. It was heaven.
THE Old Coot takes a dive!
I took a tumble the other day. The official report at the walk-in clinic indicates that I was cleaning the gutters and slipped off a stepladder, smashing my tailbone on a picnic bench. The real story is that I was standing on the garbage can trying to compact the trash so the lid would close; the can slid out from under me and slammed my tailbone into the edge of the hot-tub step. I lied! If the injury turned fatal I didn’t want my obituary to list the cause of death as something equivalent to slipping on a banana peel, ala, “The Old Coot succumbs to injuries caused by stupidity - he went out with the trash!”
If you are an old coot you tend to be conservative. Not because you aren’t open to fresh ideas, liberal thinking or new adventures, but because you are afraid of creating comic fodder for an uncaring headline writer. It’s bad enough when you die of natural causes and the buzz at your wake is that you are to blame, that it was your fault. “He smoked didn’t he?” - “He wasn’t wearing his seat belt was he?” - “He should have gone to the doctor sooner!” If it’s the deceased person’s “fault” it isn’t as hard on the people who come to the viewing. They don’t have to dig deep into their grief pool. If it is both, your fault and something stupid, then there is no need for sympathy at all. In fact, a ripple of sly chuckles will run through the gathering. That’s what we old coots try to avoid, the “slipped on a banana peel” obituary.
I had a boss, back in the dark ages when I lived in the Danbury, Connecticut, area, who believed he had solved the problem of avoiding stupid mistakes. It became his favorite catch phrase, “Use good judgment!” Anytime anyone asked for guidance before heading into a sticky situation he always said the same thing, “Use good judgment.” Unfortunately, he was too dense to know that good judgment comes from making stupid mistakes. The good judgment knowledge floods into your mind the second you are airlifted by the proverbial banana peel. He sat in his office hidden from the world while we went forth and committed bad judgment. We grew wise; he grew old and cranky.
We old coots are so afraid that our swan song will be accompanied by peals of laughter, that we get rigid in our behavior. We put the garbage to the curb flowing over the top, with the lid cocked at an angle. We enter swimming pools slowly, lest we die of cold water induced heart failure. We are the guys who wear a belt and suspenders; we take no chances; we tighten up. But it does no good; we still end up doing back dives off the top of garbage cans. I’m just glad my mishap bruised my backside, not my ego. My wife didn’t make out so well. After a week of chuckling at my ineptness she broke her toe, and on a bar stool at that. She was walking around the kitchen island to the dining room and didn’t see it. I may have taken a dive because of a momentary loss of sensibility, but she couldn’t even safely walk across the kitchen. It just proves that we all have a banana peel out there waiting for us.
Old Coot knows when to say goodbye.
When does goodbye mean goodbye? It depends on who you ask. We had a party the day of the Strawberry Festival. It was our 16th festival gathering. We bring people to town to pump up the sales tax revenue. We hope it will offset the financial pressure that has kept our property taxes in an endless upward spiral. It also gives me a wonderful opportunity to observe my favorite skirmish in the unending battle of the sexes - the confusion over the meaning of goodbye when used in the phrase, “We’re going home now.”
In the first place, it is the wife who decides when a couple will go home. We (husbands) think we do, but it’s a delusion. We start a campaign to leave the minute we get there. “Give me a nod when you’re ready to leave, Honey,” we whisper, in an attempt to plant the seed. If the truth be known, men work on an escape plan before they even get there. The exit strategy begins when they’re changing their clothes for the outing, something they’ve been ordered to do, not realizing that a stained T-shirt and a pair of wrinkled khakis are inappropriate party attire.
No, we (men) don’t make the decision to leave. We whine; we beg; we conjure up tales of horror that will unfold if we don’t go home soon - traffic jams, deer jumping onto the path of the car, or mechanical breakdowns in the dark. Eventually our wives tire of the battle and announce that it is now time to leave. Unfortunately that is the signal for the battle of the sexes to begin. Men think that the statement, “We’re going now,” means finding the host and hostess, saying thank-you and leaving. It doesn’t. For men good-bye is an event, for women it is a process. And no matter how many times we go through it, we never figure it out. We’re in the car with the motor running, but our wives are just in the early phase of leaving. We sit there listening to a boring sports talk-show for five minutes before we realize she isn’t coming out any time soon.
We leave the car running for our first trip back into the party, foolishly, but incorrectly thinking we’ll soon be on our way. We find our wife and hover by her side, in the mode of a preschool child clinging to his mother’s skirt. We listen intently to the conversation, anxiously awaiting the key words that will signal an end is near. The words never come. We have to butt in and recap the horrors that await us if we don’t leave this second. That gets us a look, but not any movement toward the door. The conversation continues until we fall to the floor, kicking and screaming. Our wives respond to this entreaty by saying to the person she is taking to, “We really have to get going.” Upon hearing those magic words, we head back to the car, expecting to get underway. We are wrong.
We turn off the engine, for a second trip back into the house. We have no optimism. It’s a walk of defeat, a march of tears. We find our wives closer to the door, but still with a queue of 10 or more exit interviews between her and freedom. We stand at her side, this time like a secret service agent escorting the first lady at a public reception. We nudge people aside to clear a path, but add nothing to the conversation. We’re the ultimate invisible men. Eventually we make it through the “good-bye” process. It’s quite a scene, a room full of women engaged in animated conversation, each with an antsy, adult-child at her side. Eventually the door is reached. She is finally ready to go; the 20 minute good-bye process is over, but the slug she came with is nowhere to be found. He’s wandered into the den with the rest of the husbands to watch the last minute of a double overtime game. It doesn’t matter if it’s football, basketball or celebrity wrestling. He wants to see the finish. “I’ll be just a minute, honey,” he says, not having a clue that he just restarted the goodbye process.
I don’t know if the Strawberry Festival was a profitable venture for the merchants or the tax collector, but it was for me. I got to watch 20 husbands fret, pace and go back and forth to their cars for the better part of the afternoon. I was in the safe zone. I was already home.
OLD COOT IS OUT OF LINE
I was in Dunkin Donuts the other day. Sometimes they set up a rope barrier to guide people to the counter in an orderly fashion, sometimes they don’t. I like it when they don’t. I get a coffee, sit back and watch the show. I’m a student of the queue. Queue is a corporate word for line. CEOs think we don’t mind waiting our turn if it’s in a queue, rather than a line. I love to watch people in line; it reveals so much about them.
Lines wouldn’t be a problem if the fictitious Soup Nazi from the Jerry Seinfeld sitcom ran things. If you wanted his soup you conducted yourself by his rules: money in your left hand, step to the counter in one swift motion, speak your order clearly, quickly step sideways to the cashier, pay, keep your mouth shut, pick up your soup and leave. He would never allow the undisciplined, sprawling, disjointed lines that take place at Dunkin’ Donuts and other places that have customers backed up and out the door.
Some of the people who join a queue have a psychological disorder, like the guy who keeps a four-foot distance between himself and the person in front of him. He has Proximity-Phobia, a fear of bumping into someone. I hate being behind this guy. The four-foot space in front of him doesn’t leave much room for me behind him. I have to stay in the doorway and hope he will move ahead a step or two. People line up behind me in a snake that reaches into the parking lot. We have a disorder too. We’re afraid of people with Proximity-Phobia. We think they will go berserk if we ask them to close up the line.
Another queue disorder that you see in a donut shop is the Food-Complexia Syddrome; everything these afflicted souls order is complicated. They want a large coffee with two and 1/2 sugars, 1/2 sweet & low, 3 squirts of milk (not half & half), a cup of ice on the side and an inch between the coffee and the top of the cup. They are fun to watch, as are the Zigzaggers. You know the type; they order a dozen donuts in a helter-skelter manner, giving the clerk a work out in the process. I call it the donut waltz: a jelly from the lower right shelf, two steps over to a glazed on the upper left, three steps back for a plain in the next section. On and on they go putting the poor clerk through an aerobic adventure.
The worst customer to get stuck behind is the I don’t know what I want person. They wait in line for their turn for five minutes staring at a giant picture menu and with a panoramic view of the display case, yet when the clerk asks, “How can I help you?” they get a blank look on their face and reply, “I don’t know. What’s good?” The clerk starts rattling off suggestions, each is discarded: I don’t like jelly, I can’t eat chocolate, I have a bad tooth so I can’t chew a bagel. The game continues until finally they pick something. The clerk quickly throws it in a bag, hoping to get rid of them, but it doesn’t work that way; the I don’t know what I want customer says I’ve changed my mind and turns into a Food-Complexia customer. “Give me the breakfast sandwich, but put the cheese on the bottom, don’t warm up the bagel, and make sure the egg is not too hot.”
The list of queue disorders is endless: customers on cell phones who have to discuss their selection with a friend - parents with four brats who insist the kids order for themselves, but then veto the selections; absent minded shoppers who run back to the car to get the wallet they left on the seat; low talkers, who order in a whisper and then get indignant when asked to repeat what they said. Queue watching is a pleasant pastime when you are not part of it. You don’t even have to be an old coot to partake. All you have to do is pull up a chair and watch the parade.
Old Coot is an outlaw!
I was at the blues festival in downtown Owego two weeks ago. It was a pleasant afternoon in the park. The bands played; the people danced & clapped, and this old coot reclined in a portable lounge chair and soaked it all in. You couldn’t ask for a nicer crowd, downright mellow. Everything was pleasant until the village cops made their rounds. They spent their shift checking cups to make sure no one was violating the open container law. They caught a few people here and there and sent them across the street to finish their “adult” beverages. I don’t know why it was legal to sip wine on one side of the street, and in the street, but not in the park. The bureaucrats have a reason I’m sure, no matter how illogical it may seem to us. The crowd handled the dilemma and showed its true American spirit by exercising a clever form of civil disobedience. It made me proud.
I saw one couple dart to the drug store. Back they came with a plastic pail & shovel set. They quickly filled the pail with white wine and ice and then poured a round into two infant, “sippy” cups. They put a lid on the pail as a final touch. I was proud. A little later I noticed a couple lying back on a blanket drinking coffee, or so it seemed, from Styrofoam Dunkin Donut take-out cups. I noticed a foamy head on the coffee when the guy took off the cover to check the contents. It smelled like Coors Light to me. Little by little, strange liquid containers began to appear through the crowd: milk shake cartons, orange juice bottles, Mickey Mouse soda cups. One couple was trading slugs from a blue Milk of Magnesia bottle. Sure, there were a lot of people sipping wine and beer across the street from the concert in the “legal zone.” But the real Americans were next to me in the park exercising the freedom that politicians stole from us when they tried to “fix” things.
I never was sure what they were trying to fix with the open container law. It has been the law for so long that I’ve lost touch with the origins. It’s one of those things you don't give much thought to until it hits you in the face. For me, the wake up call came when I was in Saint Martin about 10 years ago. My wife and I were in a jewelry store. She was trying on rings and I was being the perfect old coot, standing in the background trying my best to send a psychic message, “Let’s go!” The owner of the store was a wise man. He reached down into a cooler and fished out a glistening ice cold Heinekens. “Sir,” he said, moving the beer in my direction, “Would you like a Heinekens?” I was startled.
“What, right here in the store? Isn’t that illegal?” He laughed. “It’s not illegal. This is a free country. Drink it here or go outside and check out the other shops and take it with you. Just enjoy it.”
I had just received a lecture on freedom from a citizen in a third world country. I felt a little ashamed, envious too. The freedom that he so casually commented on had been taken away in my state and I hadn’t even noticed. Worse, the open container law turned a lot of good people into criminals. Even the old coot is now an outlaw!
The Old Coot is Knocked Down A Peg Or Two
I lost some stature this week, in Johnson City of all places. You might say I deserved it, but it wasn’t really my fault. It was simply another of those adjustments one must make if one is an old coot. I had a disc removed. It has been a long time coming. I suffer from a chronic illness known only by the Latin phrase, “Em es not seventeen anymore, em should act est age.” It's not a genetic disease. I wasn’t born with it; my father didn’t have it. It’s a condition I acquired when I turned forty and slipped into a state of age denial. Every decade thereafter the condition intensified. At fifty it shifted from acute to chronic, at sixty it became life threatening (not only to me, but to those around me) and when the first Social Security check rolled in it became insufferable. Not only did I think I was seventeen; I started to act it, with a body ill prepared for the adventure.
So this week I found myself face down on the operating table at Wilson Hospital with a skilled neurosurgeon removing what was left of the disk between the L-4 and L-5 vertebrae in my lower back. There wasn’t much left, but what was there was raising heck with the nerves that exited my spinal column at that juncture and headed down my right leg, the very leg that I instructed to take up jogging after a nine year hiatus. Oh to be seventeen again!
The ironic thing is that when I was seventeen I didn’t want the height I had reached. I was happy to be five foot eleven in 10th grade, but reluctant to see the measuring rod in 11th grade gym class extend to six feet. When it inched toward six foot one in my senior year I went into denial. I didn’t want to stand out from the crowd; I wanted to blend in, to be a clone with all the other kids in my high school. Never did six foot one make it to my driver’s license or any other official paper with my name on it.
It wasn’t until I reached my late thirties that I welcomed the inch that I’d denied for so many years. It didn’t hurt that my best friend was six foot five and another close crony was six foot three. I was the short guy in this gang and suddenly the six foot one figure made it to my driver’s license. Unfortunately, by this time it wasn’t accurate; I’d lost three-eighths of an inch to body settling, something I hadn’t counted on. By the time I was fifty when my age denial problem became acute I could barely break the tape measure at six feet even.
Then I stopped trying. At least I stopped measuring. In my mind I was six foot one and that was it. I kept running into incompetent nurses in doctors’ offices who kept thinking that the bar that rested atop my head hit the scale at the five foot eleven mark. (They got my weight wrong too). Now I don’t know what I’m going to do. From what I could see on the MRI, the piece of disc that was removed looked to be about three-eighths on an inch thick. I’m probably below the five foot eleven mark on the doctor’s yardstick, but nobody will ever know. I’ll wear thick-soled hiking boots when I go in for a medical check-up from now on. I may be an old coot who doesn’t measure up anymore, but I’ll be darned if I’ll let it become official
Old Coot is jealous of the tattoo generation
The tattoo and body-piercing business is the fastest growing industry in the country. Don’t look to your stockbroker for profit and loss data, he doesn’t have it. Tattoo and body piercing artists are too independent to incorporate; they would lose their aura if they joined the establishment. Their entire appeal is based on a credo of free thinking, independence and “in your face.” The only tattoos available to kids of my generation were of the transfer variety: you licked the tattoo, held it against your arm for five minutes and hoped you could pass it off as real. It never worked. Body piercing was limited to sticking a needle under the top layer of skin on your fingertip, and trying to freak out the kids in your class. Girls pierced their ear lobes, usually at a slumber party, with plenty of ice to dull the pain and a huge helping of peer pressure. Nobody double or triple pierced their ears or thought it even conceivable to pierce a tongue, eyebrow or navel. My generation was lame compared to the tattooed and pierced kids of today.
We may have missed out on the tattoo and body-piercing craze, but not because we lacked a desire to display an attention–getting physical abnormality. We achieved it with cuts, scrapes, scabs, scars, casts and bandages. We didn’t do it on purpose, but when it happened we took delight in the scrapes and bruises that came from a bike crash or an errant slide on the playground. These were our “tattoos” and we wore them proudly. Cuts, scrapes and bruises were okay, but their value was short lived; the scabs healed, the bruises faded and the cuts disappeared. They just didn’t measure up to the body decorations available today. Some kids were lucky in my day, they needed stitches and thus were guaranteed a nice scar to show off. But this was a rarity. Our parents didn’t take us to the doctor or the hospital unless the condition was life threatening. We got a good dose of, “You’ll be fine,” followed by a painful splash of iodine and a wad of gauze, held in place by a strip or two of adhesive tape. Fractures were treated in the same casual way, unless the bone pierced the skin. You had to wait a day or two to see if a visit to the doctor was necessary.
None of my friends ever got the two things we wanted the most, a permanent scar or a plaster cast. We were underprivileged in that sense, so we settled for second best. We taped up our wrists and put them in a sling, claiming a bad sprain. Likewise, we trotted out band-aids, gauze wraps and ace bandages on a rotating basis to get the envy of our peers. My eighth grade classroom looked more like a Civil War battlefield than a schoolroom. There was enough gauze and adhesive tape to sink a battle ship. We displayed our tattoos proudly.
I’d forgotten all about going to school with my arm in a sling, a bandaged forehead or on a pair of crutches. Then one afternoon I looked out the window and saw my three oldest daughters jumping out of a tree, one after the other. “What are you doing?” I yelled. “You’ll break your arm!” Breaking an arm was exactly what they were trying to do. They wanted a cast and were willing to incur pain to get it. Having spent an inordinate amount of time with them in emergency rooms over the years, I was in a panic. I knew they’d keep at it until they succeeded. I did the only thing I could; I made them casts using a towel cut into strips and plaster of Paris. The finished product turned out a little lumpy, but it got me off the hook. In two days they were begging to have them removed. I cut off the casts and their desire to break an arm evaporated. It was one of the few times I ever outsmarted them.
The Old Coot & Wine Don’t Mix!
My wife went to a wine tasting the other night. “Are you sure you don’t want to go?” she asked, one last time before heading out the door. “Yes, I’m more than sure,” I replied. I didn’t go because I’ve had it with wine tastings. I’ve been to every winery in the Finger Lakes and to dozens of local wine tastings. I’m ready to move to the next step - wine “drinking.” If somebody invites me to a wine-drinking event, I’ll be first in line.
I’m sick of listening to self appointed connoisseurs shovel an endless stream of wine adjectives in my direction - great legs, full bouquet, oakey whispers, pear memories. It’s all bogus. It’s a glass of wine. It tastes good or it doesn’t. Who cares if the flavor can be described with a litany of adjectives? When I bite into an apple I don’t turn to everyone in the room and proclaim the virtues of its flavor; I just eat it and keep my mouth shut. Why can’t wine people do the same?
Besides, who wants to listen to a long, drawn out spiel, only to be offered a microscopic sample of wine? I always end up getting scolded by the wine-guide, “Slow down and let your palate absorb the essence. Swirl it, don’t guzzle it like a glass of lemonade on a hot day.” He then tells the group that this is an award winning wine; it should be savored, not guzzled. If you haven’t noticed, all the wines are award winners. The wine industry is awash in trophies, plaques and pendants. When I ask how anyone can do all that swishing with such a miserly amount of liquid, he laughs and moves to the other end of the counter. There, a group of eager newcomers are ready to be dazzled with his eloquent description of the bouquet of this vintage. I don’t find it appetizing to sip wine while people all around me are rinsing out their mouths and spitting into a row of countertop spittoons. They don’t fool me. They’re trying to act sophisticated because they don’t want the winery to figure out that they are there for the exact same reason that I am, to get as much wine as possible without paying for it.
The food at these tastings is a perfect match for the stingy wine samples, quarter sized sandwiches, layered with cream cheese, olives and fish guts on crustless, stale bread. Everybody oohs and aahs over the delicacies; I spit mine into a napkin and frantically search for a glass of something to wash the taste out of my mouth. If I had a real sample of wine instead of a thimbleful I might stand a chance.
When we get a gang together to go on a Finger Lakes tasting I’m finished by the third winery. I buy a bottle of red and park myself on a picnic bench behind the winery. The view of the lake at these places is gorgeous. I ask the gang to pick me up on their way back. “I’ll stay here and have my own tasting.” I pry the cork from the bottle and pour a healthy slug into my rinsed out, Styrofoam, Dunkin’ Donut coffee cup. Old coots know how to conduct a real tasting. I suppose my derelict behavior will lead to a tragic end. I can see the news of my passing now, “Old Coot found in alley with a bottle of Ripple clutched in his lifeless hand.” I don’t care. At least I won’t have died of boredom, listening to some gasbag describe the virtues of a bottle of wine. Salute!
Ouch! The Perfect Word.
There are some words that are irreplaceable. “Ouch” is one of them. I hope it never falls victim to the politically correct crowd. So many words have been added to the “forbidden” list that a compilation would fill a modest sized library. If a word offends somebody, it gets the boot. Many of them deserve to be shuttled off to word prison; others are innocent victims. I won’t start a debate about which words should be paroled and which should remain in solitary confinement. It’s not my purpose. I’m focused on the one word I couldn’t live without, OUCH, along with its close relatives: Ow! – Owwww! – Ooo!
It’s ouch in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Aie in French and Au in German. It’s somewhat of a universal reaction to pain and discomfort. It’s one of the few words we don’t use to communicate to another person; we use it to tell the universe, “That hurt!” It’s like a prayer in a way, offered in faith. Faith that relief will follow. Its purpose is much deeper than language. If we hit our thumb with a hammer or stub a toe, “Ouch!” is our response. It does not matter that no one hears it. It’s spoken to relieve the pain and it works! It starts a process of healing, a call to arms to the body’s recovery mechanism.
Sometimes it’s all that is needed. A simple “Ouch” does the trick. Mind you, this isn’t scientific fact; it’s just an old coot observation. A group of scientists may have analyzed the “Ouch” phenomenon. They may have determined that the contractions that the jaw and face muscles go through to vocalize the sound, trigger a section of the brain, initiating a healing process. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just know that I couldn’t get through a day without it. Not that I’m especially klutzy, bumping into things and misstepping on a constant basis. I have my share of accidents to be sure, but I’m also afflicted with the typical old coot ailments that require an ouch on a pretty regular basis, be it a sore back, a cramp in the leg or a crick in the neck, all of which draw upon the healing tones of “ouch.”
I use the proper form of the word, ouch, for blunt trauma, the hammer-thumb thing. I use the shortened version, ow for stinging incidents – a branch snapping back and hitting me in the face, a needle prick, a mosquito bite. A bee sting requires a series of ows, as in “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” Burns require yet another version of ouch, “Ooo!” Like when your back is sunburned and a friend comes along and puts his arm around your shoulder, “Ooo, Ooo, Ooo, Ooo!” seems the only way to react to the pain.
Poets and writers labor a lifetime in an attempt to string letters and words together to express an internal message. Some are extremely successful. But even the least literate of us can communicate a perfect message. Even an old coot. All I have to do is bend over and tie a shoe, pushing my sore back to its limit. “Ouch!” I yelp. It feels better already. Oh what a perfect word!
Old Coot Pans the Experts.
I helped baby-sit one of my granddaughters the other day. She’s six months old, twenty-four weeks in pediatrician talk. She’s a good baby. She slugged down her bottle, burped like a drunken sailor and fell asleep watching an electric train chug around under the Christmas tree. I put her to bed on her stomach; I’m old school. Babies sleep better this way, especially if they have a bellyache. And, even more important, there is little chance they will aspirate in this position. When my daughter picked her up, she commented on the sleeping position. Not in a critical way, she just remarked that she usually doesn’t like sleeping like that. The pediatrician is another story; he’d be horrified. Today’s approved position is to put the baby on its side. My daughter usually does this but she isn’t evangelistic about it. She doesn’t buy all the politically correct child-rearing techniques. She is the daughter of an old coot, after all.
That’s a good thing. It’s the way a young mother should be, a little skeptical of the experts. We were, when our kids were babies. We didn’t follow all the pediatrician’s advice. We listened to his medical recommendations; if we wanted childcare tips we would have gone to his wife, not him. She’s the one who took care of his kids. Even in this “new age,” there are very few male pediatricians who have hands-on childcare experience. Other mothers, grandmothers and aunts are the real pros.
A few years ago the “experts” insisted that babies be put to bed on their backs. Now it’s the left side, or is it the right? I forget. I suppose it has something to do with the way the chambers in their hearts function. I’m not a doctor but I was a hands-on father. I don’t claim to be as experienced as a mother, not even close, but I can hold my own. I’ve been around long enough to know you never put anyone on their back if they are apt to throw up, be it a baby, or your favorite uncle, Joe Sixpack. It can kill them. You don’t need a medical degree to figure that out.
My generation was brought up to be skeptical. It’s why our ranks are rife with old coots. We’re the kids who crawled under our school desks and faced away from the windows when the air raid siren went off. The “experts” of our day came up with that one, insisted schools hold practice drills every month or so. (Fire drills were better; we got to go outside.) Can you imagine? We were so gullible. Our parents too! To think we could survive an atomic bomb by hiding under a desk. The expert who concocted that fabrication is lucky. Lucky his mother didn’t have experts around telling her to put him to bed on his back when he was a baby.
He’s a member of the same team of know-it-alls who advised us to stand up to bullies, “They’ll back right down if you do,” was their promise. I got some of the worst beatings of my life when I followed that gem. Experts are still around, force-feeding us their advice. They tell old coots like me to do crossword puzzles; it will prevent Alzheimer’s disease. We’re doing the puzzles, not because of the advice but in spite of it.
Old coots don’t listen to experts. We’re out from under our desks and facing the windows; we see the light. Everything they told us when we were kids has proven to be wrong – we crossed our eyes and they didn’t get stuck – we swallowed gum and it didn’t form a huge ball in our stomachs – we sat close to the TV and our eye sight remained twenty-twenty - we swam after dinner without waiting an hour. None of us drowned. The list of “don’ts” that we violated is endless. The experts were wrong every time. Take it from an expert, don’t listen to the experts. Listen to the old coots.
The Old Coot Discovers the “Um” People.
I was studying the “Um” people the other day. You know the type. They wait in line, staring at the racks of donuts in Dunkin Donuts or the extensive menu at Awakenings, but when their turn comes, they are dumbfounded. The clerk says, “How may I help you?” They reply with “Um.” They tap their index finger on their chin and repeat it again, “Um.” Finally, they get started. “Give me two jelly.” That’s followed with another/ “Um.” All through the selection process their dialog is interspaced with ums. That’s why I call them the Um people. They’re never prepared for the task at hand. When the exasperated clerk finally gets their order together and says, “That will be seven dollars and sixty-eight cents,” they shift right back into the “Um” mode, as in, “Um, where did I put my wallet?” Everything that comes their way is a shock. We all do this from time to time, but the Um people never get out of the groove.
Old coots are the exact opposite of Um people. We know what donuts we’re going to order before we leave the house. We’re prepared for line situations. We step up to the counter and get the process over with as fast as possible. That is, when we actually get in a line. Old coots don’t get in line. It’s why we go to dinner at four o’clock. We won’t wait to be seated. We’re cheap too, and early birds get a discount. Line phobia is one of the ailments that befall old coots. It’s incurable. It’s limiting.
Old-coot-line-phobia may be a handicap but it has its good points. It makes us experts on line behavior. We don’t get in lines. We sit off to the side and study the dynamics. It’s where I first detected the existence of the Um people. I love to watch them in line at a donut store but even more at a deli. They become overwhelmed by the choices. Subway seems to bring out the most ums. It starts right off when the customer has to decide if they want a six-inch or twelve-inch sub. That’s good for two or three ums. Then they are confronted with a bread selection - hearty Italian, whole wheat, white..... That’s good for another few ums. This is where I swivel around in my chair to get a full view of the Um symphony. The choices of meat, cheese, vegetables and garnishes are endless. The crescendo of ums is deafening. The fatal blow comes when the clerk offers the final option, one that Subway recently added to keep up with competition from Quiznos, “Would you like your sub toasted?” the clerk innocently asks. This does it; the “Um” person reaches overload. He runs out of the store, waving his hands in the air and screaming at the top of his lungs. It’s what I’ve been waiting for. The clerk looks at me and asks if I want a free sub. “Um,” I reply. “What are my choices?”
Unearth an Old Coot If You Dare.
Try this sometime. Put a blank piece of paper in front of you, get a pen and see what happens. Don’t doodle or write your name. It’s deeper that you need to go. There is something inside that a pen can tap into, a connection to your subconscious. You never know what will emerge. It’s how I found the Old Coot. He’d been lurking inside for years. I kept him buried, wouldn’t acknowledge that he existed. I was writing my first book, An Outlaw’s Confession, and out he stepped. “Hey, you big boob; I know you can see me!” he exclaimed. I saw him, warts and all. He was loaded with critical opinions and awash in old cootisms: It used to be…. When I was a boy….. In my day….
I grabbed him by the throat and shook him. “You’re not me!” I shouted. “Oh, yes I am,” he smiled back. “How can you deny it, now that we are face to face?” – “We think exactly alike! You hate rules and regulations. It’s why you wrote An Outlaw’s Confession. You wanted to express your displeasure at being forced to buckle your seat belt, to strap a helmet on your kid when he rides his bike; to grasp the handle on a lawn mower to keep it running; to drive a car with noisy, non-asbestos brakes, and hundreds of other government rules. You get your dander up over every thing “they” force you to do.”
“I see you wear your seatbelt,” he chuckled. “I wear it because I want to wear it,” I replied. “I wear it in spite of the politicians sticking their uninvited hands into my car, belting me in and turning off my cell phone.” - “But, you do- buckle up, ” he taunted. “And every time you do, you resent it, and resent that the law forces your hand.”
He was right. But it’s not just old coots who resent being told what to do, it’s the nature of the beast we call, human. We’re born with it. It emerges when we hit our second birthday, become a terrible two-year-old and learn the power of the word, “NO!” We don’t want to be told what to do. We master its use and employ it with gusto. We get worn down over time. We give in. We do it “their” way. We fight it all over again in our teens, but then we back off again for the second time. It lies dormant for years. In some of us it comes back to the surface for a last round. It’s what I found when I sat down that bleak Saturday morning in January 2000 and started writing at random. An over aged, (terrible) two-year-old came out. The Old Coot was born.
I was hoping for a novelist, a screenwriter or a poet. I got an old coot. Who knows what you will get. But you should find out what’s there, what’s lying buried in your subconscious. Think of it as a mental check up, a CT scan of the dark recesses of your mind. The quicker you identify the malignancy that lurks there the better chance you have to control it. Give it a shot. It will be like rubbing a lamp and having a genie emerge. I just hope you don’t release another old coot on the world.
The Old Coot Goes Left on Red!
I gazed out the window at Dunkin’ Donuts last Sunday in an old coot stupor. A guy in a three hundred dollar spandex outfit pulled up to the corner on his bicycle and stopped for a red light. The spandex is what caught my attention. I think it should be banned. It makes the wearer look like two pounds of bologna in a one-pound bag. Young people in perfect physical shape are the only people who should wear it. Yes, the Spandex got my attention but it wasn’t what held it. It was the fact that the wearer was stopped for a red light - on a bicycle - at seven a.m. on a Sunday morning and was the only vehicle on the road.
He sat there for a long time. A very long time! The light didn’t cycle; it stayed red. His vehicle was too light to trip the sensor in the road. I timed how long he sat there. He stuck with it for almost three minutes. That’s an eternity when you’re waiting at a traffic light. I don’t even do it when I’m in a car. After three minutes I turn on my flashers and go through the intersection. I have a speech all prepared. “I’m sorry officer. I thought the light was broken.”
This guy, let’s call him, Jeff Spandex, never did go through the light. He got off his bike, walked it to the sidewalk and crossed the street between the crossing lines. He sure proved he’s not an old coot. He’s the exact opposite. I ride a bike so I can go through red lights and violate the motor vehicle regulations if it gets me through traffic faster. I know, I’m wrong. A sheriff’s deputy stopped me a few years back and explained the law to me. I was riding my geriatric bicycle down Front Street on the wrong side of the road. I faced oncoming traffic. He told me I had to follow the same rules as motor vehicles. I had to go in the same direction as the traffic. I waited until he was out of sight and then continued on the wrong side of the road. When I get run over by a careless driver, adjusting his radio or munching on a Big Mac, I want to have a chance to save myself, to see it coming. I don’t want to be blind-sided.
But I digress. It’s not my intent to promote civil disobedience. I do it, I disobey the law. But that’s because I’m an old coot. I pick and choose the rules I’ll follow. What I want to promote is a public outcry, a mass plea to our state officials to change the law. To let us treat red lights as stop signs, at least during off-peak hours. It’s not so bad in our little town. Only a half-dozen or so of our intersections have traffic lights. But try going down the Vestal Parkway or through Binghamton or Endicott at six o’clock in the morning. It takes forever. There is a red light every few blocks, sometimes every block. There you are sitting in your car, waiting for the light to turn green, only to repeat the scenario, over and over. You never see a car. There is no reason to sit there wasting gas and time; the authority holding you back is a mindless, mechanical circuit.
Lawmakers don’t trust our judgment. They don’t let us treat red lights as stop signs. They love power too much to share it with their constituents. I remember waiting to get their permission to turn right on red; it took fifteen years after the rule went into effect in California. And then we only got the “privilege” because the Federal Government mandated it, to conserve gas during the energy crisis of 1973. It was the same year the speed limit was lowered from sixty-five to fifty-five. It took the legislature twenty-three years after that crisis ended for us to get back the old speed limit. Some major sections of the state highway system are still held to a fifty-five limit, Route 17 from Deposit to Roscoe for example. New York doesn’t have confidence in the decision-making ability of its citizens. I sent a request for new legislation to permit us to treat red lights as stop signs during off hours. It went to Senator Libous and Assemblyman Finch. That was two months ago. I haven’t heard a word from Finch but I did get a reply from Libous the other day. He declined to introduce legislation on the advice of DOT regional director, John Williams. Williams said it isn’t a problem, we can wait at the light; it’s too dangerous to let us have “turn left on red” power. I thought I had a winner. The idea would reduce anxiety. It would make New York a nicer place to live. It wouldn’t cost a dime. Maybe I didn’t get anywhere because the request came from an old coot. Maybe they will reply to a request from you. Give it a whirl.
The Old Coot Helps a New Recruit.
A friend of mine is an old coot in training. He won’t let me use his name, so let’s just call him Matt Laba. He’s about half my age but he comes from good lineage. His father, Pete, had a master’s degree in old cootism. He was one of my heroes. Nobody pushed him around. He did his thing and if you didn’t like it, TOUGH! Matt’s young; he’s got years to study and perfect the craft. Right now he’s building up his classroom credits. He’s collecting stories from old coots; he’s learning the trade. He picked up a good one in March, a week after the big snowstorm.
Matt owns an apartment house in Johnson City. An old coot with an artificial leg is his favorite tenant. Every morning the old coot goes out for the paper, it’s a ritual. He makes his way down the stairs and to the store. He uses a walker when the sidewalk is slippery, it keeps him from falling. This day it didn’t help; he toppled into a snow bank and couldn’t get up, as in the famous ad from the 1970s, “Help! I’ve fallen and can’t get up!” A woman driving by in a SUV pulled over to see if she could help. She shot out the door and ran to him with a cell phone grasped tightly in her hand. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied. “I just can’t get up.”
“I’m going to call 911,” she stated.
“No, no,” he countered. “I’m fine; I just can’t get up!”
“You’re in shock!” she shot back. “I’m calling them!”
The battle of wills went on and on. Finally, he glanced down at his feet. His artificial leg had slipped out of its harness and swiveled around. His foot looked like it was on backwards, like it was broken. Badly broken! It’s why she thought he was in shock. He started chuckling. Then he broke out into a full belly laugh.
“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”
“That’s not my leg! It’s a fake leg. Let me turn it around and then you can help me up.”
“Help yourself up you old coot! You scared me to death,” she yelled at him, and then marched off to her SUV and spun out as she tore down the street.
Matt appreciates crusty old guys like his one-legged tenant. He has begun to show signs of cootism himself. Like the other day when his wife had some Xerox copies made for him. When he looked at the finished product he realized the back of the copies were blank. Half his information was missing. He stormed to the store and pointed out the mistake. The clerk hemmed and hawed. He couldn’t remember making the copies. Matt turned into an old coot. “Look pal, I want it done right and I’m not paying. You’ll have to eat the cost of redoing it!”
The clerk still hemmed and hawed. The manager isn’t here; I don’t know what to do. Matt walked out saying he’d be back for the copies in thirty minutes and he wasn’t bringing his wallet. When he came back the copies were ready.
“No charge,” said the clerk. “It was our mistake.” Matt left, somewhat appeased, though still a little irked that he’d had to get tough to get what he deserved. Later in the day he found out that he went to the wrong store. His wife had the copies made at different place entirely. Now Matt is in a quandary. Does he go back and apologize? Or does he leave his newly acquired, old coot reputation, intact. That’s how you can tell Matt’s still in training. A full-fledged old coot wouldn’t give it a second thought.
The Old Coot Springs for a Big Screen TV!
I’m watching TV on a big screen these days. It’s great. I don’t know why I didn’t get one years ago. The screen is so big that I have to turn my head to see from one side of it to the other, as though I’m watching a tennis match. It didn’t cost that much. I think just about anybody can afford it. Besides, it’s not the TV so much, as how you place it. I put mine on a swivel arm. I sit down in a recliner, place a bowl of popcorn and a soda on the table at my side, and pull the TV in front of my face. All I can see is the screen, nothing else in the room. The images are enormous. I watched Leno the other night. It was like he was right in the room with me. His face was so big I had to crane my neck to see the black patch of hair above his forehead. I bragged about my big screen to another old coot. “How big is it?” he asked. “Thirteen inches,” I replied.
“Thirteen inches!” he screamed. “That’s the smallest set on the market! That’s not a big screen TV!”
“It is, if it’s only six inches from your face,” I explained. That’s the dirty little secret that the clerks at Circuit City and Best Buy won’t tell you. It’s not how big the screen is, it’s how close you sit to it. The trouble is we were brought up being scolded by our mothers, “Don’t sit too close to the TV; you’ll ruin your eyes!” Well, it isn’t true. Sitting close to the TV will save you thousands of dollars. My thirteen-inch, color TV cost sixty-nine dollars. It didn’t come with a remote but who cares. It’s right there in front of me. I just reach out and change the channel. Now I don’t have to search all over the house to find the remote. I love my big screen.
I think I’ll get into the business, go around and set up old coots with a home theater like mine. The recliner will be extra. I don’t know why people haven’t figured this out. Even a family of five can have the benefit of a big screen TV for less than four hundred dollars. That’s a lot better than spending several thousand dollars. The same thing works on mirrors. For a while there, I thought I was getting old and putting on a few pounds. Then I discovered I was standing too close to the mirror. If I stand in the bathtub and comb my hair, so the mirror is eight feet away, the wrinkles around my eyes disappear. I do the same thing when I look at myself in a full-length mirror, to make sure I don’t have my shirt on inside out or something. I use a mirror that I tacked up in the garage. I get twenty feet from it. I look a lot slimmer at that distance. That’s why there’s a noticeable bounce in my step these days. I’m younger, slimmer and watching TV on a big screen!
Old Coot Joins the Mole People.
Well it’s happened. I have to adapt again to fit into a changing world. This time it’s drastic. I have to become a mole person, to learn to live in the dark. I’ll have to function between eleven at night and six in the morning. The rest of the day I’ll sit idle and keep my electric usage at a minimum. NYSEG President James Laurito met with the editorial board of the Press & Sun Bulletin this week to announce their plan to install “smart” meters in homes across the state, starting in January. These devices are so smart they know when you are using electricity; NYSEG can then price it based on the instantaneous cost on the grid. More people use electricity during the day so the price will be higher than it is at night. There are several periods when the cost will be astronomical, like at the wake-up hour, when factories and offices are firing up and a legion of teenagers are taking their morning, hour-long showers. Another peak comes at the end of the workday, when businesses are still going full tilt and people are turning on lights and appliances at home. The cost will vary throughout the day so the smart meter will keep a record of when we use power. The cheapest rate will be between 11 pm and 6 am. That’s the only time I’ll be able to afford the stuff. I’ll live out my life in the dark; I’ll be a mole person.
It’s like being in grade school all over again, except this time around it’s not a tattletale telling the teacher that I’m chewing gum, it’s a stupid, “smart” meter, telling the NYSEG billing people that I turned on the dishwasher at noon. They think when people get the bill for using electricity at peak periods they’ll change their ways (provided they can revive me after seeing what I owe). I’m not going to wait until 2008 when the program rolls out; I’m converting myself into a mole person now, before the smart meter starts tattling to NYSEG. It’s going to be hard. I’ll get up at 11 pm, take a shower, turn on the TV and start the coffee pot. It sounds like the electricity will be practically free at that time. Then I’ll put on my miner’s hat, switch on the built-in light and go out and mow the lawn. I hope the neighbors don’t complain. But what can you do? When I finish the yard work I’ll take a stroll into downtown Owego. Awakenings Coffeehouse will be closed. Harris Diner will be closed. Riverow Bookshop will be closed. I won’t have any place to stop for a chat. After a while people will wonder what happened to the old coot, why he’s not in the front window at the Awakenings Coffeehouse anymore.
My whole identity will be stripped away. I won’t be the nice old guy you see around the village. I’ll be that weirdo who slinks through town in the dark, wearing a miner’s hat. Eventually I’ll get stopped by the police and be questioned about my odd behavior. They’ll ask me my name and I’ll have a senior moment. I won’t be able to come up with an answer. They’ll take me away. My family will report me missing. You’ll see my picture on bulletin boards in supermarkets and on utility poles, next to the photos of missing cats and dogs.
Maybe that’s what NYSEG had in mind, the real reason they came up with the smart meter. They want to rid the state of old coots. I found out who’s to blame. It isn’t exactly NYSEG. The Public Service Commission is the instigator behind the scene. You know, the same group of zealots who made the utilities sell their generating plants and now force us to select a supplier every year or so. They said it would introduce competition into the picture and give us choices and lower prices. It didn’t work, so now they have a new plan, “smart meters.” I tried to call the PSC to complain. I called at 11 pm, during my mole hours, so the electricity I used in looking up their number was the cheap stuff. But nobody was there. An answering machine picked up and told me to call between 8am and 5pm. Apparently they aren’t getting ready for a smart meter at their place. They probably haven’t bought any miner helmets either.
Because I said so!
I witnessed a fascinating conversation at an Owego lacrosse game the other day. It was between a father and his two young sons. I can’t mention his name because he’s a local icon, a top-notch English teacher and basketball coach. He was there to watch the game; his boys came to play. They climbed on the fence that rings the playing field and were jumping off and climbing up again. “Get off that fence!” was how the dialog started. One boy hopped off; one stayed on. “Why do I have to get off?” he replied. “It’s fun.”
Dad - “Because you’ll get hurt.”
Son - “No I won’t. I’ll be careful.”
Dad - “Get off. It’s school property.”
Son - “It’s OKAY. They don’t care.”
Dad - “I do. Get off. You’re making me nervous.”
Son - “Then don’t watch me.”
Dad - “Get off, NOW!”
Son - “Why?”
Dad - “Because I said so.”
That’s always the last bullet in the parental ammunition belt. After “Because I said so,” there’s nothing you can do except walk over and remove the kid from the fence, and then add another item to the list of parenting tricks that don’t work anymore. You have to do this all the time as the kid grows up. One by one, the techniques that start out so well go by the wayside. “Mommy knows best.” - “Santa Claus knows if you’ve been good or bad.” - “Because I said so.” Parenting is an unending stream of maneuvers and outright lies, though we are loath to admit they are anything more than low-level fibs.
Smart parents figure out when to move on to the next technique (or lie, if one is honest enough to admit it). “Don’t cross your eyes; they’ll get stuck and then you’ll be sorry!” That one has to be thrown on the trash pile when the kid is seven or eight. It had a good run but it’s over. “If you smoke, it will stunt your growth!” This stops working when the kid breaks the six-foot barrier. Especially if you have to look up to say it to him. The most famous of all is the one that mothers use to keep their kid from getting a BB gun, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Even though the kid in the Christmas movie nearly did, this one never stopped anybody from wanting a BB gun.
It gets trickier when the kids become teenagers. By this time, they have a long history with parental warnings that have turned out to be, shall we say, less than accurate. The secret to parenting teenagers comes when mom and dad realize that the kid is going to do it his or her way, no matter what. You still need to keep at it though. When the teen doesn’t listen and a showdown takes place, you are left with an unloaded six-shooter. You squeeze the trigger and out limps a weak, “Because I said so!” And then you pull out the long gun and fire a round of, “My house, my rules,” which is the modern day, shortened version of, “As long as you live under my roof you will live by my rules!” This may work for a while but the jig is nearly up. What you worked at for eighteen years has come to fruition. Open your eyes and see the truth. You’ve created an independent, fully functioning adult, one that is ready to go out in the world. Your job is done. Pat yourself on the back and tear up your parenting license. Why? Because I said so!
Old Coots Know How to Beat the Heat!
Every time there is a hot spell a flock of “experts” swarm the media offering advice on how to keep cool. Some are global warming advocates, trying to cut down on green house gasses. Some are just good Samaritans, trying to make sure the elderly and the very young don’t suffer when the temperature soars. The cat and dog people step in with their advice too. Us old coots chuckle every time the weather advisors take the stage. Our society can’t deal with the environment anymore. We’ve been spoiled by air conditioning. It’s everywhere: in our cars, our homes and the places where we shop, dine and work. We’ve lost the ability to cope with summer. When we were kids, in the good old days, we got a drink from a hose, not from a bottle of chilled water from France. Our parents warned us, “Be careful. Don’t blow your brains out!” Of course it never worked. We’d put the hose in our mouth and trust a friend to turn it on gradually. They never did; they always cranked it up full blast. It’s why my generation is so dumb. We blew our brains out getting a drink from a hose.
It was a lot harder keeping cool in those days. People didn’t have air conditioning in their houses or pools in their back yards, except for those metal framed, canvas, kiddy ones that were one-foot deep. We didn’t care that our legs hung over the side; we’d lie down in the tepid water and pretend we were swimming at the lake. It wasn’t too exciting but it cooled us off. It didn’t take much to entertain a bunch of kids who had blown their brains out with a hose. We’d also spend hours running around under the sprinkler or taking turns soaking each other with a hose, a pail of water or squirt guns, the kind that had to be refilled after about ten squirts. We would have killed for one of the half-gallon soakers that today’s kids have at their disposal. When we got older we rode our bikes to one of the city’s public pools. My favorite was the First Ward pool, the one behind the Ansco Film plant. It cost thirty-five cents to get in. If you turned in your locker key on the way out you got a quarter back. Mine never made it past Lamb’s Ice Cream Parlor on Clinton Street.
You had to learn to sleep hot in those days. Sleeping “hot” was an art. You had to fluff up the sheet just right so it didn’t cling to your skin and you had to turn your pillow over every half hour to get to the cool side. You never fell into a deep sleep on a hot night. You just made the best of it. I had a fan in my room, but only if I could sneak it up the stairs without my parents noticing. It was a "droner." It sounded like a small airplane coming in for a landing. The blades were metal and could nip off the end of your fingers if you weren’t careful. Those were the days before manufacturers were required to child proof everything. Those were the days when parents taught children to keep their fingers out of the fan. It was a wonderful device. The drone lulled me to sleep and the rotating mechanism alternated between blasts of air and dead still heat. It was the variety that made it feel so good.
We may not have had air conditioning when I was a kid but we had something better, Kool-Aid. Nothing was quite as satisfying as a glass of frosty Kool-Aid on a hot, muggy afternoon. Especially the way we made it, with a full cup of sugar, two if mom wasn’t watching. A lot of folks had a back porch in those days, the lucky ones, that is. It was a perfect place to slumber on a narrow cot or a hired man’s bed on a hot night. People bragged if they had a sleeping porch, not unlike they do today if they have central air. We didn’t need “experts” to tell us how to cope with the weather. Ours was a self-reliant society. We even figured out that a hot drink on a sweltering day made us feel cooler. It didn’t take a scientist on TV with an anatomy chart to convince us. We didn’t watch the Discovery channel; we discovered things for ourselves. We didn’t complain about hot weather. It was what we waited for all winter. It’s why you see us old coots all over the place when the temperature heats up. We enjoy the heat. We don’t know any better; we blew our brains out getting a drink from a hose when we were kids!
You Can Count on an Old Coot!
I’m a counter. A lot of people are. When we’re doing something boring, we count. For me, it started when I was a jogger. I’d count my steps when I first got going. I don’t jog anymore but I still count when I walk. Usually I get to 100 and start over again, then my mind wanders and I stop for a while. If I come to a hill I start counting again. I don’t know why. Sometimes I walk up Davis Hill and then Sunnyside to the top of King’s Point. I always count as I go. I never look up. I stare at my feet and count steps. If I looked up, I’d quit; it’s too steep for an old coot. But if I look at my feet and pretend I’m going down hill, I can make it with ease. Counting helps too; it’s a mindless thing that distracts from the difficulty of the task at hand.
It’s 920 steps from the bottom of Davis to where it joins Lyle Rd. Old coot steps that is. It’s 130 more steps along Lyle to Sunnyside. This is a flatter section, at least compared to Davis. Then it’s another 845 steps to the top of King’s Point, aptly named because when you make it there you feel like, “King of the Hill,” that old fashioned game we played as kids, standing on top of a rise and pushing aside anyone who tried to take our place at the summit.
I count when I mow the lawn too. I count the number of passes. Then when I get close to being done, I try to guess how many more it will take to finish. I bet with myself, “If I can finish in thirteen passes I can have a Snickers bar.” When my guess is off, I rationalize the error (blame it on the mower) and get the Snickers anyhow.
At the end of the day my head is full of numbers: 26 passes to mow the back yard, 650 paces from my house to the nearest place that sells coffee, 1250 brush strokes to paint the back of the garage. Then the brain dumps out all the numbers as I sleep. It’s a wonderful mechanism. The trouble is, it dumps out some worthwhile stuff along with the trash. Like the name of the guy I met at the firehouse yesterday, or that it’s my aunt’s birthday next week and I should send her a card. It’s an old coot thing; it’s also a male thing. We can’t help it. It’s why we can’t remember anniversaries and birthdays.
I’m going to try a new system. When I do boring, tedious things, I’m going to put back the good stuff that got flushed out of my head. I’ll start with birthdays. I’ll write them on a three by five card and recite them when I walk up Davis Hill. I’ll keep a list of new people I meet and glance at it when I ride my bike to Newark Valley. I’ll add a new item every few weeks. Before you know it people will stop calling me the Old Coot. I’ll be known as Einstein! That will be a nice change.
The Old Coot Says You’re as Old as You Feel, OUCH!
The thing about being an old coot is that you don’t feel old. Not until you start to move, that is. Sitting and doing nothing lulls you into thinking you’re young. You can’t really believe you’ve been around for sixty, seventy, eighty years or more. Your childhood seems fresh and close, not more than a handful of years in the past. And then you move. “Ouch!” The back is a little sore getting up. “When did that start?” Oh well, off you go, getting the machinery moving. A couple of stretches and a short walk used to do the job. Now you find it takes a half-mile stroll before the kinks start to work out. Walking is not a straight-line thing for old coots. We tend to take a sidewalk on a meandering slant, veering from the right to the left as we make our way. I never realized this until I looked back at my snow tracks one winter morning. I’ve been painfully aware ever since. Especially when approaching a person coming the other way. They move back and forth in anticipation of where I’ll be when we pass. It’s like the lottery; you never know how it will come out.
Every morning it’s something else. “Why is my hand so sore?” you wonder, and then you remember, you painted the garage yesterday. All that back and forth motion got something flared up. It’ll go away. You’ve been here before; it’s familiar ground. Some old coot ailments are dangerous, like the days when your neck is a little stiff. You can turn to the right okay but can’t get it to swivel to the left. No problem if you’re hanging around the kitchen supervising your wife all day but a real problem if you get behind the wheel. You back the car to the end of the driveway and look to the right to see if any cars are coming. You can’t look to the left, so you look to the right again. Then you look into the rear view mirror and hope for the best, as you slowly, very slowly, back up, giving the car you are probably pulling in front of time to stop.
After you pass that hurdle, the main danger from driving with a stiff neck is over. The only restriction left is that you’re not able to turn right on red. You can’t look to the left to see if it’s okay to go. That’s when you appreciate your reduced hearing capacity. You can barely hear the car behind you blasting its horn. The next time you get stuck behind an old coot who doesn’t turn right on red, give him a break. He’s having a bad neck day. When you see him out on the highway with his turn signal blinking for miles on end, it’s the neck thing too. He’s trying to warn you that he’s driving with a handicap. Be careful when you pass by the side where the taillight is blinking. It’s telling you that he can’t turn his head to check the road in that direction. Toot your horn, smile and wave when you go by. It will be a refreshing change from the usual gestures he gets when out for a drive with a sore neck.
The Old Coot is Green (and Cheap)
I took a walk the other day. The temperature was in the nineties, the humidity approached 100 percent. Television news and weather people warned viewers to stay out of the heat, especially old coots like me. It was noon as I crested the hill on Davis Rd. It's what old coots do. We ignore the warnings of our media “parents.” I brought a bottle of water with me. It was to be a reward when I reached the halfway point on my forbidden stroll. It was cold tap water that I’d poured into a used Diet Coke bottle. Better than paying $1.29 at the store!
As I walked along a flat section on East Beecher Road and sipped the now tepid water, it dawned on me that the Diet Coke bottle was undergoing a recycle. It was functioning as a container of liquid refreshment for the second time in its life. I had done my part; I’d saved the planet. Not for a noble purpose, but because I was a cheapskate. It was at this point in my trek that Jim Raftis pulled along side me in his air-conditioned car. “What’s an old coot doing out on a hot day like this?” he asked, with a sly grin on his face. “Didn’t you hear the weather forecaster tell old people to stay inside?” Jim’s an old coot too. He was rubbing it in. That’s okay. I’ll get even. It’s just a matter of time before he’ll be doing something in defiance of conventional wisdom himself; I’ll be there to point it out. Probably in print!
He drove off chuckling and I finished my water. I was about to stuff the empty bottle into my back pocket when I stopped myself. The bottle is worth five cents. Will someone stop to pick it up if I put it on the side of the road? I was curious. I placed it in a prominent position at the intersection of Lisle and East Beecher. I wasn’t sure if five cents was enough of an incentive. When I was a kid, we got two cents for returning a small soda bottle to the store, five cents for quart bottles. (That was when things came in pints and quarts, not liters) I got my spending money by returning empty bottles. A small coke was eight cents in those days, plus two cents deposit. The incentive to return the bottle was proportionally higher. (25% of the cost of the soda versus about 10% now) An empty bottle didn’t sit on the side of the road very long, it was too valuable. I wondered if the modern returnable bottle would do as well. Would it be gone when I returned on my next trip up the hill?
When I came back a few days later, it was gone. Someone had picked it up. I wish I’d put a note in it, asking them to give me a call, to let me know why they stopped to pick it up. Was it a “green” deed or did they do it for the money? I’ll never know. But nobody can accuse the Old Coot of littering. I simply enabled an entrepreneur to make a five-cent profit! I’m a one-man Economic Development Department. I wonder if the county’s official Director of Economic Development, Doug Barton, is jealous?
The Old Coot Got Booted Out!
I was listening to the radio the other morning on my walk into town, 1330 on the AM dial, WEBO. (If you haven’t tuned in lately, you’re missing a lot, especially the morning show with fellow old coot, Lew Sauerbrey.) Anyhow, a nationally acclaimed pediatrician claimed that half the kids with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD, ADHD if you add “hyperactivity” to the acronym) aren’t diagnosed and thus don’t receive medication. She said that over thirty-five per-cent of kids between the ages of six and twelve probably have the disorder. Toward the end of the interview she reluctantly admitted that medication isn’t the only effective treatment. Some non-chemical alternatives have shown good results, methods that employ old fashion life style techniques: a good dose of rules, routines, exercise, and criticism balanced with praise. Again today, I heard another expert speak about the syndrome, this time on a television morning show. He claimed that changes in dietary habits have also shown good results, “Limiting the consumption of soda and junk food can make a big difference.”
I’m not a scientist, just an old coot, but when over one-third of the population is supposedly afflicted with a disorder, it isn’t an illness, it’s normal. Except for the small percentage of kids, who truly do require behavior-modifying drugs, it should be treated as such. My generation had the disorder too. It was called AITP, “ants-in-the-pants.” The treatment was simple, “Go outside and play!” We took our medicine. We had to practically be dragged back inside at the end of a “session.” We burned off energy and calmed our ants-in-the-pants with a flood of endorphins. Our parents didn’t get involved in the specifics. We figured that out on our own. They just got the process going, got us out of the house. We ran, we wrestled, we climbed trees and we rode bikes (without a helmet). We skated on cement sidewalks (without the protection of elbow and knee pads). It only took a skinned knee or two to learn how to fall. We played dodge ball (now, taboo in most school districts). We hiked in the woods and got soaked playing in streams and ponds. The “treatment” options at our disposal were endless: sledding, tobogganing, ice skating, tennis, croquette, badminton, pogo stick and stilt walking contests, cowboys and Indians, hide and seek, capture the flag, fort and tree house building, hiking, exploring the woods, swinging from trees on ropes, king of the hill contests, not to mention all the ball games: bat ball, kickball, baseball, football and basketball.
We were lucky; adults didn’t interfere in our games. We didn’t know we were undergoing medical treatment for ADD and ADHD, yet we were faithful and obedient patients. We didn’t walk when we could run. If we couldn’t run, we skipped. (When is the last time you saw a kid skipping down the sidewalk?) We burned up more energy in simple things like practicing yo-yo tricks and flying kites than a kid does today in an organized aerobic class. Newly framed houses were our gymnastic apparatus. We scampered from basement to attic in a wild game of tag. No one had to cajole us to take our medicine. When we needed another treatment we were just told to go back outside and play. It’s where I’m headed now, though at my age they don’t call it going out to play. It’s called golf, hiking, going for a walk. I’m still in treatment, you know.
parking lot pERSONALITies
The parking lot at the mall is a great place to study human nature. It reveals the hidden characteristics of shoppers. It also provides wonderful entertainment for old coots with nothing better to do on a frigid February afternoon. You can see us at work, parked at the fringes of the lot in our full size American cars, the engine idling, a newspaper draped across the steering wheel, a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee clutched in our mitt. We sit there in a daze and wonder what it is that our wives, sons or daughters find so interesting inside the mall and why it takes them so long to come back to the car. As we wait, we observe.
Fascination with human nature is, in fact, the essence of human nature; we can’t get enough of trying to figure out what makes our species tick. Old coots though, are often driven to the study of our fellow humans by boredom. Nevertheless, it is still a scientific investigation and the study of the parking habits of people is not just interesting, it has practical application. Would you want your daughter to marry a parking lot vulture? Would you want your son to date a girl with a severe case of curb-a-phobia? A person that is so afraid of parallel parking that they only shop at malls. Of course not, but you need guidance to prevent just such a family tragedy.
I was at the mall in Ithaca the other day, and like a dedicated bird watcher, I was able to observe several common and a few rare members of the subject species. It was cold; the lot was awash in parking lot vultures, those astute shoppers who will walk five miles once they get inside the mall, but can’t waddle 100 yards across the parking lot to get inside. They patrol the rows, looking for the right parking spot for hours. It’s fun to watch them jockey for position, tailing and herding shoppers to their cars. Sometimes a shootout occurs as two vultures merge on a single victim. They fight it out with bumpers though, not six shooters.
New car hermits are the exact opposites of parking lot vultures. You can spot these guys at every mall. Their cars are brand new, immaculate and parked like lone sentries at the extreme limits of the lot. Hermits are happy to walk miles to get inside the mall, as long as their cars are protected from the usual assortment of nicks and dings that come from careless door-openers, another common species. It’s really not the driver’s fault; the blame goes to the architects who maximize the number of spaces in the lot by ordering the lines painted so close together that shoppers can’t open a car door without smashing it into the side of the car next to them. It can be avoided by performing an acrobatic maneuver similar to the limbo, but on a vertical rather than a horizontal plane. Old coots bodies don’t bend enough so we solve the problem by straddling two spaces, making us parking lot hogs and forcing us to endure the messages that fellow shoppers scratch in the layer of dust on our windshields, such as, “Learn to park you old coot!” or “Where’d you get your license?”
Another common species that I spotted in Ithaca was the slalom driver. These are the people who weave through parked cars, ignoring the driving lanes. They scare the heck out of us old coots when they glide within inches of us as we sit dozing in our cars. I also was able to observe a number of parking lot creepers, a breed that is petrified of crashing into another car. They drive to an open space at two miles per hour. They never get to park near the mall because they are too slow to beat out a vulture, that cuts them off and takes the spot. Creepers end up parking at the extreme edge of the lot next to the new car hermits. They are so inept that they end up parking real close to the hermits. So close that the driver’s side door on the hermit’s car can’t be opened more than an inch or two. When a parking lot jokester sees this, he parks on the other side of the hermit’s car. Then, neither door can be opened enough to get in. The hermit has to take a cab. Ha ha!
It was a good day for observation, but not complete. I missed seeing an Indy 500 driver, the guys who tear through the lot as though in a race. But I did have some fun being a teaser. It’s a favorite old coot routine. We stroll to our cars, attracting a swarm of vultures. When we get there we don’t leave; we fiddle with the radio, the wipers and the glove box. We keep at it until the vultures get impatient and leave. What parking lot personality type are you?
the Old Coot is training for the Olympics
A new event will be introduced at the 2008 summer Olympics. It doesn’t have an official name, for now it’s called “old coot getting out of a car.” triathlon. It’s the only event that is gender specific; only men can participate. And not just any men. They must be over sixty and have a bad back. The medical tests they’ll undergo won’t be looking for steroids or blood doping. It will certify that they have a back ailment: a slipped disk, sciatica, arthritis or a sore spot from the “old lady” kicking them after mowing down her flowers. A lot of us have the latter condition. It happens when we are hit with a leg cramp and the mower gets away from us.
The object of the event is to see how fast an old coot can get out of three different cars. The first is a full sized, 1976 Ford LTD station wagon. Old coots are quite familiar with this vehicle. Most entrants are expected to worm their way out of it inl ess than the two minutes allotted. It just takes a simple body swivel and a short step down to the pavement. Getting both feet over the doorsill is the only real challenge but using the oversized steering wheel as a fulcrum makes it fairly easy.
The second leg of the event will be conducted in a 1986 four-door, Chevy sedan, another vehicle that old coots are familiar with. The steering wheel is smaller, the doorsill higher and the seat softer, making it harder for back-challenged coots to get out in two minutes. The field of combatants will be narrowed in this phase. When the last contestant finishes, a celebration will be held. All the entrants will be paraded around the arena on a float pulled by twenty-four Hooter girls. The float will be stocked with beer, pizza and German hot dogs. Every participant will be presented a trophy and a certificate, just like the soccer leagues where their grandchildren are taught that everybody is a winner.
When the party ends, a hush will fall over the crowd. A sports car will be towed to the center of the arena. A feeling of dread will ripple through the contestants, akin to that which ran through the gladiators when the lions were brought into the Coliseum. Straws will be drawn to see who goes first. The two-minute time limit will be suspended. Instead, a winner will be determined using the actual time it takes to squeeze out of the sports car. The timing device is different that those used in other Olympic events. It doesn’t measure in fractions of a second; it measures in minutes and hours.
A lot of us old coots are excited about getting a chance to participate in the Olympics. You can spot us in our driveways and in local parking lots, perfecting our skill. I’m working on my techniques. I tilt the seat back into a reclining position. It’s easier to get my feet up and over the doorsill from this position. When I get them out the door I put the seat back up and slide out the door. It’s not as easy as it sounds; we aren’t allowed to use a power seat in the Olympic games.
The other method I’m working on is called the dog walk. I throw a package out the door and then lean over and walk on my hands, far enough from the car to get a foot over the sill and onto the ground. I balance like a tripod on my hands and one knee and pull out the other foot. When I’m on all fours, I grab the package, bring it to my chest and stand up. People passing by don’t have an inkling that I’m practicing for the Olympics. They think I dropped a package and got down on all fours to pick it up. I can’t wait for the official try-outs. I’m sure I’ll make the team. I’ve been practicing in the automobile showrooms around the Triple Cities. In Miatas, Z4’s, Boxters and a host of other, two-seat er cars. The dealers haven’t figured out that the old coot getting in and out of their display models has no intention of buying a car
The Old Coot Pays his Respects.
Diane Stack died today. Not today, exactly, but on this day in 1961. I’ll never forget that awful moment when I heard it reported on the radio. It was like when Kennedy was shot or the World Trade Center got hit; the moment is forever etched in my mind. I was in my room doing homework. I was a Broome Tech student at the time. Some of the Electrical students went to class in summer, the ones who went out on a co-op assignment in the spring. The semester was made up in summer school. The building wasn’t air-conditioned and was hot as blazes. They wouldn’t let us wear shorts. I tried the first day and was sent home. The whole school was empty except for thirty, male students. You would think the dean could bend the rules, but he refused. That’s the way things were in the sixties. Rules were rules, whether they made sense or not. It’s the attitude that spawned the hippie culture, the war protests, the women’s movement and the civil rights struggle. The intolerance of the people running the show had to be taken down. The rules that didn’t work had to go.
Diane was one of us, a Broome Tech student, and a fellow protester. We’d been classmates all our lives, from grade school through high school, and finally, college. We weren’t always the best of friends. I still remember the time in fourth grade when she got her due. Diane was a tattletale. I slipped up a lot in those days. I spent as much time in the principal’s office, the hall and the cloakroom as I did in class. I wasn’t a bad kid; I just rebelled against the rules, the ones that made no sense. Every time I “slipped” Diane was there to tell the teacher. There wasn’t anything lower than a tattletale in my mind. Our fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Daniels convened a “quiet time” in the afternoon. She read to us while we nibbled away on a piece of fruit. My friend, Woody and I always had a contest to see who could finish last. We could stretch out a banana for 10 minutes, an apple for twice that long. At the end of the reading we were required to put our heads down on the desk and “rest” for fifteen minutes. Ours was a restless crowd. Our heads were down but our eyes were open. At least Woody’s and mine. We’d make faces at each other and then quickly recompose ourselves when Mrs. Daniels looked our way.
Diane, who was a rule follower, broke the law; she peeked. She saw us sticking our tongues out at each other. She couldn’t help herself. She sat up, raised her hand and shouted to Mrs. Daniels, “Woody and Merlin have their eyes open!” - “Nuts,” I thought to myself. “She did it again; she tattled!” I expected to get the usual punishment for a crime of this nature. I’d be writing on the board, one hundred times, “I will not open my eyes during rest period.” I was wrong. Mrs. Daniels did something totally unexpected. She challenged the informer. “Diane?” she asked. “How could you know that Woody and Merlin were peeking unless your eyes were open as well?” I’ll never forget the look on Diane’s face. Here she was, nine years old, facing a reprimand in school for the first time in her life. She was horrified. She sobbed the whole time she was at the board writing, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
After that, Diane and I became friends, a friendship that lasted through our final two years at PS-13 (Binghamton’s Longfellow Elementary School) and on through high school and into college. She was my friend. She died in a car accident on what was called the towpath, now Route 88, just north of Chenango Bridge. It was a clear sunny afternoon. Her tire slipped off the edge of the pavement. When she tried to steer back onto the road she pulled too hard on the wheel and her car shot into the other lane, into the path of a tractor-trailer. Here I am, forty-five years later, wishing she were around to tell the teacher what I did wrong today. It’s another reminder of how precious (and fragile) life is. I should write that on the board one hundred times!
The Old Coot is Ready for an Invasion.
Home invasions are on the rise! At least according to the morning news show I watched the other day. Of course they are. It’s a new crime, invented by the news media. I liked the old name, burglary. I could understand it - somebody breaks into your house and steals stuff. The term wasn’t dramatic enough for the media. It didn’t have enough zip, not enough to get people to tune in to the six o’clock news for the full story. It’s just like the weather forecasters when they started using wind chill factor. It didn’t get our attention when they predicted temperatures in the twenties. So they threw in the wind chill factor and told us it would feel like zero. They have our attention; we’re tuning in for weather reports. We’ve forgotten that wind chill factor is the evaporation affect of wind on bare skin. It has no effect if you are wearing clothes. It only makes bare skin feel colder. Most people I know wear gloves and hats so the wind chill factor is negligible. It doesn’t matter. We’re conditioned to the term now. All we hear is the zero; we ignore that the real temperature will be twenty.
Home invasion will eventually become an accepted term, just like wind chill factor. We wouldn’t tune in to hear about a burglary. But a home invasion? That’s another matter. We’ll be lined up at the news hour in droves to get the scoop on that one. The morning TV show, where it was purported that home invasions were on the upswing, finished with a news-chat between the reporter and a, so-called, home invasion expert. (Expert, because he wrote a book on how to protect yourself from home invasion) Most of us know what to do - lock our doors and windows. This is essentially what the expert said. But he looked more impressive. He had his tips flash across the screen as he talked. He was a “power-point” guy. #1 Get new dead-bolt locks. #2 Use them. On and on he went. Nothing we didn’t already know. The conclusion was what I liked best. The reporter got him to admit that there really is nothing you can do to stop a determined burglar. The best locks in the world won’t keep out the guy who smashes down your door.
I’m not putting in new locks. I’m not investing in a security system. I’m not calling in a home invasion consultant nor am I buying the book. I’ve got a fool proof, old coot system. It’s called - “There’s nothing here worth stealing.” All you have to do is install a bunch of low budget lawn decorations – a plywood fat lady, bent over as though weeding in the garden - the silhouette of a black bear with three cubs - an assortment of whirligigs: a man sawing wood, another climbing a ladder, an airplane hovering over a landing strip. The more, the better. The tackier, the better. As a final touch you need to install a sign on the front door that says, “Property Foreclosed! To Be Sold at Public Auction on the Courthouse Steps. Contact the County Clerk for Details.” This year I didn’t even have to mess with the sign. A nice sheriff’s deputy came by and nailed one on the front door. It got me wondering, “Did I mail in the tax payment, or is the bill in one of my coat pockets where it’s been going on long walks through the village with me for the last few months?
The Old Coot Gets a French Lesson.
I was in France for two weeks. Well, not exactly France, not the one in Europe. I was in the French part of Saint Martin, a small island in the Caribbean that is half French and half Dutch. It was France to me. I was a foreigner. I wasn’t an illegal alien but that’s how I felt. They spoke French when I wanted something, and English when they wanted something.
The trouble started with an introduction to the euro. I naively thought the euro was just a form of currency used by member countries of the European Common Market, so people don’t have to change currency when they leave one country and enter another. That’s not exactly true; it’s not the whole story, anyhow. I discovered that the euro is used by French merchants to sock it to you, as in, “In your ear-o!” While you’re busy trying to avoid a sharp stick in the eye, they stick it in your ear. That’s what euro really means.
When I used a U.S. dollar to buy something that was marked one euro, they made me cough up another thirty cents. A scoop of ice cream that was priced three euros on the menu cost three dollars and ninety cents “American.” I understand the concept of foreign exchange rates, that one form of currency floats in value compared to another. But it didn’t work that way in the France I was in. When I used a euro I didn’t get the extra value. All of a sudden the euro and the dollar were on a par. My euro equaled a dollar according to the clever clerks.
It didn’t take me long to get with the program. The Island does that to you. Their motto is – “No Problem” – and after a few days of gorgeous weather you adopt the motto. I stopped trying to figure out the currency thing. When I bought something I emptied my pockets on the counter, a mix of euros, dollars, quarters, nickels and French coins, and let the clerk take what he wanted. I didn’t care. I paid for the trip with a French credit card. I don’t plan to pay the bill when it comes. I’ll just put a note on it and send it back in the payment envelope. It will instruct them to take the money I owe for the trip out of my share of the unpaid debt that France owes the American people, the money our country loaned them in World War II. I’ll even give them $1.30 in credit for every euro.
The Old Coot Wants to Know Who To Blame!
Who’s making the decision? Who is it that decided we wouldn’t celebrate Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays, that we’d toss them aside and have a Presidents Day? I liked it the old way, with “honest” Abe and “I can’t tell a lie,” George. Those were two guys I learned to respect as a school kid, now they’re gone, erased from the fabric of our society. Congress is credited with the change; they bumped off George and Abe but who is the person that made it happen? There’s always one man or woman who takes the ball and runs it into the end zone. Who was it? I’d like to give him or her a “proverbial” punch in the nose.
We never get to find out, yet these people change our lives, usually for the worse. Who was it that decided the World Series would be played at night? They stole the thrill of sneaking a peek or a listen to the game as it progressed while we were at work or school. The games now keep me up past my bedtime. They keep up the whole Eastern Time zone. Major league baseball made the decision, encouraged by the lure of cash from media executives, but who is the person that got it done? I know it’s probably a media money guy, surrounded by a bunch of yes men. Who are you? I want to throw a pie in your face.
It’s not just the big decisions that intrigue me. It’s the little ones too. Like, who is it that decided to put a notice on the door to the county clerks office on Court Street that says, “Door Pushes Hard,” instead of fixing it? I’m not talking about a temporary cardboard message. I’m talking about an engraved, hard laminate sign, securely fastened with brass screws. I first noticed it six years ago but I bet it’s been there a longer than that. So who was it that said, “OK, make a sign and stick it on the door?” I’d like to bring him home to help me with my repair projects. It’s a lot easier to make signs than to paint a bedroom or to clean up the yard. This guy is a genius. He won’t get a punch in the nose or a pie in the face. He’ll get a holiday named after him. What the heck. We’ve got one to spare now that Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays have been merged. We could call this new one, “National Get-out-of-doing-it Day!”
But, who was it? And who decided to change the Binghamton Evening Press into a morning paper and eliminate the opportunity for kids to be paper carriers, because of the early a.m. delivery requirement? Who decided that New York State license plates would be blue and white? Who made it impossible to buy a winter coat in January, decided we wanted to wade through a sea of bathing suits, short sleeve shirts and open toed shoes when it’s snowing outside? Who did it? That’s all I want to know. These things are always attributed to a group, but I know better. It’s one person that makes it happen. Stand up and take a bow. The Old Coot has something for you!
The Old Coot Doesn’t Get the Dozen!
I went to Dunkin’ Donuts Saturday. I told the clerk I wanted some donuts. “How many, sir?” she asked. She was part of the “weekend” crew, which is different than the crew that runs the place on Monday through Friday. The weekend crew is mostly high school kids. When I go in during the week, Nancy, Lisa or Debbie will automatically get me a large coffee with cream and walk to the prep area to do something constructive while I get out my wallet, shoo away the moths and pull out two singles. If I linger a minute or so, looking like I might be about to order something else, Lisa will notice, and ask in shock, “Oh my gosh; are you actually going to buy something besides coffee?” When I answer, “Yes,” she yells to Nancy in the back, “Call my broker; put in a buy order for Dunkin’ Donut stock; the Old Coot is buying donuts!” (I don’t get any respect!)
But it wasn’t a week day; it was a Saturday; I was met with a polite, “How many, sir?” I told her I wanted ten donuts. “We don’t sell ten. You have to buy a dozen or half a dozen!” - “I only want ten,” I insisted. The haggling went on and on: “I don’t know how to ring it up.” – “It’s cheaper if you buy a dozen.” – “How about a half a dozen plus four “individual” donuts” – “How about a dozen and then we buy back two?” A donut shop or a bakery can’t handle the decimal system. They live in a math world based on twelve. So do the golf pros. They won’t sell me ten golf balls; they make me buy a dozen. Same with the florist. You should see the look on the clerk’s face when I try to buy ten roses. I can’t buy a ten pack of beer either. I like to buy things on a base of ten. Ten is good. I can do the math; I can’t figure things out based on twelve. If ten roses are twenty-two dollars, then I know they are two dollars and twenty cents each. I can’t do that with a dozen. I don’t think I could even do it if I had a piece of paper and a pencil.
I haven’t found a good explanation why certain products are sold by the dozen, or multiples and fractions thereof. Even then, the users of the “duodecimal” system aren’t consistent. They make you buy a gross (a dozen, dozen) when you buy in bulk, but then abandon the whole thing when you go to the next level. The next step is ten gross, not a dozen gross. I don’t get it.
The dictionary is no help. The encyclopedia either. Even the Internet failed me. Wikipedia, the so-called, Internet authority, provided a detailed explanation of the origin of the dozen. It sounded good at first, but fell apart when I did the math. It claimed that primitive people measured things using the cycles of the moon and sun “The dozen is the approximate number of moon cycles in a year,” it said. But the math is off. The moon goes through a cycle every twenty-eight days. Twelve moon cycles takes three hundred and thirty days. The last time I looked there were three hundred and sixty five days in a year. If you use Wikipedia’s logic, a dozen should really be thirteen. That’s how many moon cycles there are in a year. That’s the trouble with the Internet; you can’t depend on the information. You get two bad answers for every dozen questions. Don’t ask me what percentage that is. I can’t figure it out.
The Old Coot Can’t Stay Silent!
A friend of mine is half my age but wise enough to be preparing for a future as an old coot. He and his pals sat around for an hour the other night carping about silent letters. This young friend, who shall remain nameless, because he’d be embarrassed if it got out that he associated with the Old Coot, has a name that ends with a silent E. It's Wayne, as in Wayne Moulton. It might be spelled Wayn or Wain, if our language made any sense. I couldn’t agree more with their discussion. I have a terrible time with English, and not just spelling and pronunciation. I can't figure out simple things, like which verb is correct in the following sentence? “The group of boys walk to the store,” or, “The group of boys walks to the store.” I’m told it’s the latter but it sounds funny to me.
Wayne and his cronies stumbled onto a secret. We’re illiterate! But it’s not our fault. It’s the language. Take the silent letters that his buddies were making fun of. They pepper our vocabulary. They lie in wait, ready to trap the innocent user. Silent B`s, for example, in lamb, comb, and climb. If we dropped the B, we could end global warming. Think how much carbon ink would be saved in a single book if silent B`s were eliminated. Multiply that by tens of billions of other silent letters and you have the real cause of global warming. It’s not us; it’s the English language.
English is rife with silent, carbon polluters of the atmosphere. Take the humble K. It leads the way in words like knife and knock but doesn’t get noticed at all in the pronunciation. Even the mighty N, one of the most popular letters in the language is shushed in words like damn and autumn. It’s been a long time evolving, this silencing of letters in English words. It began in the 15th century when King Henry VII began borrowing words from other languages: Spanish, French, German, etc. The adopted words didn't follow the rules of English pronunciation. At the time, 90% of English words were “phonemic” (they sounded the way they looked). But the English alphabet only had 26 letters and the foreign words required 41 sounds (letters) to be pronounced as they were spelled. Henry and his royal court had to combine some letters and silence others to fake the sounds of the new words. The language evolved and today, only 40% of modern English is phonemic. And, isn’t it ironic that the word "phonemic," which means, “sounds like it looks” is spelled with a ph, when, if it lived up to its own definition, it would be spelled with an F.
So what’s the big deal you ask? We can spell and pronounce words properly with the rules we learned in grade school, the ones that helped us pass our weekly spelling tests: "I before E except after C or when sounding like A, as in neighbor and weigh." Unfortunately, the number of rules has grown to over 100. They only provide correct answers 76% of the time, at least according to the Internet authority at www.learnenglish.org. You are better off memorizing the correct spelling of the dam (damn) word than memorizing the rule. But whatever you do; don’t suggest that we start pronouncing the silent letters, at least, not until you try it. Start with easy ones, like knife and gnome, pronounced ka-nife and ga-nome when you vocalize the silent letters. Then, work your way through the alphabet, starting with B, in words like debt. It becomes deb-tee! Lets face it; we couldn’t adjust to the change without the help of a psychiatrist (spelled with two silent letters, P and H). The smart thing to do is what people tell me to do all the time, “Shut up!”
(And don’t bother to call me to tell me that the word I used in the previous paragraph should be phonetic not phonemic. I looked them up. Phonemic is correct. The two words have different, but similar meanings. Confused? Well, that’s the English language for you.)
The Old Coot is Cool on Global Warming.
The lamest excuse for doing something came into being when we landed a man on the moon. The astronauts barely finished bouncing around on the pock marked surface when the deed was used to garner support for somebody’s pet project. It most likely was a complaining old coot that got the ball rolling. “If we can land a man on the moon we should be able to figure out how to fix a pothole!” The moon landing is used as an excuse to get people’s agenda moved forward an average of three thousand and twenty-seven times a day, according to my old coot almanac. It has reigned supreme for twenty-five years, eclipsing the previous record holder, “The dog ate my homework!”
Now, along comes global warming; it’s headed for top billing in the lame excuse department. Some people claim the moon landing was faked, that it never happened. Global warming is also thought to be on both sides of the “is it real” fence. I’m not concerned with the controversy. I think both are true. We did land a man on the moon and the planet is warming, just as it has, many, many times, over the past five billion years. It’s not the controversy that bothers me. It’s the way it is used to force me to behave.
Global warming has been catching up with the moon landing excuse for years, but it’s power as an excuse really ramped up when environmentalists began to blame individuals for the phenomenon. It’s no longer the eruption of volcanoes, sunspots or planetary cycles that are causing the rise in earth temperature. It’s you and me: driving around in gas guzzling SUV’s, taking Sunday drives with the family, keeping our houses at seventy degrees and using materials made with carbon atoms. Global warming is now used to attack everything I do. The final straw came when some “crazy show biz personality suggested that we only use a single square of toilet paper. “It will end global warming,” she promised!
I’m sick of it. And I’m sick of the Hollywood and political crowd flying around the country in private jets and lecturing me about my bad habits and telling everybody what “we” must do. (Heal thyself, physician) It’s getting hostile out there. If I get a coffee to-go, some young disciple will come up to me and say, “You know sir, if you used your own cup instead of that Styrofoam throw-away thing you would stop destroying the planet.” Or, when I’m filling the tank in my evil, four-wheel drive Jeep, I get a lecture from a young mother holding her baby, “You know sir, if you didn’t drive that SUV my infant daughter would inherit a planet that can support human life.” I’ve heard it all. It’s my fault the oceans are warming, the glaciers are melting and the polar bears are dying.
I don’t know where it will end. But I know one thing. If we can put a man on the moon we can stop global warming activists from picking on old coots. Besides, it’s not my fault; the dog ate my global warming prevention handbook!
old Coots Need Special Care on Independence Day!
Fourth of July is coming. I dread it. Not the holiday. I love the 4th; how can you not? Parades, fireworks, family picnics, hot weather. No, what I dread is the news media telling us how to get our pets ready for it Pet psychologists come out of the woodwork on the eve of every major holiday. They appear on TV with a list of dos and don’ts, advice that will prevent dogs and cats from getting stressed.
At Thanksgiving, one of them warned viewers not to share the feast with their dogs or cats. “No table scraps!” he ordered. “Human food isn’t fit for animals.” I was shocked; I always fed my dog table scraps when I was a kid. He lived a long, happy and healthy life. Most dogs did in those days.
At Christmas, a pet psychologist on Good Morning America focused on cats, telling viewers not to yell at them if they messed with the decorations or got into the garbage. “Cats don’t like getting yelled at.” she warned. “It stresses them out and hurts their self esteem!” She advised the viewers to provide a safe and private place where they can go to escape the hustle and bustle of the holiday.
She was back on Super Bowl Sunday with more “wisdom.” She said we should resist the temptation to toss chips and pretzels to our dogs, no matter how much they beg. And, to make sure cats don’t get into the tuna fish. (I didn’t know tuna fish was a tradition at Super Bowl parties) She said tuna fish is not appropriate food for cats. Funny, our last cat lived more than twenty years. She ate mice, snakes, chipmunks, rabbits, bats and birds by the gross, but now I’ve learned, it was tuna fish that killed her. She also advised us to run up and down the stairs with our cat every few hours during the day, to help it work off stress and burn calories. She never mentioned that it might be good for the owner’s health.
I can only imagine what they’ll come up with for the Fourth of July. It’s a dangerous time, with loud noises, excessive amounts of food, rowdy family members and a legion of crazy old Aunt Tillys, who love to see if they can get the dog drunk by pouring booze into his water dish. Back in the days before pets were moved to a higher level on the pecking order of society than old coots, the news media would have experts on to give advice on keeping children and old folks safe on Independence Day, as it was called. They’d warn of the dangers of matches, firecrackers, sparklers and rockets. Of overeating and over heating. Of swimming and diving in unfamiliar ponds and lakes. They were concerned with people, not dogs and cats.
The focus needs to be shifted back to the human population, especially the old coot sector. It’s not hard to keep us stress free and healthy over the “Fourth.” Don’t feed us table scraps or tuna fish. Be sure to provide a quiet and private place for us to get away from the hustle and bustle of the day, especially at naptime. Use the old coot golden rule, “Treat an old coot as good as you treat your dog or cat.” Do that, and we’ll get through the holiday just fine.
The Old Coot Adds a Little Color to the Sex Offender Debate.
Twice last week the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin asked groups of people what they thought about posting warning signs outside the homes of Level 3 sex offenders. The answers were a blend of yeas and nays. One side argued that the public has a right to know!” The other side said that it wasn’t fair to the neighbors. The debate went back and forth. They should have asked an old coot.
I’m an old coot, not a social scientist but I think there is a solution that can bring the yeas and nays into alignment. We can paint the sex offenders. Then, no matter where they go, the public will be put on alert. The colors can follow the warning system developed by Homeland Security: red for Level 3 offenders, orange for Level 2 and yellow for Level 1. The paint (or dye) would fade over time but parole officers assigned to meet with the offenders could give them a fresh “spray” at the end of a session.
I’ve been reluctant to offer my solution to this problem because I’m afraid I, and my fellow old coots, would get caught up in the system. Somebody would suggest that we get painted too. It would be known as the nuisance notification system. Those of us who go on and on about the good old days, boring everyone within earshot, would be dyed blue, to match the mood you end up in after encountering one of us. All the hues in the old coot notification system would be from the cooler end of the color spectrum, since we are not a danger, just an annoyance.
Green would be the best color to dye old coots whose conversations are rife with memory breakdowns that cause statements like: “I can’t remember his name.” – “It’s that thingamajig.” – “You know what I mean.” – “What was I talking about?” Green matches how sick you feel after spending time with an old coot who insists on telling long stories but can’t remember any of the details.
Gray paint (dye) would be sprayed on old guys who insist on keeping you up to date on their deteriorating condition: “I was up six times last night!” - “I got a leg cramp in the produce aisle in the supermarket yesterday and ended up in a pile of bananas!” – “I looked down after my speech to the Rotary Club and realized I had my pants on backwards!”
A color code system would spell the end for old coots. People would know what to expect if they sat down next to us in a coffeehouse or on a bench at the mall. I’d probably be painted with a blend of all three colors: blue, green and gray, to warn the public that they’re in the presence of the most dangerous of all the old coots. My memory is shot, my ailments are many and life in the good old days seems better and better as each year passes. “Sit down right here young fellow and let me tell you about it.”
where’s the terlit?
This is a subject that nobody talks about. Yet, it’s a serious problem, has been for decades. We’ve got a “terlit” crisis on our hands, at least that’s how they say it in Brooklyn. In the rest of the country, it’s called a rest room crisis. There aren’t any. At least when you need one. Public rest rooms are scarcer than proverbial hen’s teeth. Our government has turned its’ back on the problem. Ok, OK, they’ve thrown us a few bones, there are rest rooms along interstates highways and sometimes we are allowed to use the facilities in municipal buildings. Provided we get there on Monday through Friday between nine and five, it isn’t a public holiday and we can make it through the security checkpoint with a nail clipper (or some other deadly weapon) in our pocket. But, for the most part, our elected officials have ignored the “terlit” crisis.
Actually, they haven’t just ignored it; they’ve exacerbated it. They’ve made nature’s call a crime. If there aren’t public “facilities” around and you get caught with your pants down behind a bush, you will be arrested. We’ve got a presidential campaign going full force and not a single candidate has mentioned the terlit crisis. Politicians have strapped us in our cars, taken cell phones out of our hands, defaced all the products we buy with warning labels and are forcing our favorite restaurants to prepare our food in politically correct cooking oil but they stick their heads in the sand when we ask them, “Can I use the terlit please?” Candidates are promising all kinds of new programs: free health care, $5,000 savings bonds for new babies, free 401-K accounts but not one word about what we’re supposed to do when we’ve had three cups of coffee and are walking around in a downtown area looking for a rest room. All levels of government have failed us: village, town, county, state and federal. “Go find a gas station,” they say.
It’s time to fight back, to tell the politicians to shut up about new programs, to get down to basics. Build us public terlits! Don’t make us go from store to store, begging to use an “employee only” rest room. I’m not optimistic that anything will be done, not even in a presidential election cycle. It’s just not a problem that a politician is willing to take on. Who wants to be known as the “terlit” president? We’ll just have to depend on the kindness of strangers until some smart entrepreneur comes along and figures out that there is money to be made, and a lot of it, by simply opening a chain of public rest rooms across the country.
A fortune could have been made in Watkins Glen last month when vintage sport cars sped along village streets, tracing the original grand prix route. The town was awash with old MG’s, Porsches, Austin Healeys, Jaguars and a slew of other two-seaters from the past. Hay bales were installed at the corners to protect the spectators, open container laws were suspended and 10,000 old coots roamed the streets, trying to appear cool and youthful, while sipping on cheap beer ($1.00 per mug). The bureaucrats tried something new this year; they decided to close the rest rooms in the municipal office building. The facilities are right in the middle of the festival. Maybe it was a sociological experiment, to see what happens when you turn a crowd of people, with 50, 60 and 70 year old, beer filled bladders, loose in the middle of town. I was there; it wasn’t a pretty sight. Ten thousand old coots squirming around and doing the twist in the middle of Main Street, yelling, "Where’s the terlit?”
The old coot is an expert on filler
Like any kid who ever did a term paper, I’m an expert on filler. I could ramble on to fill up this blank section on this, the last page of The Best of The Old Coot II, but if you’ve gotten this far you know that old coots in general, and this one in particular, are poor planners. We’ve learned not to look too far ahead. So instead of ending right here in the middle of the page I’ve added the first few paragraphs of my first, and only, work of fiction, Mystery on South Mountain. I have to admit, I edited it as I inserted it, so it won’t match the book exactally, if you decide to buy it sometime. (Sorry, that was a shameless commercial pitch.) I’ll end right here. It’s been fun taking you on a journey through old cootville. Thanks for reading.
Foreword – Sunday, June 20, 1954
She stepped off the curb onto the path. It connected the street she lived on to her friend Sally’s street. She hated this section of the neighborhood. Hated that it was undeveloped. Trees and undergrowth lined the trail. It made her terrified. Low branches and blackberry shoots reached out, as if to grab her. She thought of them as witch’s fingers. A doll was clutched in one hand. She dragged an overnight bag stuffed with miniature dresses with the other. She was in a hurry to get home. Then she was struck! It felt like a bolt of lightning. One minute she walked along the path, the next she lay on her back looking at a clear blue, summer sky. Tree branches swayed gently above, but rough were the hands that held her. A stench of garlic and body odor washed over her. She struggled to get up, but his grasp brought her down with a thud. He mumbled behind the filthy kerchief that hid his face, “Shut up and you won’t get hurt.”He shifted his hold to unfurl a burlap feed sack. She made the most..........
