DARN!
Another
Bunch Of Old Coot
Essays
(Will the madness ever
stop?)
The Old Coot when he
was starting off.
A collection of 50 preposterous
Old Coot articles, in case you didn’t get the point when
you read them in the paper
Old Coot articles, in case you didn’t get the point when
you read them in the paper
By: Merlin William Lessler
The Old Coot at the top.
(Wondering, “How am I
going to get back down?”
And, “Did I bring my
Medicare card with me?”)
Copyright Ó
2007, Merlin William Lessler
Copyright Ó
2008, Merlin William Lessler
Copyright Ó
2009, Merlin William Lessler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of
the author. Bla, bla, bla, let’s get real. If you want to make copies of any
part of this stuff, help yourself. Just give the money if you make any and
don’t claim it was something you wrote. It may not be great literature but I
worked hard on this stuff, well some of it.
Library of
Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Darn! Another
Bunch of Old Coot Articles.
Lessler, Merlin William
FIRST EDITION (October, 2009)
Index
Old Coot Articles
Page 1 The
Old Coot Mourns the Bumper!
Page 3 The
Old Coot Knows His Cookies.
Page 5 The
Old Coot is Short of Cash.
Page 7 Hero
Worship Ain’t What it Used to be!
Page 9 Old
Coots are Cheap! (But it’s not our fault)
Page 11 The Old Coot Climbed Mount Everest!
Page 13 Why Did the Old Coot Cross the Road?
Page 15 The Old Coot Goes Wireless
Page 17 The Old Coot is Positive, Almost, Maybe, Sort of!
Page 19 The Old Coot Mourns the Loss of “Yes.”
Page 21 The Old Coot Learns a New Language.
Page 23 The Old Coot is How Old?
Page 25 It Never Ends For The Old Coot! (The goodbye
process)
Page 27 The Old Coot Gets Blasted Out of the Stadium!
Page 29 The Old Coot is a Tennis Fan, Not a Player!
Page 31 The Old Coot Abdicates His Throne.
Page 33 Car Controls Baffle the Old Coot!
Page 35 The Old Coot is Storming! (Weather
alerts ruining TV)
Page 41 The Old Coot Can't Let Go! (Of old clothes.)
Page 43 The Old Coot Heard a Train?
Page 45 The Old Coot is a Four Flusher. (New toilets
don’t work.)
Page 47 The Old Coot is Language Challenged. (Or out of
date)
Page 49 The Old Coot Can’t Fly High! (Swing seats
pinch)
Page 51 The Old Coot Rejects Green Expert’s Advice.
Page 53 The Old Coot Is No Help at All. (Registration
sticker mess)
Page 55 The Old Coot Blows Up. (His stadium pants do, anyhow)
Page 57 The Old Coot Works it Out. (In a PT clinic)
Page 59 The Old Coot is Drowning in Shoes.
Page 61 The Old Coot Gets a Rude Awakening! (His spot
closes)
Page 63 The Old Coot Explains Infinity. (Fingers to
shoe laces)
Page 65 The Old Coot is a Trespasser. (Except when
it snows)
Page 67 The Old Coot Toes The Line. (Bumps the
line at DD)
Page 71 An Old Coot Has a Day at the Beach. (With help)
Page 73 The Old Coot Takes a Dive! (Out of a recliner)
Page 73 The Old Coot Knows His Numbers! (It saves
bickering)
Page 77 The Old Coot Makes a Living Will. (Leave me
alone!)
Page 79 Get Your Medical Opinion From an Old Coot
Page 81 The Old Coot Mourns the Neighborhood Mailbox.
Page 83 The Old Coot Asks, “Tennis anyone?”
Page 85 The Old Coot is a Victim of the No-Text Law.
Page 87 A father’s best lessons are unspoken
Page 89 The Old Coot sits on a time bomb.
Page 91 An old coot buys a Cinnabon!
Memories Columns
Page 93 Unsafe at any Speed.
Page 96 The Old Coot Goes to the Dogs.
Page 99 Badge of Dishonor.
Page 102 We Learned More Than the ABC’s at PS-13
Page 105 Real Men Don’t Wear Jeans!
Page 108 Ross Creek – Tunnel to Hell!
The Old Coot Mourns the Bumper!
Published Jan 30, 2008
The car bumper is history. That shinny, chromed,
steel bar that once graced the front and rear of our Detroit dinosaurs has
disappeared; it has been replaced with a plastic, bumper-like object that
shatters when it “bumps” into something. Some pick up trucks and a few SUVs
still sport a metallic bumper, but not cars. It’s another change I didn’t
notice taking place. Now it’s too late.
It’s too bad. It’s not just the shine that’s gone; so is
the pride we took in slathering chrome polish on our bumpers to finish off a
ritualistic Saturday afternoon car wash. We lost functionality too. Where are
you going to tie the baby shoes and tin cans when the bride and groom drive
away from the church? And, where are businesses going to wrap the thin pieces
of wire that held their cardboard bumper ads saying, “We had a blast at Hershey
Amusement Park,” or “I visited Howe Caverns?” There’s no place to wrap the
wire. Where will you stand to pick apples from a farmer’s tree when he isn’t
looking and where will you attach a piece of rope to pull a friend out of a
ditch? It’s more than the shine that’s gone. It’s a way of life that slipped
away. And nobody said a word.
When I tell my grandchildren about my favorite
childhood Halloween prank, tying a stuffed dummy to somebody’s car bumper when
they stopped for a red light in downtown Binghamton, they won’t know what I’m
talking about. “What’s a bumper,” they’ll ask? They won’t be able to understand
how we got even with the “meanest woman” on the south side of Binghamton on a
blustery fall day in 1956, the stealth we employed to fasten a length of
clothesline to her bumper while she was in her backyard hanging out clothes to
dry, the care we took to cover the rope with leaves so we could connect it to
her garbage can and the patience we exhibited as we waited for more than an
hour in the shrubbery before she finally came out of the house and drove off.
She turned left on Pennsylvania Ave, hell bent to get to a sale at Fowlers
Department Store, oblivious to the racket she was making, oblivious to the now
empty garbage can bouncing, rattling and leaping in the air behind her. My
sides still hurt from that laughing fit so many years ago.
Yes, we got even with the meanest woman in town. Mean, because she made her son finish his chores before leaving the house to hang out with us. The same son who blew a “laugh” gasket, hiding in the shrubs with the rest of us, the son who had actually tied the rope to her bumper, the son who, when it was over and our laughing fit had subsided, turned to me and said, “Now let’s do it to your mother’s car!” It can’t be done anymore. There is no bumper to attach to. We’ve lost a lot more than a shinny piece of chrome. We’ve lost a way of life. Let’s have a moment of silence for another passing, “The car bumper is dead!”
The
Old Coot Knows His Cookies
Published
February 20, 2008
The
food industry is out of touch. They don’t understand our eating habits. Take
Oreos for instance. The back of the package has a carefully researched list of
nutrition facts: Total Fat 8g, Sodium 110 mg, Sugars 11g, etc. You can be sure
it took a pretty smart bunch of scientists to compile the data. I can’t begin
to comprehend the number of tests and calculations it took to come up with the
information. Yet, when it comes to the easy part, the standard portion size,
this astute collection of food scientists and chemists at Nabisco got it wrong.
They didn’t even come close. It’s obvious they’ve never sat at the kitchen
table with a glass of milk and a package of Oreos. They claim, with a straight
face, that the standard portion size is three cookies. No human has ever
limited his intake to three Oreos. Forcing a prisoner of war to stop at three
Oreos is considered torture under the rules of the Geneva Convention. It makes
water boarding seem like a day at the beach.
Nabisco
isn’t the only company that gets it wrong. All the makers of cookies, ice
cream, candy and the foods we love, don’t have a clue about the eating habits
of their loyal customers. The only ones who come close are the companies that
sell canned vegetables. They put an average portion at one-half cup. That works
for corn, peas and beets but is way too high for things like lima beans,
asparagus and spinach. I limit my intake of that “unholy trinity” to a
teaspoonful or less. I’ve done so since I was four years old and had to empty
my plate before leaving the table no matter what my taste buds said. Of course,
my mother had other ideas. If I complained about the vegetable she dished out I
got a double helping. It made me into a sneak. I became a master at making a
pile of lima beans vanish from my plate and reappear in my socks. It was easy
to pull off because my mother never sat down at the dinner table with us. She
was in constant motion: stirring, basting and shuttling back and forth between
the stove and the table. It was only on Thanksgiving that she sat down with the
rest of the family. Even then, she never looked comfortable. You could tell she
wanted to be in her combination, maitre d’ – chef role, making sure her charges
were well served. A lot of mother’s were like that, still are.
I did the research that Nabisco and the other
food processors should have done. I came up with the proper portion size for
their products. I started with Oreo Cookies. I determined that the correct
portion size is a row of cookies. At three cookies (the portion stated on the
back of the bag) I hadn’t even warmed up. At seven, I was getting close. But, I
couldn’t stop myself until I finished the entire row. I was tempted to have one
more cookie, but if I did, the next row would be in jeopardy.
The next product I worked on was ice cream. The
package put the correct portion size at four ounces (one-half cup). It’s not! I
filled a bowl with butter pecan. I don’t know how many ounces it was but it
looked about right, heaped up an inch higher than the bowl. When it was gone, I
wasn’t quite satisfied. I replenished the bowl with three more scoops. That
didn’t do it either. I was drawn back to the fridge for a smidgen (another full
scoop plus a dab more). That did it. I don’t know how many ounces it added up
to. I’d recommend they don’t use ounces on the package, that they state it in
terms we can understand – one bowlful + one-half bowl + a smidgen. It’s not
that hard to figure out; the manufacturers need to use real people to do the
research, not computer models. I’m available.
The Old Coot is Short of Cash.
Published February 27, 2008
I was in Dunkin Donuts the other morning. The
woman ahead of me ordered a coffee and two donuts. The bill came to $2.65.
"Charge it," she said, handing the clerk a credit card. The same
thing happened at the post office. The guy in front of me bought a book of ten
stamps for $4.20. He pulled out his card and charged it. It dawned on me; cash
is unnecessary. A fifty-year-old prophecy had come true. I was there when the
prediction was made, clutching my brand new “Master Charge” card, as it was
called in those days. Up until then, you had to arrange for a charge account
with each merchant separately. They didn’t give you a plastic card; they gave
you a metal charge-a-plate. The bank manager who handed me my first plastic
card made the prediction. Some day this will replace money. Our society will
convert to plastic money!" I remember chuckling to myself at the time,
"This guy is nuts!"
I
still remember that first credit card. It was a wonderful, but, oh so brief
love affair. I maxed it out in six months. I didn’t know what hit me. For the
first month or two, it was fine. I was able to pay off the balance. Then it got
out of control. I spent money like a drunken sailor. I exceeded my limit. A
clerk at K-Mart broke the news. She said the bank had flagged my account. I was
forced to walk away and leave behind a cart full of stuff. It was the ultimate
embarrassment. The limit I’d exceeded was only $300. It doesn't sound like much
today but back then, it was a fortune. I was twenty-one, married and with a new
baby in the house. I brought home about seventy dollars a week. A pair of
scissors ended the spending spree. It
was another of those lessons in life I could have done without. My pride was
cut to pieces, along with the card. It took a full year to get the monkey off
my back.
But it’s
not like that anymore. People think nothing of carrying a $5,000, $10,000 or
$20,000 credit card balance. It fuels our economic system but it is one of the
reasons why people get into such trouble when the economy stumbles. The plastic
debt turns on them. The fastest growing business is the one that “helps” people
manage their over indulgence with plastic money. And guess what? You can only
pay for their service in cash.
I eventually went back to using a credit card. I
kept the scissors handy, just in case. I now have a stack of them. Everyplace I
shop makes me an offer I can’t refuse. “We’ll give you an additional 15% off if
you sign up for our card today!” So I do. Then I pay off the bill and put the
card in a pile. Usually though, I pay with cash. There is something about real
money that I love. When I was a kid, my father constantly lectured to me that
money was just a symbol, a mechanism to barter with, so you didn’t have to
carry around a bushel of potatoes to trade for a gallon of gas. It was just
useless paper and metal otherwise. But I never bought it. I liked money for
itself, not for what it would do. Nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars,
singles and especially fives. I never got my hands on a ten or twenty. My lust
for cash came from having a paper route. I handled money on a daily basis.
Counting, sorting and slipping it into coin wrappers. It took a lot of effort,
and considerable harassment, to collect forty-five cents from sixty-seven
customers every week. I had to get enough to pay the bill when the circulation
manager came knocking on my door. He only took cash. No promises, no checks
from mom or dad and definitely no plastic. It was like having a goon from the
mafia come by every Saturday. I was convinced he’d break my kneecaps if I came
up short.
But that world is gone. We live in a cashless
society. Plastic money is our currency. This new generation will never know
about money, the feel of a crisp bill and the satisfaction of filling up a roll
of quarters. The National Football League will have to come up with a new way
to start a game. There won’t be any coins to toss, to see who kicks and who
receives. I guess they’ll flip a credit card.
Hero Worship Ain’t What it Used to be!
Published March 12, 2008
The steroid controversy continues to dominate
the headlines. One week it’s baseball, with Roger Clemens under fire at a
congressional hearing. The next, it’s Marion Jones, sentenced to prison for
lying under oath about her steroid assisted victories in the 2002 Olympics.
Football, wrestling, basketball, swimming, track and cycling have all had their
turn. The entire sports world is wrapped up in the controversy. Pundits prattle
on about it ad nauseam. Eventually, the discussion gets around to the kids, and
the effect that disgraced sports heroes have on them. Child psychologists
wrestle with the issue all the time, but can’t say for sure. As an old coot,
I’m not saddled with needing facts to back up my opinion. I don’t think it has
a bad effect at all. Kids don’t get their sense of fair play from sports
heroes. They get it from each other. Stop sometime and watch a game of pick-up
basketball. The kids call their own fouls. “I hit your arm. It’s your ball
now,” one will say, and then toss over the ball. He knows what he did. Every
pick-up game goes this way. Unsupervised sports are the lesson teachers. When
adults get involved, it goes downhill. Out come the “steroids,” so to speak:
the ref’s calls are disputed, boos and catcalls engulf the stands, praise is
lavished when it isn’t earned. It’s the adults that deserve our concern, not
the kids. For them, it’s all about winning. And truth be told, sports is about
winning, but how you win is just as important as, if you win.
Kids teach each other. A lot more than parents
imagine. Old coots know this. We spend half the day reliving our childhoods. We
remember what the bully taught us about how to get along. It only took a bloody
nose or two to get the message. It taught us to pick our battles and it taught
us to hold back when we had the power over a younger, smaller kid. We knew how
it felt to get bullied. The self-called fouls in a pick-up basketball game
taught us too. We learned to admit our mistakes, to fess up fast and get it
over with. Some people never learn this. You see them all the time in the
paper. The politician who won’t admit to his indiscretions, even when caught
red handed, or, the sport’s figure, who claims over and over again, “I never
used steroids!”
So, be an old coot for a moment and take a trip
down memory lane. Stop and watch some kids play a game of touch football, sand
lot baseball, pick up basketball or soccer. The unsupervised version. They
manage the game pretty well by themselves. It’s here that fair play is learned,
where admitting your error proves to be the higher path, that giving the
benefit of the doubt to your opponent is the best way to win. If we could just
get the professionals to watch the kids, they might get it; learn what sports
are really all about.
Old Coots are cheap! (But it’s not our fault)
Published March 19, 2008
Old coots are cheap! We didn’t start out that
way; it came with the aging process. We have an elongated reference point. For
example, when I was twelve, I could buy a candy bar for a nickel and a soda for
a dime. Cigarettes were twenty cents a pack, though by the time I was twelve
I’d given them up. Prior to that, I smoked Kent cigarettes in a tree fort
behind a friend’s house, but only when his cousin David showed up. David’s
mother worked at a supermarket and got them free, or so he claimed. We believed
him. We thought everybody got free merchandise where they worked. That flawed
thinking got me fired from a soda jerk job, years later. But, that’s a story
for another day.
At
any rate, a historical reference point starts the buying process for old coots.
Our thought train goes something like this - “Let’s see, a pizza cost a dollar
when I was a kid. Now it’s ten times that much. I better get the cheap one so I
don’t feel quite so ripped off. It doesn’t matter that we don’t like that
particular pizza. We can’t enjoy the better tasting one because it isn’t the
cheapest one. Our taste buds are connected to our wallet. Every purchase is
made against a backdrop of the price of things in the “good old days.” Lunch in
1965 was $1.80, including a 10% tip. Even the tip percentage has increased over
the years. It has gone up with the sales tax rate. (Most old coots double the
sales tax to calculate the tip. We can’t do the math in our heads anymore) When
the rate was four or five percent, it worked fine. We doubled it and left a ten
percent tip. As the tax rate went up, so did the tip rate. We’ve been
transformed from cheapskates to big tippers, thanks to the politicians who
raised the tax.
It’s not just a money thing, this cheapness of old coots. It’s a desperate attempt to hang on to the past. When we go out to dinner and someone asks us, “How was it?” We go into a monetary history lesson, “The spaghetti was fine, but I used to pay five dollars for the same meal at Moretti’s restaurant when I lived in Elmira (thirty five years ago). They had the best pasta in town. Last night it cost me twenty-five dollars. It was good, but it was TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS!” It’s not a good dinner for an old coot unless it is cheap. It doesn’t mater how delicious the food tastes. It’s that darn connection between our taste buds and our past.
We don’t even know what cheap is after a while.
We’ve raised our reference point, replacing the 1950’s prices with 1960’
prices, and then the sixties with seventies and so forth, but we’re always ten
years or so behind. We mutter under our breath about the price of everything.
It’s why we line up for the early bird special or have our main meal of the day
at noon when restaurants, for some odd reason, sell things for less. You see us
in droves at church suppers or circling the venders offering free samples in
the supermarket. We’re not cheap. We’ve out of date.
The Old Coot Climbed Mount Everest!
Published March 26, 2008
I
climbed Mount Everest. It was a “bucket list” thing. I picked up the idea from
the Jack Nicholson movie of the same name. The main characters made a list of
the things they wanted to do before they kicked the bucket. My list included a
climb to the top of Mount Everest. I did it! Last Tuesday!
I didn’t go to Tibet to make the assent. I
didn’t have to. We have an Everest right here, an old coot equivalent. I got
the idea of using an equivalent from the book, The Thing About Life is That
One Day You’ll be Dead, by David Shields. He says the dying process starts
when we are in our mid-twenties. Our brains begin to shrink (along with our
IQ’s, I suppose). I prove it every day when I find myself in the living room
wondering what I came in to get, when I meet a guy named Bill and say, “It is
so nice to meet you, Frank,” and when I swear I put the milk in the
refrigerator and there it sits on the counter. Shields goes on to point out
that by the time we are fifty-five, our mid sections have gotten thicker while
our arms, legs and skin have gotten thinner. It explains why my feet are cold
all winter and why T-shirts make me look like a boa constrictor that’s
swallowed a pig. I accuse my wife of shrinking my clothes but it’s hard to deny
the real truth, when the T-shirt that’s too tight is brand new.
And that’s not all that goes to pot for old
coots: our aerobic function is half what is was at age 25, our blood pressure
is higher making our hearts work harder, our loss of muscle mass and bone
density is staggering and we are more sensitive to noise, practically jumping
out of our skin when we hear a car horn. Moving things are a threat because we
react as though stuck in molasses. You wave to us and we respond so slowly that
you swear you’re looking at a slo-mo replay. Unfortunately, we’re moving as
fast as we can.
So
yes, I climbed Mount Everest on Tuesday and crossed it off my bucket list. I
set out on my venture by walking east on Main Street toward the mountain. I was
huffing and puffing after crossing the railroad tracks. My back was sore as I
came to the drilling rig in the field beyond the village line. I stopped to see
how they were doing. They are boring a tunnel and inserting a natural gas pipe
under Brick Pond and the Susquehanna River. I’m sure the foreman thought I was
just another old coot who had come to gawk, but I was using the construction
site to rest up before making my assent. Eventually, I sucked it up, and
continued walking to the end of Main Street where I turned left on Davis and
started the climb. It was man against the mountain, “old” man against the
mountain. My vision was blurred - one eye was trying to adjust to an
ever-imposing cataract; the other was just plain out of focus. I had a cramp in
my leg, my left foot was asleep and waves of vertigo washed over me. I pushed
on. Up I went. Cars zipped past but I kept on my trek to the top. People blew
their horns and waved but I couldn’t hear them because I was moaning so loud,
and I couldn’t see them through the tears that flooded my eyes.
I finally made it to the summit. I clung to a
street sign at the top that read, “Lisle Rd - Davis Rd.” and basked in the
moment. I’d climbed Everest and now could move on to the next item on my bucket
list, breaking the four-minute mile. I’m doing it at the OFA track. One lap in
under four minutes. Stop by if you want to witness history in the making, I
just ask that you keep your snickering to a minimum.
Why Did the Old Coot Cross the Road?
Published April 2, 2008
I was sitting in Tioga Trails having lunch on
Saint Patrick’s Day. As I gazed out the window I spotted a fellow old coot
getting ready to cross Main Street. Naturally, he wasn’t anywhere near the
cross walk. Old coots don’t use crosswalks. We take the shortest route, which
is often an erratic diagonal line. He looked left; he looked right, and then,
like the instructions on a bottle of shampoo, he repeated. Then he stepped off
the sidewalk and looked left and right again. Two more steps found him
repeating the surveillance maneuver. At the center of the street he performed a
“360,” checking front, back, left and right. Then he dashed for the other side,
right in front of an oncoming car. It screeched to a stop as the old coot
turned and raised his hand in a “halt” gesture. He then sauntered toward the other
side of the road, muttering under his breath. His face was red, a mixture of
anger and embarrassment, a common emotional state for old coots.
He stepped onto the sidewalk and headed down
Lake Street. He stopped after a few steps. His body language said, “Why am I
here?” In the excitement of crossing the street he forgot why he was there. We
do that a lot. The only solution is to go back to the starting point and hope
that retracing our steps will jar our memories. It works fifty per-cent of the
time. He did exactly that. He went through all the steps in reverse, even his
overdone, looking left and right routine. My neck got sore watching him. He got
in his car and drove away. I stopped looking out the window and began watching
Mike Graven and his small combo. They were starting a new set of Irish songs.
The place began to fill up. Neighbors: Tim, Beth, Darren, Cindy, Mike, Joe and
Chris joined us and I forgot all about the street-crossing old coot. An hour
later, as our group made its way to the Parkview Inn, to continue our Saint
Patrick’s Day ritual, I saw the street crosser coming out of McNamara’s office
supply store with a ream of printer paper under his arm.
I smiled and nodded to him. He returned the
gesture. “It came back to you,” I said, pointing to the printer paper he was
now clutching to his chest. A strange and defensive look came over his face,
“What came back to me,” he asked? “Nothing,” I replied. I have you mixed up
with another guy. He walked north; I walked south. I heard him muttering under
his breath as he made his get-a-way, “What’s that old coot’s problem?”
I’m sure he knew exactly what I was talking
about. An old coot can’t fool an old coot. He was embarrassed to think that
someone saw his public, memory meltdown. We hate it when others notice our
descent into senility. We don’t mind pointing it out ourselves but we don’t
want anybody else doing it, especially to our face, like I’d just done. We
prefer it be whispered behind our back, “The old guy is slipping.” We try to cover it up, like a little kid who
gets into a chocolate cake and stands in front of the destroyed pastry with
frosting laden hands behind his back and a chocolate ring around his mouth as
he says to his mother, “The cat did it!” It all boils down to a classic question,
“Why did the old coot cross the road?” Nobody knows. The old coot doesn’t
remember.
The Old Coot Goes Wireless.
Published April 9, 2008
Once again, a cell phone user got my dander up.
This one had a “blue-tooth” phone clipped to his ear. I was looking in a window
on Front Street with my back to him as he stepped out of his car and walked
past me toward the front door of Awakenings Coffeehouse. I heard him yell,
“You’ve got to get on the ball. You’re stuck in a rut!” I swiveled to see who
was chewing me out when he spoke again. “Seriously, you need to get a life!”
Now I really was irritated. Who did he think he was to tell me to get a life? I
turned to confront him and noticed a cigar butt sticking out of his ear. I
realized it was a cell phone. The first time I saw this type of phone, I
thought it was a snake crawling along the top of a guy’s ear. I know better
now. This guy wasn’t yelling at me; he was having a phone conversation with
some other poor sap. I was relieved; I get enough advice from friends and
family. I don’t need any from strangers. Still, this guy succeeded in raising
my blood pressure; I resented it.
These people are rude! They walk through crowds
of people and yak in a loud voice, chewing someone out or talking baby talk to
an infant. They startle and annoy everyone within range of their voice. The
more I thought about it, the more irritated I got. Then, I had an epiphany!
“Don’t fight em! Join em! Buy a blue-tooth phone and become a part of the in
crowd.” Then I can talk into it as I stroll along the sidewalk, forcing
pedestrians out of my way. They won’t want to be anywhere near an old coot who
is talking to himself. Even if they notice the cigar butt in my ear, they’ll
never suspect it’s a cell phone. People don’t expect old coots to use a
state-of-the-art device. I won’t have any problem getting a quiet table in a
restaurant. I’ll just sit down, call home and have a loud, stimulating
conversation with my answering machine. The patrons nearby will ask to be
reseated on the other side of the room. It will also help me get to the front
of the line in busy places like Dunkin Donuts or the deli counter at John’s
Fine Foods. When people hear me talking to myself they will say, “Why don’t you
go ahead of me. I’m not in a hurry.” Nobody wants to be I line with a nut.
My power to criticize will increase when I get a
blue-tooth cell phone. I’ll be able to walk up to the biggest, meanest store
clerk and say what’s on my mind, “Your service stinks. I’ve been waiting for
ten minutes while you’ve been talking to your girlfriend!” If he gets mad, I’ll
point to the cigar butt in my ear and say, “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you.” He
will apologize and take care of me as fast as he can. The device will grant me
the freedom to say what I want with little risk of getting punched in the
mouth. I can demand special treatment. I can offer unsolicited advice: “Boy,
that coat makes you look fat!” - “Wow, your kid is really a brat!” - “Did you
ever think of updating that hair do?”
I have to admit, I’m a little hesitant to get a
blue tooth phone. I might have a senior moment and get into trouble. I can just
picture an incident where a huge, scruffy guy, wearing a biker jacket, asks me
who I think I am to say his motorcycle is a “girly” bike. The nightmare in my
head has him striding toward me with a look in his eye that unmistakably says,
“I’m going to rearrange your face.” I reach toward my ear and chuckle, “I
wasn’t talking to you. I’m talking to a friend on my blue-tooth.” When my hand
reaches my ear, I discover that I’ve forgotten the phone. I’m about to die and
I can’t call 91. Still, it might be worth it!
The Old Coot is Positive, Almost, Maybe, Sort
of!
Published April 16, 2008
I’m positive,” is something we say when we’re
young, especially when in our teens and early twenties, a time when our
memories fire on all eight cylinders. As we get older and discover our memories
aren’t what they once were, our declarations get modified. We say, “I’m almost
positive.” With each new decade, our
assuredness fades. “I’m almost positive,” evolves to, “I’m fairly positive,”
and then to, “I’m somewhat sure.” By the time we hit fifty, all bets are off;
we qualify every statement, with things like: “Or so I’ve been told” – “At
least that’s what I’ve been led to believe” – “According to so-and-so.” We
refer to a third person’s expertise to gain credibility in this chapter of our
lives.
Everyone we come into contact with contributes
to our meager use of positive statements: our friends, co-workers, spouses and
especially our teenage children, the latter who are as surprised as we are,
that the smart people who raised them could become so dumb. It finishes off our
transition; we aren’t sure of anything. This self-image guides us through
day-to-day events. We pick up nicknames like: Mister “Wishy-Washy” or Mrs.
“Has-no-opinion.” Our words reflect our uncertainty. “I think his name is
Bill.” – “I’ve heard the Murphys and the Johnsons are back from Florida.” – “I
guess that we turn the clocks ahead this weekend.” We don’t know anything!
Then, a magical thing happens. All of a sudden,
we’re positive again. It’s not that we’ve gotten any smarter, just the
opposite. We know less than we’ve ever known. It’s just that we’ve become a
citizen of old cootville. It’s a wonderful land. One where the residents don’t
care what other people think. It doesn’t matter that we are corrected when we
say that Owego celebrated its’ bicentennial in 1985 instead of 1987, or that
Daphne York is really Darcy York, and conversely, Darcy Braden is really Daphne
Braden. We got the first letter of their first name right, and that’s all that
counts in old cootville. Old phrases come back into our vocabulary: “I’m
positive!” – “I’d bet my life on it!” – “There is no question about it!”
People who stop us on the street and ask for
directions get a full dose of our know-it-all, cocky attitude. It doesn’t
matter where they want to go. We give all of them the same instructions. We
send them to the high school. That’s where most strangers want to go anyhow.
With great assurance and positivity we tell them how to get to George Street,
and finish it with “Turn left, go one block and then right at the Indian. You
can’t miss it.”
Old coots are positive about everything. The car
we drive is the best one they made, our doctor is the most gifted and our
grandchildren are the smartest. No team even comes close to being as good as
the football, baseball and basketball teams we root for. Evidence of our
positive attitude is everywhere. Take Sam Harris, owner of the diner next to
the firehouse. He’s not an old coot, not yet, but he acts as though he were.
The “boys” who occupy the tables in back have heavily influenced his behavior.
After his beloved Giants won the Super Bowl, Sam made a sign and bolted it (not
nailed it) to the utility pole by the diner’s front door. It said, “NY Giants,
Greatest team in NFL history.” It stayed there for several months. He took it
down a few weeks ago, not because he lost his enthusiasm for the Giants or
because he got in trouble with code enforcement or the Historic Preservation
Commission.
He took it down because he needed a piece of
plywood to repair the floor in the bathroom at his mother’s house. He’s a
positive guy but he has a way to go before he’s a full-fledged old coot. Otherwise,
he would have left the sign on the pole and put an “out of order” sign on the
bathroom door. Of that, I’m positive!
The Old Coot Mourns the Loss of “Yes.”
Published April 30, 2008
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the word
“yes” has been sent into exile. It’s been under attack for a long time, but the
fight is over. It started in the 1950’s when hipsters stopped using it. If you
asked one of those cool cats a question, you never got, “Yes,” in reply.
Instead, you got, “I dig!” – or- “Cool!”
Now it’s finally happened. “Exactly” has
finished the job. Just watch TV and you’ll see, especially when a show host
interviews a Hollywood celebrity. “Did you have a blast making that movie with
Brad Pitt,” they ask a young starlet? “Exactly,” the actress will reply. But
it’s not just the Hollywood and television crowd who’ve replaced yes with
exactly. The change has worked its’ way into the vocabulary of reporters,
corporate spokesmen, and politicians. The latter follow their use of “exactly”
with a complicated paragraph of hard to understand buzzwords. But that’s
nothing new; they did the same thing when they used, yes.
“Are you in favor of the new tax cut for senior
citizens?” A senator will be asked.
“Exactly!” will be his reply, followed by, “But
I’m not sure the proposal on the table includes all the elements that a
fiscally sound, economic stimulation package should have to create non-negative
cash flow to the targeted population strata to the degree sufficient to resolve
the deteriorating balance sheet issue.” Politicians love “exactly.” It’s more
powerful than a meek, one syllable, “yes.” And, they especially love to stretch
out its’ pronunciation, to show just how decisive they are, “Ex-act-ly!” (They
proudly proclaim)
TV news people now use "exactly" all
through the news hour. The anchor will ask a reporter a question, usually one
so protracted that it takes two commercial breaks to get it all in. The poor
reporter, with no idea what’s been asked, will reply, “Exactly!” What else can
he do? It’s his boss who asked the confusing, convoluted question. He wants to
look like he understood it and he wants to show he has a powerful and precise
response. “Exactly” serves him well. It feeds the ego of the anchor and makes
the reporter appear well informed and decisive. It’s now a favorite word in the
corporate world, too. No matter what the boss says, all the “underlings” reply,
“Exactly!” They then go and do the right thing, the exact opposite of what the
boss just ordered.
Exactly, has made its’ way into the population
at large. Yes, has slipped into obscurity. And, I’m once again, forced to morn
the loss of a word that has served me well. I have fond memories of the yeses I
heard in my life. The little ones, like, “Yes, you can go out to play after
supper.” And, “Yes, you can stay up to watch Ed Sullivan. And, the big ones
like, “Yes, I’ll marry you!” Even though, in my case, it was preceded by a very
long pause, two phone calls to her girl friends and then the question,
"Can I see the ring again?" When I’m asked if I miss the little
three-letter word, I answer, “Exactly.” If you can’t beat them, join them.
The Old Coot Learns a New Language.
Published May 7, 2008
I
watch people in line; it’s one of my favorite pastimes. I do it to kill time
because I don’t get in long lines. I wait off to the side until it gets small
and check my wallet to see what’s in there with the moths and watch people in
the line to see what they are doing. They don’t talk but they do speak, in a
way. I’ve been studying their “line” language in hopes of becoming bilingual.
It’s a silent language. People communicate using mouth movements. The
vocabulary, if you can call it that, is made up of a series of mouth
contortions. Each conveys a different message. I hope to master it and publish
a dictionary. Then I’ll be as famous as Noah Webster. Here are the mouth
movements that I’ve figured out so far.
#1. The cheek-blow - When the cheeks are blown
up and held that way for a long interval, it means, “Oh darn!” If they are
puffed up and emptied in a rapid series of inflations and deflations, and the
person is staring off into space, it means, “I’m thinking. Leave me alone.”
#2. The cheek, suck-in-and-bite-down - is used to express puzzlement. The person
sucking in and biting down on their cheeks is on the verge of being upset.
They’re not sure what’s going on but they suspect it’s not good. The harder
they bite, the worse they think the situation might be. Sometimes they bite so
hard it brings tears to their eyes.
#3. The wide-open mouth - expresses shock. It’s usually followed by
a yell or a scream.
#4. The open-mouth, teeth-clank - When people
clank their teeth together in rapid succession while their mouths are slightly
open, are processing information, thinking, trying to decide what to do.
#5. The tongue-stick-out - Of course everyone is
familiar with this one. It conveys its message loud and clear, “The heck with
you!” - or – the singsong -“Na-Na-Na-Na-Na!” It’s one of the first forms of
communication that we learn, usually, well before our first birthday.
#6. The blow-air-through-lips-rumble - We all
mouth this one from time to time. Sometimes it’s silent and sometimes it comes
with a rumble noise, like when little kids are pushing around a toy car. Adults
do it to express, “I give up.”
#7.
The lip-pull-back-pop - This communicates nervousness. The lips are pulled back
under the teeth and then the person bites and releases, bites and releases,
making a quiet bup, bup or pop, pop sound. It says, “I’m nervous,” - or - “I can’t
decide what to do.”
#8. The air-blow-out - When a person slowly
blows air out in a soundless whistle, they are in awe. It communicates, “Wow.
I’m impressed!”
#9. The roof of the mouth, tongue-cluck - This
means you are about to get it. It’s similar to the ticking of a time bomb. The
person is counting down and about to launch a verbal attack on you. When you
hear this, it’s a good time to vamoose, as though from a rattlesnake shaking
his tail.
#10. The closed mouth, teeth-chatter - This is
similar to the roof of the mouth, tongue cluck, except that after the count
down is finished you will get bopped in the nose, not yelled at. You must leave
or start your own teeth chattering to ward off the attack.
This is as far as I’ve gotten with the mouth
movement language. I’m sure I’ll learn more as I sit, wait and watch line
people speak this secret language.
The Old Coot is How Old?
Published May 14, 2008
We don’t know how old we are, us old coots. When
we walk down the street and look out at the world, we think we are much younger
than our chronological age. When we spot a group of people in their forties
standing around, we think, “That’s my crowd.” It’s confusing. We think we’re
whatever age we are reliving in our head at that moment. When our real age pops
to the front of our mind, it’s a shock! “Am I really 60, 70, 80? How the heck
did that happen?” It was really brought home to me the other day when I was
working on the emergency squad. We picked up a guy in his early sixties who
needed to be transported to the hospital. As I lifted him onto the stretcher,
he looked up at me with pleading eyes and asked, “Why does this keep happening
to me? Why do I keep getting older?” I felt his anguish, better than he might
have imagined, since he was several years younger than me. I didn’t have an
answer. It’s a question I ask myself every day. “Just what is going on here?”
It’s a puzzle. I’ve tried everything to figure
it out but nothing works. I pretend that being old is a dream and any minute
I’ll wake up, look out the window and see my beat-up 53 Ford convertible in the
driveway and greet my twenty-year-old face in the mirror. Most of the time,
just the opposite happens. I dream that I’m twenty and wake up to an old coot’s
face in the bathroom mirror, “Who the heck is that?” I ask. The first time it
happened, I was in my fifties. It happens even more, now that I’m in my
sixties. I’m afraid the next time I come out of a stupor the face looking back
at me will be so old, wrinkled and unfamiliar that I won’t know who it is.
I walk around thinking I’m a younger me. One day
I’m fourteen, the next I’m thirty-seven. I can’t tell from the inside looking
out. True, the world is a little fuzzy. The cataract in my left eye makes it
so. And, my back hurts when I hop off a curb. But, the change took place so
gradually that I don’t feel any different than I did in my twenties, as long I
don’t put it to the test and race up the stairs, or get into a chin-up contest
with a group of younger friends. Especially Joe Wegman of Paige Street. He beat
me ten to one the last time. He did ten; I did one. At least I didn’t come in
last, like Nick (who is much younger. He blamed it on the chin-up bar, said it
was too high. He lives in the state of denial.
I avoid mirrors. It works fine until I catch a
glimpse of my reflection in a store window. I have to restart the process, keep
my eyes focused on the street, not the stores along the way. It’s why old coots
don’t window shop. We grow beards and have messy hair, too. It’s dangerous to shave
without a mirror and combing hair from memory is an art that we can’t master.
Thankfully, messy hair and scraggly beards are popular with the young Turks in
Hollywood. It almost makes us old coots appear hip and with it.
The “age” lie that we tell ourselves explains
why our conversations are rife with: “When I was a boy,” - or - “Remember
when,” - or - “The way we used to do it...” We spend so much of the day
drifting through the past we are a danger to ourselves and the world around us.
When you see one of us stuck in the passing lane with our turn signal on, or
coming down a one-way street the wrong way, don’t get mad. We’re just living in
a world that slipped out of our grasp, thirty or forty years earlier. We’re
busy, trying to stop it from slipping away altogether.
It Never Ends For The Old Coot!
Published May 21, 2008
A few years ago I wrote an article how
differently men and women say goodbye. When a man is at a party and he hears
his wife say, “Are you ready to go,” he runs for his coat, blows a kiss to
hostess and heads for the car. Twenty minutes later, he comes back inside
looking for his wife. “I thought you said we were going!” For him, goodbye is
simple, say goodbye and go, for her it’s a process, one that involves making
the rounds with each person at the event, be it a small cocktail party or a
large wedding reception. On the “goodbye” round, all the previous conversations
are recapped and put into a state of suspended animation, so they can be
revived at a future time. The husband tags along, adding nothing to the
process. He resembles a five-year-old child, clutching to his mother’s skirt on
a shopping trip, whining, “Can we go now? Can we go now?”
Nothing has changed in the intervening years
since I first described this process. It still demonstrates one of the
fundamental differences between men and women. Unfortunately, I’ve been subject
to more “goodbye” conversations than a human should have to endure. It’s
because of cell phones and people’s continuous and indiscriminate use of these
rude, communication devices. People walk down the street talking on them.
People stop their cars to ask for directions while still connected to a friend.
Store clerks scan your groceries and shove them toward the bagging area while
talking on a cell phone. Everyone I come into contact with is talking on a cell
phone. I’m forced to wait for them to finish their conversation. It puts me in
a “goodbye process” on a continuous basis. I spend my day standing around
listening for the six most beautiful words in the English language, “I’ve got
to hang up now.” But they don’t come easy. Cell phone talkers, just like women
saying goodbye at a cocktail party, throw out a series of false endings that
make you think the end is near.
These false endings used to fool me. But, little
by little I’ve figured them out. Now I take action. I don’t stand there and
wait (and wait and wait). When a store clerk says into his phone: “Oh just one
more thing and then I have to hang up,” I don’t believe it. I know he has at least
ten more things to say. I take immediate action. I do something crazy. I make
him want to get rid of me. I pull out a yoyo and start doing tricks: walk the
dog, rock the baby or thread the needle. Or, I pull a pint of Jack Daniels out
of my pocket and take a swig; my bottle is filled with iced tea, not whiskey. A
tube of lipstick works wonders, too. All I have to do is start to apply it to
my lips. The clerk hangs up fast. If you act nutty, they get scared and wait on
you. This isn’t hard for old coots. We act weird in public all the time. You
can fake it, I’m sure. Good luck. It’s a cell phone jungle out there.
The Old Coot Gets Blasted Out of the Stadium!
Published June 4, 2008
We went to the NCAA, quarter final lacrosse
games at Cornell a few weeks ago, to watch Duke play Ohio State and Syracuse
take on Notre Dame. We got there an hour early to get a good seat. Everything
was fine: we secured a vantage point on the fifty yard line, high enough to get
a panoramic view of the field but not so high as to be deemed the “nosebleed”
section. Rain clouds threatened from the west but at the moment it was a
pleasant May afternoon. A swarm of lacrosse players were on the field for
pre-game warm-ups and scrimmages. It was quite a thrill to see the best of the
best show their stuff. Then the loud speakers fired up. A blast of rap and
bebop music invaded the arena. The decibel level was on par with that at a rock
concert, the sort that has created a generation of hearing impaired teenagers.
The crowd was aghast. Well, some of it. Well, I was. It was so loud; I couldn’t
concentrate on the activity on the field. It made me wonder. Who decided that
adult lacrosse fans want to listen to loud rap music while they wait for the
game to start? And it isn’t just Schoellkoph Field at Cornell. Every athletic
venue in the country subjects its fans to loud, screeching music as a pre-game
treat.
It didn’t bother me for long. I’d come prepared.
I dug around in my old coot survival bag and pulled out a portable radio and a
set of ear buds. I tuned in a public radio station and listened to “Car Talk.”
It blocked out the ruckus in the stadium and saved me money too. I never heard
my son ask for money for a hot dog and a soda.
If it had been thirty years earlier when I smoked, I would have torn the
filters off two Marlboro cigarettes and shoved them in my ears. But, I had my
ear buds and they did the job just fine.
Then, a new source of irritation took center
stage. Aluminum seats! All the stadiums are replacing wooden ones with metal.
Bureaucrats, who never set foot (or rear end) in the stadium, are making the
decision. There is nothing colder than a metal seat on a cool, May afternoon.
It doesn’t warm up, even after you’ve sat on it for an hour. It’s a heat sink
(to use one of the few scientific concepts I still remember from my high school
physics class). It sucks the heat out of the sitters and disperses it. It stays
cold. The bureaucrats tossed out the wood seats to reduce the maintenance cost.
Some slick sales rep talked them into the aluminum benches with the pitch,
“They’ll never need to be maintained!” (The heck with the fans and their frozen
rumps.) But, if they had bothered to ask the fans, they would have got a
resounding, “No!” But, even the ice-cold aluminum seat didn’t dampen my mood. I
reached into my old coot survival bag and pulled out a wool blanket.
Finally, the games began. Duke gave Ohio State a
lesson in lacrosse, beating them 21 to 10. It was a magnificent demonstration
of boys running around and hitting each other with sticks. That’s why I like it
so much. We were forbidden to hit with sticks when I was a kid. It started to
rain at half time; it sprinkled at first but then it really came down. A sea of
umbrellas popped up. Fans in rain suits grumbled. One yelled out every once in
a while, “Invest in a rain suit if you come to a stadium; your umbrella is
blocking my view!” I didn’t care. I was nice and snug under mine, especially
since my wife was holding it. The umbrellas provided a distraction for me when
the game became lopsided. Several “umbrella-challenged” people were in the
stands: one guy forgot to hold the umbrella high enough above his head when he
closed it, and shut his face in it. Another guy, the he-man type, opened his so
forcefully that it went beyond the stop and ended up looking like a tulip. He
never did get it back to normal. I saw it in the trash barrel on my way out.
It’s where they should toss the metal seats and the music system.
The Old Coot is a Tennis Fan, Not a Player!
Published June 11, 2008
I
watched a fascinating tennis match last weekend. It wasn’t the French Open. It
wasn’t the high school playoffs. It was an obscure event, a gathering of mature
adults at the high school tennis court, better known as Windy City. I was the
lone observer. Play started at nine; the group has the place to themselves at
that hour. So, weather permitting, they meet there every Sunday to hone their
skills. The courts were built for teens who wouldn’t be caught dead out of bed
partaking in physical activity at that ungodly hour on a Sunday morning.
Vintage players, of the sort that I found on the courts, are early birds. By
the time the typical teenager stumbles out of bed and into the shower stall for
a thirty minute wake up ritual, these players will have finished their match,
had a second breakfast, pawed through five pounds of the New York Times and
rubbed on enough Ben Gay to send the stock price through the roof. Kids don’t
know it, but old coots rule the world in the wee hours of the day. And, although
this tennis group was of varying age, a good share of the players had the old
coot look: T-shirts with slogans of “I like Ike” and “Remember the Maine,”
shorts that were four inches shorter than today’s style, hats worn to protect
thinning heads of hair from the sun and shoes that were tied. (Tied tight and
double knotted, as a matter of fact)
I sat on the court pavement and leaned back
against the fence. I was positioned so I could watch two sets of doubles at the
same time. I had a worm’s eye view. It’s quite different when you look up at a
tennis match. It’s easier on the neck, too. When the ball comes across the net
toward you and then back again, you don’t have to swivel to the right and left
to follow its’ flight. The only problem with a ground level vantage point, are
the errant shots that come your way. It wasn’t a concern to me. These guys were
playing with tennis balls, soft, fluffy orbs that are nothing compared to the
rock hard, lacrosse ball that went whizzing by my shoulder as I walked through
the end zone at the Owego - Maine Endwell lacrosse playoff game the day before.
If that one had hit me I’d be writing this in a shoulder harness.
It looked like the teams were set up with a sense of fair play. It might have been a random pairing, but from outward appearances it seemed well contrived. The younger guy was partnered with an older one who sported three pounds of elastic support wraps. The guy in orthopedic shoes was teamed with an agile and fit woman. The guy who could bend over and touch his knees, but not his toes, selected a short guy for a partner. He took the high shots; his partner took the low ones.
Nobody disputed a call. If someone said a shot was out; it was out. Who could see well enough to challenge the call? It was a verbal event, too, but not like professional matches where players yell and grunt as they put every ounce of their strength into a shot. The sounds from this match were more like those you hear on a golf course when a ball heads toward the woods and the golfer yells at it in a vain attempt to get it to change direction. In this instance, they were pleading for a poorly hit lob shot to find its way inside the line. A lot of apologizing was going on: “I’m sorry; I should have gotten to that one.” - “That was my fault; I should have allowed for the wind.” - “I’m sorry; I was watching that ridiculous looking old coot come through the parking lot on a motor scooter. I didn’t see the ball coming to me.
It was fun! There was some good tennis on
display. I only left because the noise from the court got louder and louder as
play went on. The oohs, aahs, ouches, sighs, gasps, groans, creaks and pants
worked into a crescendo that was deafening. I’ll be back, but next time I’ll
bring earplugs. If you are interested in watching an entertaining tennis match
just stop by the high school on a Sunday morning. There’s plenty of room in the
bleachers.
The Old Coot Abdicates His Throne.
Published June 18, 2008
My friend Woody turned sixty-five a few months
ago. We grew up together; I’m two weeks older so I’ve broken through all the
age barriers first. I was the first to turn thirty and join the “untrusted
ranks,” as in that popular chant of the 1960’s, “Don’t trust anybody over
thirty.” It was a shock to join the establishment after railing against it for
so long. I turned forty, fifty and sixty, first. I led the way. I admitted I
was an old coot first too. It took him years longer. He still works; I’m
retired. He wears suits; I wear cargo pants and T-shirts. I signed up for social
security when I turned sixty-two; he waited until he was sixty-five. But we’re
both on Medicare. You don’t have a choice about that. It becomes your primary
health insurance coverage.
So, as the “elder,” I’m used to leading the way.
But now things have changed. He was first for once. He’s the one who had the
first “old coot” car accident. And, it was a classic. A backing up accident! He
pulled into his mother’s driveway to see how she was doing. She’s well into her
nineties and living independently. A hero in my book. Woody stops in every day
on his way home. When he backed out, he ran into the side of a car parked
directly across from his mother’s driveway. He never saw it. He was too busy
looking up and down the street. SMASH! Right into the parked one! He did the
right thing; he got out, knocked on the neighbor's door and exchanged
information with the owner of the car, a teenage friend of the neighbor’s son.
Woody owns an insurance agency so he knows how all this stuff works. He gave
the kid his card and told him he would take care of all the damages and the
paperwork.
Then he drove home, grumbling to himself. He had
asked the neighbor not to park directly across from the driveway. The road is
narrow and it’s difficult to maneuver when somebody parks there. “It’s an
accident waiting to happen,” he told them. Now it had happened and he was
irked. His phone rang about thirty minutes later. It was the police. The
parents of the teenage kid whose car he’d hit, called them and reported the
accident. They wanted Woody to come back to the “scene of the crime.” This is
where he made me proud. This is where he proved he was an old coot like me. He
said, “No!” He told the cops he was in for the night; if they wanted to talk to
him they’d have to come to his house.
The cops came. They ended up having a good
laugh. He used his old coot charm and convinced them that everything was in
order when he left the scene. The cops agreed but said, “What can you do? The
parents called us.” They shook hands and parted company. The incident was
closed. Except, Woody now had to admit to me that he was first to have an “old
coot” accident. Imagine, running into a car parked out in the open, directly
behind you. It’ll never happen to me!
The Old Coot is Tuned Out!
Published June 25, 2008
An old coot pulled up alongside me as I was
walked down Mountain Road the other day. I was on my way home after climbing
Mount Everest (Davis Hill). He pulled to the side, stopped and waved me over to
his car. I leaned over and peered into the passenger window, waiting for him to
open it and say what he had to say. He turned to his left to engage the power
window switch. The back window went down. He fumbled some more and got the
front window to open. I won’t mention his name; he might be offended if I
publicized a public display of old cootism by him. It’s Jim Raftis.
He stopped me on the hill to see if I needed
help finding my way home. Did I know where I was? Did I know who I was? He
never misses a chance to give me a little (old coot) jab. I thanked him for his
concern. Then, I thanked him for the Memorial Day ceremony at the Court House.
He does such a good job with it every year. You shouldn’t miss it. It really
brings to mind the sacrifices so many men and women have made to ensure the
freedom we too often take for granted. I’ve never seen it done better.
He continued up the hill and I wandered back
into town. I was still smiling about the way his back window went down while I
was leaning toward the front one. It was such an old coot thing. It’s nice to
know I am in good company. I can’t figure out the controls in my car either.
They have little icons on them that are too small for me (and anyone over fifty
who refuses to wear their glasses) to see. And even when I’m able to squint
hard enough to make them out, I still don’t get the meaning. Jim opened the
back window instead of the front. I usually hit the switch that locks the door
or adjusts the mirror when I try to open my window. It never happens when I’m
alone, only when my misstep can be witnessed, like at the drive up window at a
fast food restaurant. I can just hear the conversation inside after I pull out.
“Did you see that? That old coot couldn’t figure out how to get his window
open. He had to back up, get out of his car and come over to get his order.
What an idiot!”
It wouldn’t be so bad if I drove the same car
all the time. I’d eventually remember where the controls were and how they
worked. But I switch back and forth between several cars. They all are set up
differently. I don’t dare go to a car lot and take a test drive. I’d never make
it out of the dealership. I used to be able to hop into any car and drive with
ease. They were set up pretty much the same: Want to open the window? Turn the
crank. - Want to open the passenger
side window? Lean across the seat and turn the crank. – Want to lock the door?
Push down the button. – Too hot in the car? Open the window. Now, it’s like
being in the cockpit of an airplane. There are more controls to study and
memorize than I have brain capacity to handle. Six different functions are on
the turn signal stick alone. Five are built into the steering wheel.
Even the radio in my wife’s car is beyond my
capability. It’s a six CD, AM, FM stereo system. A DVD came with the car to
explain it all, but I’m determined to figure it out on my own. I haven’t! It’s
stuck on a station out of Utica that fades in and out. If you need to know the
weather forecast in central New York just give me a call.
The Old Coot is
Storming
Published July 9, 2008
About once a year I have a “weather” conniption.
The weather hysteria we are subjected to gets to me. This time it hit me during
the US Open, the golf championship where a guy with a bad knee and a broken leg
played against the best golfers in the world and won the tournament. Back in
the “good old days” we bragged that we could beat someone at something with one
hand tied behind our back. Never with a broken leg! Anyhow, my wife and I were
under the weather, fighting a summer cold and along came the Tiger Wood’s
miracle at Torrey Pines. We hunkered down in front of the TV with bottles of
cold medicine, boxes of Kleenex and gallons of chicken soup. It was exciting!
Then it turned sour. The screen turned blue and a loud “EEE-AAK” blasted from
the set. A rolling message ran across the screen that urged us to turn to
Channel 4 for important weather information. We didn’t!
We stayed with the golf channel. Tiger Woods
sank a sixty-foot putt; Mickelson got a nine on a par five. Then an “EEE-AAK”
blasted through the house again. We weren’t asked to turn to Channel 4 this
time; a robotic voice gave us the low down, a thunderstorm was rolling through
the area to the north of us. But, not just a simple thunderstorm! This one, the
voice claimed, would have “dangerous” lightning, leading one to believe that
some storms have “safe” lightning. Even the wind was purported to be different
from regular wind; it was “damaging” wind. The weather folks have a ready
supply of adjectives to scare us with. They do a pretty good job. People are
jittery. I was at an Owego lacrosse game this year when a Weitsman scrap metal
truck lumbered past on nearby Route 38. The load shifted and a loud rumble
roared through the school complex. The game was stopped and the players were sent
into the building. Somebody in charge thought it had thundered. They have rules
for this stuff now. If it thunders the game must stop for thirty minutes.
But, my complaint isn’t with the school, or
their rules about thunder, lightning or loud Weitsman trucks. My complaint is
with the Chicken Littles who run the weather service. They’re afraid of the
weather: thunderstorms, snowstorms, cold snaps, hot spells, hard frosts. You
name it; they’re afraid of it, and want us to be afraid too. They cluck around
the barnyard (studio) in a constant state of panic.
I could put up with their hysteria before they
got control of my TV set. I could just ignore the weather segment of the
evening news. But, the Chicken Littles have gained strength, like the storms
they want us to fear. They interrupt TV programs with their squawking whenever
they feel like it. They remind me of the kid who got his hands on my junior
high school’s P.A. system. He got drunk on power like they do. He used his to
dismiss school two hours early. They use theirs to tell us the sky is falling.
It’s bad enough that the flock of Chicken
Littles keep us in a panic over day-to-day weather, now they have us in a
frenzy over climate change – global warming. I don’t know how the planet
survived for six billion years without them, dumb luck, I guess. In the 1970’s
they claimed it was cooling, but we weren’t as easily frightened in those days.
Now they are back at it again, trying to make us afraid of nature’s random way
of doing things. This time they are telling us it’s our fault. The planet is
warming because we work for companies that make things, because we drive cars,
because we heat and light our homes and finally, because the atmosphere is
being polluted with carbon dioxide, the very thing that comes from our lungs
when we exhale. I guess we should cut back, take fewer breaths. If we don’t,
we’ll have to face a constant barrage of, “EEE-AAK - EEE-AAK,” from our TV
sets.
The Old Coot Won
the Triathlon?
Published July 16, 2008
I signed up for the Broome County Triathlon! It
was an item on my bucket list, the concept I shamelessly stole from the movie
of the same name where two guys make a list of the things they want to do
before they kick the bucket. The first item I crossed off my list and wrote
about was the assent to the top of Mount Everest (Davis Hill). I cheated a
little on that. Davis Hill isn’t quite as high as Mount Everest. It’s close
though. Try it on a hot afternoon; you’ll see.
The day of the triathlon came fast. It seemed a
long way off when I sent in the application. I didn’t train. I was cocky. I
thought I had it made. The swimming leg is half a mile. I swim a mile at the
YMCA, once or twice a week, though the surface of the water is as smooth as ice
and the lifeguard doesn’t take his eye off me for a second. The bike portion is
twelve miles, about the distance to Candor. I peddle there and back every once
in a while. I was sure I could do it in a race. The running part is a little
over three miles. I used to run farther than that every day, but since 1995,
I've been a walker not a jogger. I figured I could walk fast and then jog
across the finish line, act as though I’d run the entire distance. My friend
Joe didn’t train either, unless you consider smoking a cigar and drinking a can
of Keystone Light every night a training regime. He can’t swim far, but he was
sure that the two laps he does in a pool once a month, would see him through.
He is a runner, and a fast one. “Not to worry,” he said. “I’ll swim a little
bit and then tread water a little bit. I’ll get there, and then make it up in
the running leg.”
So, at seven-thirty in the morning, on Saturday,
July 5th, Joe and I headed to Dorchester Park in Whitney Point, along with our
fan club: Marcia and Christina Mary. The cheerleaders came to identify the body
when they pulled one of us out of the water or scraped us off the road. We
didn’t want to cause the coroner any extra work. Marcia brought a camera, in
case we finished before dark and she could capture the accomplishment on film.
We put our mountain bikes in the staging area near the beach. The county had
set up a series of bike racks so you could slip the front wheel into the slot
and the bike would stand at attention, waiting for you to come out of the
water. Our “mountain bike” wheels were too fat to fit in the slots. I’m not
saying there was a roar of laughter when the other triathaloners noticed we
weren’t using road bikes, but I definitely heard a chorus of snickers. We
tossed our shoes, towels and shirts in a heap next to our bikes and headed to
the beach to prepare for the swim, the first leg of the race. I noticed that
the shoes of the other contestants were strapped into the pedals of their
bikes, their high tech racing shirts were draped over the crossbars and a line
of energy bars were taped to the handlebars. I knew we were in for it!
Barbara Fiala, Broome County Executive, welcomed
us to this county sponsored event. Then a “rules” guy took over. The first
thing out of his bullhorn was an order for Marcia and Christina Mary to get out
of the restricted area so he could start the race. They were trying to get a
picture of Joe and me in the lead. They figured that the start of the race
would be their only opportunity. Then, Mr. Rules turned to us. We were lined up
in the wrong place; we had to move. He rattled off a long list of dos and
don’ts, like bureaucrats always do, “You must wear a bathing cap! You must use
an approved bike helmet! You must turn in your timing chip at the end of the
race. If you don’t, we will charge you $90.” On and on he went. Finally, he
started the race. Joe and I lunged forward with a swarm of racers in high tech
wet suits and custom fit goggles. We wore long swimming trunks and Donald Duck
goggles. The water was dark, choppy and ablaze with fluorescent bathing caps. I
felt like I was in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy.
Joe made it to the middle of the lake and then
the cigar and beer training routine caught up with him. A lifeguard in a kayak
insisted he go back to shore. “Oh well,” he thought. “I’ll bike and run.” The
rules guy came over to him as he waded ashore, to make sure Joe knew he was
disqualified. (He should have given him a medal for swimming out to the middle
of a lake without his swimmies.) The guy had no clue that we were here for a
higher purpose. To survive! And we did. We finished! We lived! I crossed off an
item on my bucket list. Joe doesn’t have a list. He’s twenty years younger and
doesn’t need one yet.
Thirty-four year old Keith Murray of Wynantskill
won. He finished the triathlon in one hour and four minutes. It took me one
hour and fifty minutes. To my way of thinking, I should have been awarded the
gold medal. After all, I outlasted him by forty-five minutes.
The Old Coot Goes
“Low” Tech!
Published July 23, 2008
I bought a geographic location system the other
day. A lot of my friends use a high tech version, a G.P.S. (global positioning
system). When you ride with them you can forget about having a conversation.
You start to say something and the GPS interrupts, “Turn left, one-hundred
yards!” Every time you get going on a topic, it’s back again, alerting you to
the next turn. It’s a nag! “Are we anywhere near Shelter Falls?” I ask. “Don’t
know,” my friend replies. “How about Utica? Will we go anywhere near it?” Don’t
know! Don’t know! Don’t know! That's all I get. He’s got a $400 system and it
can’t, or won’t, tell him what’s along the route. Not with my system. Mine
tells you everything: what towns you pass, what routes you cross, the points of
interest along the way.
The other neat thing about my system is that it
doesn’t use energy; it’s earth friendly. And most important of all to an old
coot, it was cheap, $1.75. It’s called a map. My father taught me how to read
one when I was a little kid, back when the gas stations gave them out for free.
Back when they filled your tank for $2.60 (cash only, no credit cards), checked
your oil, cleaned your windows and made sure you had the right amount of air in
your tires. My map is superior to a Global Positioning System in many ways. My
friend asks his system where to eat. “Turn left,” it orders. “Stop here,” it
demands. It comes with sponsoring restaurants preloaded in its memory. They’re
not included with a map. You get to pick where you eat. You get to talk to local
people. “Where’s a good Italian restaurant,” a stranger to town will ask some
old coot walking down the street. “Mario’s,” the coot will reply, and then
start a conversation. “Where are you from?” Next thing you know he’s telling
the stranger to follow him, “The restaurant is a little tricky to find,” he
says. And, it doesn’t stop there. He takes him inside and introduces him to the
owner, and then says to Jerry, “Take good care of him; he’s from out of town!”
My friend’s GPS tells you to turn left into the
Pizza Hut parking lot. It only knows about national chain restaurants. You
never get to experience the unique (and superior) local restaurants. And, you
never get to meet anybody when you use a GPS. These systems are not just in
cars. They’re all over the place. I played golf last week, for the first time
in a long time. I discovered that a lot of golfers use GPS. It sends their
position on the fairway to a satellite that bounces back a calculation of how
many yards it is to the green. That same irritating voice that says, “Turn
left. Turn right,” in the car, told my opponent that it was one hundred and
fifty three yards to the green. I looked over to the side of the fairway and
saw a red stake. It’s one hundred and fifty yards from a red stake to the green.
My friend’s GPS said it was 153 so he pulled out a five iron. He said I should
do the same. I took out a three. I don’t hit as far as he does. My shot went
one hundred yards toward the green. All my shots go one hundred yards. He
muffed his; hit it into the woods, probably because of the weight of the GPS in
his back pocket. “Where did it go,” he cried? “Ask your GPS,” I replied, and
headed down the fairway.
I’ve had it with modern global positioning
systems. They are as annoying as cell phones. They are loud and intrusive. It’s
bad enough to have to listen to a chorus of cell phone talkers on the golf
course. It’s down right exasperating when you add a bunch of GPS’s to the mix,
yelling out the distance to the green. It won’t be long before the devices take
over the game completely, “The green is forty yards to the north. Use a wedge
and hook it a little,” one will say. Mine, if I was forced to use one, will
have to remind me to keep my head down, put my weight on my left foot and
remember to follow through. After the shot it will tell me to watch my
language. I’m sticking with my map. It’s better than a GPS. It never yells at
me.
The Old Coot Can't Let Go!
Published July 30, 2008
I can't let go! Of old clothes. It's a sickness.
Just when I get used to a new T-shirt it turns on me. The color is perfect; the
fit is perfect; the feel is perfect; I love it! Then it starts to collect new
colors: coffee stains, mustard specks, splatters of spaghetti sauce, grease
prints from my bicycle chain. Still, I wear it. Then, it starts to fray. I get
out the scissors and trim off the loose strands. The neck hole stretches so
that it slips down around my shoulder when I turn fast. I keep it in the
rotation. Then, I get the looks. The ones from my wife that say, "Don't
even think about wearing that out with me!" I don't know what she's
talking about. When I look at it in the mirror, all I see is the memory of what
it once was, not the stretched out, frayed and stained object she views.
Eventually I see it for what it is. Still, it's an old friend and I refuse to
throw it out.
It goes to the "work clothes" pile.
It's like old home week when I plop it into the box in the garage. It nestles
down next to a two toned, red and blue, rag tag, paint splattered, Rugby shirt.
Over to the side is another old friend, a blue, button-down collar, oxford
cloth shirt. The box is full of old favorites I can't let go. These guys have
served me well. They are irreplaceable. I've tramped through miles of store
aisles, worn my fingers to the bone on the Internet and ruined my eyes viewing
auctions on E-Bay. All, in a failed
attempt to find a replacement for a lost friend. “They don’t make that
anymore!” That’s the business philosophy of the clothing industry. It doesn’t
matter what it is. You’ll never find a replacement. When I try to beat the
system and buy two of an item I think will make it to my “favorites” list, I
still don’t win. When I do this, the item changes shape or color on the way
home and turns out to be something I don’t like. Now, I have two of them!
Sometimes I don’t send the exiled item directly
to the work clothes pile. I put it in limbo. I’m not ready to give up on it. An
“Old Navy” sweatshirt has been in this state for two years. It hangs near the
door in the garage next to my kayak paddle. I wear it when I go out on the
river. It’s faded and discolored but otherwise in good shape. It’s an odd blend
of lightweight fleece and regular sweatshirt material. I can’t find one like
it, though I’ve looked for years. It was on my mind the other day when I passed
through the fabric treatment area in the grocery store and spotted a shelf
loaded with Rit clothing dye. “I’ll dye it back to life!” I thought, picking up
a package of dark green dye. When I got home I pulled an empty joint compound
container out of the garage, filled it with hot water and immersed the
sweatshirt in a bath of hunter green soup. My wife watched as I stirred the dye
mix with a 2 X 4. She didn’t say anything. Her eye roll said it all. She
doesn’t have anything to complain about. I did it on a burned out section of
lawn. Now it’s a lush green.
The jersey is out of I.C.U. It’s in a recovery
mode on shelf in the back of my closet. As soon as the temperature dips I’m
giving it a test run; I’m wearing it out in public. What else is a guy to do? I
just can’t let go.
The Old Coot Heard a Train?
Published August 13. 2008
When
disaster hits a small town the national media moves in to cover the story first
hand. Dan Rather started the trend. He wore a belted safari jacket when he
reported from the scene. Other newscasters picked up his style; now they all
get into “costume” when they report from “fly over country.” It looks like an
L.L. Bean convention. News anchors strut around town mixing it up with “real”
folks, the sort of people they avoid like the plague when the camera isn’t
rolling.
The broadcasts are all exactly the same. Nobody
is ever original. The news crew finds some old coot who is missing his front
teeth and wearing a flannel shirt and high water pants. “Tell us what it was
like when the tornado hit your house,” the reporter asks. “I was sitting there
watching reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies, when all of a sudden it
sounded like a train was coming through the house.” It always sounds like a
train. It doesn’t matter what it is, a tornado, an earthquake or a hurricane.
Except when it actually is a train, one that comes off the tracks and plows
through a shopping center. Then the witness says, “It sounded like a tornado.”
These interviews always include an “all my life” declaration. “I’ve lived here
all my life and I never saw anything like this,” the old coot will say to a
reporter (often with specks of oatmeal clinging to his beard). They never
interview regular people. It’s always an odd ball or an old coot, someone who
gives the town a bad image.
Quite often the interview takes an unexpected
turn. It happens because news anchors are lazy. They don’t talk to the
interviewee ahead of time. They are too busy getting into their LL Bean
outfits. “I’m here with Tom Saw-it-all. He caught a woman who jumped from a
second story window to get away from a boa constrictor that was wrapped around
her leg,” a news anchor in a safari jacket will say to set the stage for an
interview. “How were you able to catch her?" he asks. Tom Saw-it-all looks
him up and down and grins. And then answers the question, “Well, I really
didn’t catch her. She kinda fell onto that bush over there and then slid down
to the sidewalk by my feet. I picked her up to see if she was OK. The picture
in the paper showed me holding her.”
“Cool!” the anchor responds, not hearing a
single word that Tom Saw-it-all said. He’d been adjusting his outfit while Tom
was talking. “What about the boa constrictor wrapped around her leg? Were you
terrified when you saw it?”
“There twasn’t no snake. Betty was in her cups
again, like she always is on Saturday night. What she thought was a snake on
her leg, was a tablecloth. She was dancing on the table. She fell off and it
got tangled around her ankle. She freaked out and jumped out the window
yelling, ‘Snake’.” A commercial comes on at this point. The gaff is never
mentioned when the host in the main studio takes over and closes the segment.
It’s why you can’t just listen to the introduction of a TV news segment if you
want to be informed. The real story is always different. You can thank the
legion of old coots out there for the truth. We’re the ones in the “I Like Ike”
T-shirts standing next to the guys who look like they’ve just stepped off the
page of an LL Bean catalogue.
The Old Coot is a
Four Flusher.
Published
September 3, 2008
It's
not a character flaw or an inborn trait that made me a four flusher. It's the
politicians and environmentalists that did it. They decided that I wasted too
much water when I flushed the toilet or took a shower. They passed a law and
took over control of my bathroom. “Hear ye, Hear ye, Henceforth all toilets
shall use 1.6 gallons per flush, all shower heads will emit no more than 2.5
gallons per minute. And so it came to pass. They broke the mold and tossed it
aside, the mold for the toilet tank that is. So now I live with the results:
dried shampoo flakes in my hair and “flusher” elbow, a condition similar to
tennis elbow, but one that comes from repeatedly pushing down the handle on a
toilet.
They
made into a four flusher. And, I use more water now than I did before the
environmentalists and politicians “fixed” things. About twice as much,
according to my water bill. These are the same guys who outlawed the 100-watt
bulb, insisting we buy expensive compact fluorescent lamps that leak mercury
and pollute our homes when they break. The same guys who mandated higher and
higher levels of ethanol (corn oil) in gasoline, raising the cost to fill both
our gas tanks and our grocery carts. If they fix any more things they will
drive us back into the Stone Age.
It's
not just big water bills that irk me. It's the inconvenience of waiting around
while the tank fills back up after it’s flushed, so I can flush it again and
then again. If I could figure how to do it, I'd raise the tank to the ceiling,
like in the old days, so my allotted 1.6 gallons per flush had enough force to
work as well as the fifty-year-old toilet in the downstairs bathroom. It works
great; you could flush a watermelon down it and it wouldn’t even burp. It was
designed by plumbers, not politicians.
Zoe
Industries has outwitted the dimwits. They sell a shower device that has three
heads. Instead of a weak, 2.5-gallon/minute misting, you get a
7.5-gallon/minute blast. The department of Energy is beside itself. They can’t
figure out how to close the loophole in the regulation that allows a
three-spray shower. I’d order one myself but we still have a teenager at home.
He often has several friends staying over on the weekend and teenagers don’t
consider it a real shower unless they stand under the spray for thirty minutes.
At 7.5 gallons per minute, per kid, I’d be bankrupt in a year with a Zoe
showerhead. I suppose I should thank the D.O.E but if I did, I’d be thrown out
of the old coot society.
The
Department of Energy is also pushing us to install replacement windows.
“Tighten up that house and save the planet,” they preach. It’s a tempting
offer. The windows in our house are over two hundred years old. They leak air.
Some won’t stay up unless I prop them open with a stick. The glass is wavy. A
new pane cracks every other month and puts the spotlight on my inept glazing
skills when I replace it. But, I’m keeping my old windows. Some of the panes
have initials and dates scratched into them. It was a nineteenth century
tradition for girls who became engaged. Nobody knows if it was to record the
historic event or to make sure the diamond was real. At any rate, how can you
replace a window with that kind of history? Besides, I’m an old coot.
Replacement windows would mean I’d have to open my wallet. I can’t do that. I’m
a four flusher!
The Old Coot’s One Good Ear Is Ringing.
Published September 10, 2008
I was in an old geezer’s house the other day
when his phone rang. The sound caught me off guard; it was a regular telephone
ring. You almost never hear that anymore. They don’t even call it a ring these
days; it's a ring TONE. You select it from a list in your phone or buy it off
the Internet. Everybody has their own personal tone, usually a song they are
hooked on, accompanied by a vibration that would wake the dead. I feel like I’m
in the orchestra pit at an opera house whenever I’m in a crowd of cell phone
people. Their pockets screech so much that it sounds like a group of musicians
tuning up for the first act, a sea of discordant harmonies. Some people don’t
contribute to the din; they don't take the phone away from their ear long
enough for it to “ring.” As soon as they hang up on one party, they speed dial
another. They are “think-about-it” challenged. They can’t stand having an
unexpressed thought float around in their head; they have to flush it out as
soon as it materializes. It’s turning us into an “impulse” society. We don’t
think anything through or weigh the consequences. We just blurt it out!
I have an old phone in my office. It's from the
dark ages, the seventies. It doesn't ring anymore. I disconnected the bell.
Like all old coots, I don't want to talk on the phone, especially if someone
else initiates the call. Unfortunately, I've deprived myself of hearing the
real sound of a telephone by rendering mine mute. I’ve had some good chuckles
with my old phone. One of my son's friends will ask to use it to call home.
“Help yourself,” I say, and then leave the room. A minute later the kid will
come searching for me with a puzzled look on his face. “The phone didn't work,”
he’ll say. “I pushed on the numbers but nothing happened!” Of course nothing
happened when he “pushed” on the numbers. It's a “dial” phone. Something he's
never encountered.
The evolution of electronic equipment is
affecting my ability to communicate with the younger crowd. My language is
becoming foreign in my native land. When I told the kid to try again, to “dial”
the number, he didn't know what I was talking about. The concept had no meaning
to him. It's like my grandchildren when I tell them to turn something
clockwise. I get a blank stare. All their clocks are digital. More and more of
the words I use are obsolete. I can’t talk about going to the blackboard when I
was a kid in school. Blackboard? They aren’t black. They’ve been green for
decades. And, even the green boards are becoming passé, as dry-erase boards
take center stage. Slide shows are out! Power Point is in! Though half the time
the power is missing. The computer throws a temper tantrum and the speaker has
to give his speech without visuals. I like it when this happens. There is
nothing worse than a power point presentation where the speaker reads the words
on the screen to you. The words that you skim through six times before he gets
half way down the page. They should change the name from power point to “what’s
the point.”
It’s the honest truth; I’m rapidly becoming an
illiterate old coot. My language is more out of date every day. The innovations
in electronic and mechanical devices are finishing me off. Phones don’t ring;
blackboards aren’t black. Movie directors can’t say, “Roll the cameras.”
Cameras don’t use film; they’re digital. I don’t know what they should say,
“Start digitally aligning the electrons?” I’d look it up, but no one would know
what I meant by “look it up.” I’d have to say, “I’ll Google it,” if I wanted to
be understood. Oh well, I have to go. My phone is singing, “Bo Jangles.”
The Old Coot Can’t Fly High!
Published October 8, 2008
I stopped at the swing set behind the elementary
school the other day. It had been a long time since I had a good swing. It's
something we don't do as adults. And, we should! We call it a kid thing and
deprive ourselves of one of life's simple pleasures. I know this, yet I forget to do it. I was riding my bike through
the school parking lot when the swing caught my eye. My mind clicked, I was 10
years old again. I headed in that direction, anxious to indulge in that feeling
of flying. This swing looked especially promising. The top bar was twenty feet
in the air. High enough to offer a long glide and give a really good ride.
But, it didn’t! The seat squished my hips
together. It was like being pinched in a vice. The flat, wooden seat that I
grew up with had been replaced with a rubber strap. This new and “improved”
seat was a pain. I took a couple of swings. Pumped my legs like in the old
days. But, flying through the air while clamped in a vice is anything but
exhilarating. I hopped off and surveyed the other swings in the vicinity, the
ones near the Little League Park and the ones on the other side of the school.
They all had the same defect, the same “strap” seat, the same torture chamber.
These seats are OK for little kids, but they are a disaster for old coots.
I went on a quest, to find a place for an old
coot to have a good swing. “Marvin Park,” I thought. “They wouldn't have
converted to the new type of seats there.” Not a park with a slide so high it
makes the village’s insurance agent gasp. Not in a park steeped in history and
tradition. I was wrong! The swings at Marvin Park are new. They have tortuous
seats, too. And worse, the top bar is barely ten feet above the ground. The arc
is so short you may as well be on a porch glider. You can’t fly on these
things.
I took inventory. All the modern swing sets are
short. The top bar is only ten feet above the ground. They are half the height
of the swings of my day. The only tall ones left are behind the elementary
school and in the park near the Little League fields. All the rest are
shorties: the eleven swings on the other side of the school, the eight at
Marvin Park, the two at Boland Park, the one by the creek in Hickories and the
two by the river. Our town is swing challenged. One old coot and a thousand
kids have no place to fly!
One swing in Hickories has a flat, rigid seat,
like in the old days. A seat that isn’t a pain! I was able to “fly” a little.
It was nice to sail through the air, even at this low level. A lot nicer than
some of the sailing I’ve done in the past few years. Like the flight I took off
the top of our garbage can when I tried to stuff 60 gallons of trash into a 30
gallon can, or the swan dive off my motor scooter on East Main Street where I
was practicing figure eights for my motorcycle road test. The flight on the
swing by the river was better than those ones, but the glide path was so short
it lured me into a foolish act, hopping off at the top of the arc. Fortunately,
I made it. I “stuck” the landing!
I
registered a swing seat complaint with Bill Russell, the school superintendent.
I didn’t plan it. He just made the mistake of sitting down next to me at an OFA
football game. He's skilled at defusing old coots. He promised he’d look into my
request for a swing seat that didn’t pinch. “Maybe one of our students can
conjure up an old coot seat in shop class,” he said. We’ll see. I’m not too
optimistic. I’m sure the kids at OFA can design and build a better seat, but
will the school attorney or their insurance carrier let them use it? Probably
not. I’ll have to make one myself and just hope it doesn’t come apart in mid
flight and send me to the emergency room with a red face, like when I skated
off the top of the garbage can. There is nothing worse for an old coot than
facing a team of snickering doctors and nurses in the emergency room.
The Old Coot Rejects Green Expert’s Advice.
Published October 22, 2008
A self-anointed green expert was on TV this
weekend, telling viewers how to save energy. You know how it goes. They unveil
a chart with five or six things listed on it. The host of the show asks them a
leading question and off they go. It's easy to see that they don't walk the
walk. A guy with a big gut will insist we eat less. A woman with a smoker's
hack will speak of the evils of cigarettes. This time, it was a guy who had
written a book about saving energy, the “green” way. He had the usual list of
stuff, “Seal up the cracks around windows and doors,” – “Replace your furnace
filter every month,” - “Check the tire
pressure in your car every time you get gas.” We all know these things. We also
know that the tire thing doesn’t save money, not when it costs seventy-five
cents for three minutes of compressed air. Half the time the pump doesn’t work
and the compressors at most modern gas stations are so weak it takes a lot more
than seventy-five cents to get the job done. The gage never works right either.
You have to fill the tire by eye and hope to stop before it blows up. It’s
safer if you just let the guy who inspects your car check your tires, and take
your chances the rest of the year. One look at the guy on TV was enough to tell
that he hadn’t bent over to put air in his tires in years. He was as
hypocritical as Al Gore, when he scolds us for our carbon footprints and then
drives off into the sunset to his palatial estate that uses more energy in a
month than an average house does in a year.
The “expert” finished his pitch with, “Don't rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher!” The host admitted that she does just that. “I can't bring myself to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher,” she confessed. “You are wasting water and wasting energy,” he scolded. “Today's dishwashers are good at their jobs. You can put dishes in dirty and they will come out clean.” He was able to browbeat the young, single, TV hostess into submission. She promised to stop rinsing. But I doubt he convinced the audience. You don’t tell the American homemaker, housewife, mother, caregiver, partner (you pick the politically correct term) how to do the dishes, not without getting beaned with a frying pan. You don’t tell “mama” not to rinse. It will make her mad, and as the old saying goes, “When mama ain’t happy; nobody’s happy!” I know. I learned it the hard way, by suggesting a more efficient way to do the dishes once. Now, I rinse them and put them in the dishwasher and keep my mouth shut. He should do the same.
Besides, he didn't consider that a lot of people
rinse their dishes because they wait until the dishwasher is full before they
run it. They save energy in their own way, a smart way. Sometimes it takes a
week to get a full load. Is “mama” going to listen to a guy who tells her to
let them sit there for that long, covered with dried food? I don't think so!
These “green” guys selling books on TV are all the same. The only green they
are interested in is the green in your wallet, and how they can get it into
their wallet. No, I’m not green, but mama is happy and our dishes sparkle!
The Old Coot Is No Help at All.
Published October 29, 2008
I was walking down Parker Lane in Owego the
other day. It’s my favorite street. I go there when I can’t come up with a
topic to write about. Not to find ideas, but to get lost in the past. It’s a
magical pathway, steeped in an aura of Owego’s distant past. Days when it was
lined with foundries, stables and industrial structures. You enter it burdened
with the frustrations of the day and exit it with a clear head. That was my
intent when I turned right on Front Street and onto Parker Lane. I didn’t get
very far, not far enough to fall into the stupor that usually overtakes me when
I go there. I heard a voice. “Hey, Old Coot! Comehereaminute,” it said. “What,”
I replied, wondering if I really heard something or just imagined it. An old
ghost calling out from the past. “I’m here in the garage; come on over,” It was
David Allen, sitting in the front seat of his SUV, fiddling with a registration
sticker.
He wanted to know if I ever got stuck coming up
with something to write about. “Stuck!” I said to myself. That’s my middle
name. I figured he knew I got stuck all the time. It’s why I write about
“nothing.” I was surprised he’d asked. “Never,” I lied. “Why do you ask?” He
told me about a time when he had to write an article every month at Binghamton
University. How, some months it was so easy, it just flowed from his pen, and
other months, he’d come up with an empty slate and had to force words to the
page. Then he explained why he called me over. He had a topic for me. “Car
registration stickers!
“These things,” he said, as he waved the sticker
he’d been fumbling with. “Do you have the same kind of problem I do when I have
to put on a new sticker?” I was ready to lie again. I would have loved to tell
him that it was a snap. That only old coots had problems with these things. But
it was David Allen. I couldn’t lie to him. He’d know it the minute the words
left my lips. So I admitted my lack of dexterity, vision and know-how, when it
came to removing the old sticker and installing a new one. “I can’t get this
apart,” he complained. “I know it says peel from the back, but I can’t get it
started.” I took it and gave it a look. Of course it was nothing but a blur. My
glasses were two miles away. I scrunched it around, bent it, folded it, wadded
up one end and somehow it came apart. The sticker pulled away for the backing.
“Here you go,” I said handing David the wadded up, bent, spindled and mutilated
registration sticker.
He gave me a look of horror. The same one my
father gave me the day he’d discovered that I’d cut his pile of eight-foot long
boards in half so they’d be easier to stack in the garage. “I wasn’t ready for
the sticker yet,” he said. “I haven’t even scraped off the old one.” I looked
at his windshield, and sure enough, the old sticker was firmly in place. “I can
help you with that too,” I offered, knowing how difficult it is to get the old
one off, especially on a vehicle with a narrow space between the dash and the
windshield. “No thanks,” he replied. “I can handle it from here.” So off I
went, continuing my journey down Parker Lane. Funny, but it’s one of the few
times I came out onto Main Street without something new to write about. I’ll
have to remember to ask David not to interrupt me when I’m trying to clear my
head.
The Old Coot Blows Up.
Published, November 12, 2008
I wrote an article in May about the ice-cold
seats at Cornell's Schoellkoph Field. I was there for a college lacrosse
tournament. Syracuse beat Notre Dame and then went on to win the national
championship a week later. But it wasn’t the memory of the game that I came
away with that day; it was the memory of a painfully cold, metal seat. It was
so frigid my teeth chattered. I complained ad nauseam in my article, ranting in
print about the incompetent bureaucrats across the land who replaced warm,
user-friendly wooden bleacher seats with metal ones. I accused them of
forsaking the backsides of sport’s fans for lower maintenance costs. Their
response, “You don’t have to paint metal seats and they last forever.” I don’t
buy it! Metal seats are awful. I’ve renewed the chilling experience time and
again over the last several months, watching high school, football and soccer
games on metal bleachers throughout the southern tier.
I’ve tried to figure out what to do. I even
considered giving in, like my fellow old coots, and lug a stadium cushion
around. But, I hate letting the metal-seat-people force me to become a pack
mule. I’m going in another direction. I know I can’t take on the bureaucrats;
they opted for the durability of bleachers over the comfort of fans.
Bureaucrats don’t have a reverse gear; they never revisit a decision. It’s a
done deal. Wood is out; metal is in. I’m not going to beat my head against the
wall. I’m working on a solution that will allow me to remain a sports fan
without freezing off my proverbial buns. If my idea works, I might end up with
a valuable patent.
I’m developing a pair of pants with an
inflatable seat. I think it’s the answer to the cold metal bleachers. I’ll be
able to walk to the stands empty handed. When I get to my seat, in the back row
where the old coots gather, I’ll blow up my pants, using a three-foot section
of rubber tubing connected to two basketball bladders, sewn into the seat of my
pants. I’ll be sitting pretty, with a layer of air between the sub-zero metal
seat and me. I’ll be higher than the rest of the crowd. I won’t have to keep
asking the guy next to me, “What just happened?” - “Who’s got the ball?” – “What’s the score?” When the game is
over, I’ll open the valve, my pants will deflate and I’ll walk out of the
stadium empty handed. I haven’t perfected my invention yet. The valve got stuck
on the trial run and I had a hard time getting the air out. I’m afraid if I try
it in public I’ll be forced to walk out of the stadium with 500 giggling fans
watching Mister Big Butt waddle to his car. My wife took one look at my
inflatable pants and said, “You need help!” I don’t care. I’m plowing ahead. A
person is entitled to a comfortable seat at a ball game. An old coot deserves
better than a block of ice.
The Old Coot Works it Out.
Published, November 26, 2008
I’ve been going to physical therapy for the past
several weeks. Just a sore knee. Probably from putting my foot in my mouth so
often. The therapy isn’t working, at least not as well as I hoped. I wanted to
end up feeling like a seventeen-year-old. All they’ve accomplished is to make
my knee feel better.
I’m serious! I expected the P.T. staff at Peak
Performance to work a miracle. I wanted a break from my old coot body. I wanted
to feel seventeen again, for just a day. I’m tired of the old coot roulette
game. Today, my knee hurts; tomorrow I won’t be able to turn my neck to the
left. When that goes away, I’ll start getting cramps in my calf, making me look
like an idiot in a restaurant, jumping up to kick it out. Old coot roulette is
a symphony of aches and pains. One by one, they ease up or I get used to them
and then a new one comes along.
“How did you hurt your knee, arm, neck, (you
fill in the blank),” the doctor asks? The answer is always the same, “I didn’t
do anything!” He chuckles, pain free in his forty-six year old body and then
tells you it’s normal for someone “your” age. “Probably just a little arthritis
in the joint. Let’s get you into P.T. and see if “we” can’t get you feeling
better.” So, you go and it happens. The pain fades into the background.
Because, you now ache all over from the exercises you’ve done to fix the
primary trouble spot. It didn’t really get better. It just got company. Oh,
I’ll admit, it will eventually go away. A cure will manifest itself. But, then
a new cycle will start. Old coot roulette is an endless game.
I long for the old days, the old ways. If you
had a sore knee, hip, neck, back or shoulder, you didn’t climb aboard a series
of exercise machines to build up the muscles around the aching joint. You
climbed into a tub of hot water and Epsom salts and cherished the treatment.
Or, a kind relative applied a soothing mustard plaster to your back and brewed
you a hot cup of tea. When that didn’t work, you bought a cane and whacked
anyone who snickered. You weren’t forced to lift a thirty-pound weight with
your leg ten times, rest, repeat, and then move to the next torture machine.
Instead, you limped around. You got pity. Pity is way underrated. Plus, you got
out of doing chores around the house. Now you get better!
So, as you work it out you join the ranks of the
65 million American’s that regularly mount exercise machines for thirty minutes
or more, three times a week. Some people are even more fanatical. Madonna works
out three or four hours a day. Workout
machines dominate the landscape. More and more runners, bikers, kayakers and a
legion of other amateur and professional athletes forsake the journey and
travel “in place” on an exercise device. Runners don’t enjoy breezing down a
tree-lined lane; bikers don’t enjoy the countryside. The means becomes the end.
We need to put “work,” back into “work-out.” The world would be a better place
if the energy expended on machines were connected to tools: paintbrushes,
shovels or rakes. The athlete would get fit and society at large would benefit.
Our parents and grandparents didn’t need machines to get in shape. They
“worked” to stay fit. Maybe we should go back to the old way. I’d join in, but
I have a sore knee.
The
Old Coot is Drowning in Shoes.
Published January 7, 2009
I bought a new pair of shoes the other day.
There is no telling what they’re made of. Probably a combination of oil,
plastic, recycled toxic chemicals and animal parts that don’t make it into hot
dogs. At least the shoes don’t smell funny, not too funny anyhow. It got me
thinking about shoes in ancient times, in the 1950’s. You didn’t have to guess
what they were made of. The uppers were leather; the soles were leather, rubber
or crepe. Crepe was a nice change. It was spongy and put a bounce in your step.
But, you couldn’t put cleats in crepe heels; they would loosen up and fall out.
And, if you wanted to be a “cool cat,” you had to have cleats so you could make
the distinctive click when you walked. New shoes had to be broken in. You
trotted out a new pair with mixed feelings. They looked nice and the heels
weren’t worn down and your socks wouldn’t get soaked from a hole in the sole
like your old pair, yet they weren’t all that great. You knew they were going
to kill your feet.
New shoes were like that. It took a few weeks to
get them working right, to get the stiffness out, to get the leather stretched
and molded to your foot. We suffered through it. It wasn’t all bad. It gave us
a ready excuse for being grumpy. Someone might ask, “Is something wrong? Are
you in a bad mood?” Even if you weren’t
in new shoes, you could use it as an excuse for your unsociable behavior. “No,
I’m OK. I’m just breaking in a new pair of shoes.” And then hope the asker
didn’t look down at your scuffed and lopsided wingtips that bespoke your lie.
But not anymore. Shoes don’t have to be broken
in. They feel good right out of the box. And, they last and last. They don’t
wear out. Shoe repair shops are idle. Shoe polish and shoeshine boys are a
thing of the past. If your shoes get scuffed, you have to take them to an auto
body shop and get a new paint job. The soles and heels don’t wear out. This
causes a big problem for old coots. We hate to throw things away that still
have useful life. Even if we hate a pair of shoes, we keep them around. We have
stacks of old shoes clogging our closets. I took inventory the other day after
I noticed a sag in the ceiling below mine. I was shocked. I counted seven pairs
of sneakers, one pair of wing tips (last worn in 1993) one pair of saddle
shoes, four pairs of loafers, hiking shoes, hiking boots, fishing boots, work
boots and winter boots. I’m drowning in
the things. I can’t throw them away; they aren’t worn out.
I long for the days when I had two pairs of
shoes: everyday shoes and dress-up shoes. The days before Goodrich came along
with P.F. Flyers and changed the game. We had to have them! Nike dealt the
knockout punch, offering different footwear for every occasion: hiking,
running, walking, basketball, baseball and strutting around the mall. Shoes went from utilitarian to fashion
statements. Now I have a big pile in my closet. I hate them! Every single pair.
I can’t throw them out. Meanwhile, I’m walking around in yet another new pair
of shoes. They feel great. But so what! I’ll eventually get sick of them and
they will be ushered into exile on the floor of my closet. It wouldn’t surprise
me if I ended up with a collection that surpasses the 1060 pair of shoes left
behind by Imelda Marcos when she and her husband fled the Philippines in 1986.
I remember laughing at her wasteful excess at the time. Now, I’m on a pace to
out “shoe” her. I’d better get help before I drown in them.
The
Old Coot Gets a Rude Awakening!
Published January 14, 2009
Most weekday mornings, from 7:30 to 8:30, I
parked my frame in a window seat at Awakenings Coffeehouse. It’s where my
muddled, old coot articles took shape, either typed into a portable computer or
scribbled onto a piece of scrap paper. The computer was one in a series of
ten-dollar laptops. They surfaced on E-Bay every so often; I guess, when
someone cleaned out their basement or attic. They were heavy, the batteries
wouldn’t hold a charge and their memories were as deficient as mine, but they
were good enough to absorb and spell-check an old coot article. Darci, the
owner of the Awakenings, let me store them under her couch. I didn’t care if it
got stolen. I only had ten bucks invested and a stack of spares in the garage.
I needed an electrical outlet. The table near the window was the only place
where one was available. That’s how the window seat became the “old coot” seat.
Darci wouldn’t accept reimbursement for the electricity and never charged for a
refill. It was a perfect place for and old cheapskate like me.
Now it’s closed. Darci’s gone, off to
concentrate on her catering business; her daughter Valerie too, along with an
extensive parade of service staff, who, over the years, learned a little about
the world of commerce while earning a few bucks on their journey through high
school and college. As a result, an eclectic family is adrift; a social network
has been torn apart. No longer will I be able to greet the gang from my cat
bird seat by the window: Paul Cavataio heading off to the Agway Store, Charlie
Truman en-route from Flemingville to the New Holland dealership in Vestal,
Linda (Veronica) from Doc Cooks, office, Wayne Moulton, who we forced to
explain time and again, that sheriff deputies couldn’t “fix” our speeding
tickets, John Spencer of Riverow Books, Kevin Millar, Daren Merrill & Matt
Laba shuffling back and forth to 217 Main Street, Maureen Hawley on her way to
the County complex on Rte 38, George Williams off to survey a piece of
property, Rick, headed for Cornell, Pat & Ray, Doc Nichols, Damon Tinkham,
Shawn Yetter, Amy, sisters Heather & Robin, Tim & Beth, Mayor
Arrington, Judge Squeglia, not to mention the Thursday morning coffee klatch
with: Mary Beth, Heather, Lynn, Maureen, Carolyn, Kevin, John and any stray
person passing by that could be lured over to their big table. Ours was a big
but loose knit family. We came for the coffee and left with a feeling of
belonging. We didn’t all know each other’s names but we knew each other’s faces
well enough to exchange a hello, if not a short anecdote or two.
Now, I’m in a funk, the others too, at least the
ones I’ve bumped into. I’ve only seen a few; the connection with the rest has
been severed. Valerie, whose progress we followed from when she was a newborn,
up to and through, the big day last September when she proudly marched off to
kindergarten in her St. Pat’s uniform, is now deprived of the “expert”
unsolicited parenting advice that we dumped on her mother at every stage of her
development. Who’s going to tell us that refills are free? Who’s going to show
us where the broom is if we complain about the puddle in front of the door?
And, who’s going to tell us it’s OK that we forgot our wallet and accept our
promise to, “Gladly pay you on Tuesday?”
I guess we’ll somehow move on, find a way to
adapt, crawl over this bump in the road. It’s why old coots hate change;
something good is always lost in the process. A new shop will eventually
replace Awakenings. We’ll find a place to buy our coffee in the meantime. But,
we’ll never get back the old fashion feeling that Darci orchestrated. It was
like hanging around a potbelly stove on a cold winter morning in an 1800’s
general store. It’s another cruel reminder to appreciate what we have, while we
have it. The good things in life are fleeting and fragile.
It’s time to move on. Awakenings is no more.
And, contrary to what you might have heard around town, the place wasn’t forced
to close because the old coot in the front window was bad for business. Good-bye Darci. Good-bye Valerie. Good-bye
Clay. We will miss you.
The
Old Coot Explains Infinity.
Published January 28, 2009
I watched a science show on the Discovery
Channel the other day. A professor was explaining mathematical concepts to a
group of young kids. It reminded me of the Mister Wizard Show. I like shows
that are dumbed down for children; I can follow the conversation. The topic of the day was “infinity.” The
scientist used the conversion of a fraction to a decimal to explain it. 1/3 was
the fraction. He picked a kid at random from the audience and sent him to the
blackboard. “Divide the numerator by the denominator,” he instructed. I was
lost until he turned to the camera and whispered, “Divide the one by the three.”
The kid knew exactly what to do. I suspected it was a set-up, but I kept
watching anyhow. Pretty soon, this “random” kid from the audience had a string
of threes to the right of a decimal point. He turned to the professor and asked
if he should keep going. “I’m just going to get more threes,” he explained. The
prof was delighted. “That’s it exactly!
- That’s infinity. The string of 3’s never ends.”
I thought it was a pretty lame example. I
couldn’t relate to it; I don’t think the kids in the studio audience could
either. They use calculators, not long division. Half of them sat there with a
blank expression on their face. They had no idea what the nerd at the
blackboard was doing. It’s why the producers of these shows should hire old
coots to explain abstract concepts. Infinity isn’t that complicated. I
experience it every day. Infinity is the distance between the end of my
outstretched fingers and my socks lying on the floor, when I bend over to pick
them up. It’s grown over the years. I can remember when it didn’t even exist. I
didn’t have a problem reaching my socks. Then it surfaced. It was about an inch
wide to start with. Now, it’s six or seven inches, depending on how my back
feels. I think the change has something to do with global warming. It can’t be
me.
It has affected my shoe tying ability too. I
walked into the Hair Designs beauty shop on Lake Street the other day. “Can I
help you,” Linda, the owner, asked? “No,” I said, slipping into a chair in the
“on deck” circle. “I just need to sit down so I can tie my shoe.” It came
untied as I was walked down the street. My shoes don’t stay tied like they used
to. When I complain about it to a stranger who watches me while I sit on a curb
to retie my laces, it usually gets me an eye roll, followed by a smart aleck
comment, “A guy your age shouldn’t be wearing tie shoes. It’s why they make
Velcro, Pops!”
But it’s not me. It’s the laces. They don’t make
them like they used to. They aren’t made of a natural fiber anymore. They won’t
tie tight and stay that way. They are made from a strange, synthetic - plastic
concoction, a slimy white tube inside an outer sleeve. I know, because the end
breaks off about a week after I put in a new lace and the white part starts to
show itself. It slips back and forth inside the outer sleeve. It feels like a
piece of well-oiled spaghetti. It won’t hold a knot. Even when I tie a double
knot, it comes undone. It’s why I have to stop all the time, sit down, and
retie my shoes. I’m a regular nuisance to village shop owners, stopping in to
borrow a chair so I can reach my laces. I won’t have to worry about it much
longer. Infinity is creeping into the picture. It soon will insert itself
between the ends of my fingers and my laces, just like it did with my socks on
the bedroom floor. When that happens, I’ll have to switch to loafers. Then I’ll
look like even more of an idiot on the treadmill at the fitness center.
The Old Coot is a Trespasser.
Published February 4, 2008
I headed to Hickories Park as soon as the snow
stopped flying the other day. I parked my Jeep, strapped on my cross-country
skies and glided to the riverbank. Someone had beaten me to it but that was
fine with me. His tracks made the going easier. I was in old coot heaven; the
air was crisp and clear, the snow was crunchy-cold and the river swirled by,
its surface dotted with sheets of ice. It’s a beautiful solitude, this
cross-country skiing thing.
I turned north at the park boundary and then
west when I came to the creek. I followed it for a while, crossed it when I
came to the bridge that takes you to the soccer fields and headed toward the RR
tracks. Up to this point I was perfectly legal, an old coot slipping and
sliding along the snow in a public park. But, that’s no fun. Cross-country
skiing is about getting to places where you’re not allowed, with the snow too
deep and temperatures too forbidding for anyone to chase you away. If you get
caught, you have a sure fire alibi, “I’m not trespassing, sir. I’m not on your
property; I’m eight inches above it.”
I exited the park and traveled along the R.R.
track, crossing under Route 17C and down to the backside of The P&C
Supermarket. There, I crossed the tracks, went down a steep bank, across a
frozen section of Barnes Creek and onto a utility road behind the Sanmina
Plant. I leaned on a “No Trespassing”
sign and dusted off the snow that covered me from head to foot from the tumble
I took coming down the bank. I think I snagged my ski on a hidden tree limb.
Maybe, I just lost my balance. I’m never sure what happens when I find myself
with a face full of snow, but I’d rather blame it on some external force, not
my lack of coordination.
I didn’t know how I was going to get there, but
I hoped to find my way to Brick Pond. I headed west, skirted the sewage
treatment plant, an old deserted camping trailer and a stern looking series of
“No Trespassing” signs. I came to a cornfield and paused. A flock of turkeys
scurried about and warned me to keep away. I didn’t pause because I felt
threatened by the turkeys. I save that reaction for when a bear stumbles out of
his den and decides it would be great sport to chase an old coot. The reason I
paused, was to get my bearings. I never guessed there was a cornfield behind
the commercial buildings along Fifth Avenue. It confused me for a minute. I
wasn’t sure where I was. I continued on anyhow. The turkeys shuttled to the
side and two deer at the edge of the field raised their heads. Their tails
wagged nervously. It made the trip worth it. I was one with Mother Nature and
her creatures. And, best of all, I was trespassing!
“I wish I had a camera,” was a thought that
fluttered through my head. But, just for a second. I regained my senses and
rejected it! This wasn’t a moment to save on film (or on pixels); it was a
moment to savor. I soaked it in and slowly continued my journey across the
field to a clump of scrub trees, and, after tripping a few times on snow
covered obstacles (real or imagined), I stumbled out onto a frozen and snow
covered, Brick Pond. I looked back. The turkeys and the deer continued with the
business of pulling nourishment out of a bleak landscape. I’d been nothing more
than a minor blip on their radar. I lumbered down the pond, keeping an eye out
for a hawk or an eagle, but none appeared. I had to be satisfied with the quiet
beauty of the white landscape. I made it to the end of the pond near the
intersection of East Front and Fulton, stepped out of my skies and walked home,
basking in the moment, a tired, happy old man. It hadn’t cost a cent, making it
a perfect old coot afternoon, especially when I remembered I’d left my Jeep at
Hickories, seconds before dialing 911 to report it stolen.
The
Old Coot Toes The Line.
Published February 11, 2009
I walk across the crowded parking lot and
through the front door of Dunkin Donuts in Owego. Heather catches my eye, holds
up a cup and asks, “Large?” There is a line of ten people in front of me, yet
my service starts the minute I walk in the door. All us “regulars” get this
premium service if our order is the same every day and we have the exact
change. Heather asks, because sometimes I get a large and sometimes I get a
medium. If Lisa, Heather’s mom, had spotted me first, I’d get a large. She only
goes so far with special service, especially for a cheapskate who only buys
coffee: no donuts, no bagels, no breakfast sandwiches. I get in line. Pretty
soon I spot a hand with a coffee container coming toward me over the stack of
specialty coffee packages. Lisa filled it while she was waiting for a customer
who couldn’t decide what kind of donut they wanted. I take it and pass back two
dollars. If it were a normal day I’d be out the door. But, today is “miracle
day;” I’m buying donuts. I stay in line sipping my coffee and in a few minutes
it’s my turn at the counter. Lisa looks me in the eye and says, with a wry
smile breaking across her face, “What’s the matter old coot? Why are you
crying?” Then she lets fly a belly laugh as I lamely explain that I’m not
crying. My eyes are watering from the cold.
Lisa fetches my donuts and Heather rings me up.
She chuckles and asks if I’m going to Tarrytown this weekend. It’s an old joke.
For a year or more we’d had conversations about the trips I took to my
daughter’s house in Tarrytown. Lisa and Heather live in Pennsylvania and they
thought I meant the Tarrytown near them, not the one across the Tapanzee Bridge
on the way to New York City. It wasn’t until I came back from a trip and
complained about a traffic jam I got caught in that we finally figured it out.
“Traffic jam? Tarrytown doesn’t have traffic jams,” they replied in unison. Now
it’s a running joke. “Going to Tarrytown today?”
Nancy, Lisa and the Kid (Heather) run the place
on weekdays. They banter among themselves and with the customers. Nancy,
serious and business like, chuckles quietly to herself, Lisa, brazen, fun
loving and “on the edge,” percolates in a stream of cackles, belly laughs and
snickers, interspersed with a chorus of good hearted sarcasm. Heather is a
blend of the two: highly efficient, witty and bubbling with good cheer. Like
her mother, she is an expert at the subtle barb. She can get a chuckle out of a
line of old sourpusses like me. It’s a lesson she learned at her mother’s knee.
They all are a delight, even Amber, the new kid in the line up. Come for the coffee,
leave with a smile, no matter what mood ushers you in the door. They know their
business. They could run the place blindfolded. Reluctant, undecided patrons
are prodded into a decision with a helpful suggestion, “You’ll be too old to
eat it if you don’t decide what kind of breakfast sandwich you want pretty
soon.”
The place is alive with energy. The sound
effects are a regular symphony, more complicated than anything Beethoven ever
pieced together. Here's a sample of the “music” that I recorded I my composition
notebook:
Heather - I think I’ll have another baby next year.
Lisa
(Heather’s mom) - No she won’t, addressing the line of customers. Not if I have
anything to say about it. Another baby would be a lot of work! She's still in
the fun part with her little one.
Heather
- Guess what mom. You don't have any say about it! Ha Ha Ha!
Lisa
– We’ll see. (Nancy observes, smiles and wisely holds her tongue.)
Heather
– I’d rather stay home with a baby than ride to work with my
mother. She spends half the trip riding on the rumble strip. She can’t keep the
car on the road. (Lisa doesn't hear her; she's busy with an indecisive
customer.)
Lisa
- “Spit it out,” she
says to a guy trying to decide if he should ask Nancy if she's from Candor. He
finally does.
Customer
- You look familiar. Are you from Candor?
Nancy
- I should look familiar. I baby-sat you when you were a little kid.
Lisa
– Yea, I bet she changed your diapers, too. Ha Ha Ha! (both, Nancy and the guy
turn red)
They move things along. Boxing up donuts, making
and pouring coffee, finishing donuts in the back, making and broiling a sea of
sandwiches and bagels. They move customers along too. The croissants are great.
Want to try one?” Did you say, “Yes,” on
the toasted? Something else? Cream? There can be twenty people in line but when
Nancy, Lisa and Heather are behind the counter, it’s a rare one who turns
around and heads back out the door. We, regulars, don’t think much of those
people. They don’t know what they’re missing. We glance to see who’s behind the
counter and then happily get in line. We know we’ll be out the door in no time
and well entertained while we wait.
Tony,
the owner, rumbles through the place on a periodic supervisory excursion, even
tries to act like he’s in charge, but it’s obvious that he knows how good this
team is. He doesn’t escape the barbs, either. He takes it like a man, smiles
like the rest of us and gets out of the way. Stop in some time. You’ll love the
show.
An
Old Coot Has a Day at the Beach.
Published March 25, 2009
“You’ve come a long way, baby!” So touted an ad
for Virginia Slims, a new cigarette being marketed to independent minded women
in the late 1960’s. It was true. It is true. Women had broken
free of the shackles that held them back. Now they stand or fall on their own
merits. It isn’t true though, as some social progressives would have you
believe, that there is no difference between men and women. Old coots know better.
The fundamental difference hasn’t changed since we lived in caves. Men hunt. Women
nest (and do everything else, I might add).
I stumble on these differences all the time,
pursuing my favorite pastime – people watching. I’ve reported back on many of
them - men can’t fold - men don’t listen - men don’t understand the good-bye
process - men tape over the wedding video with a Giant’s football game and
wonder why she’s so upset. And, as I observed by the ocean last week, men can’t
pick out a spot on the beach.
It was a perfect summer day. I lurked in my
beach chair, a crossword puzzle at the ready, a strong cup of coffee at my
side. I watched a fellow old coot come out of his hotel and plop a beach bag
and two towels down on the first pair of chairs he came to. He sat down, lit a
cigar and opened the paper to the sports section. He was in heaven! Then the
storm clouds blew in; his wife arrived. The battle was on! Mind you, I was too
far away to hear a word they said. But, I’m a master of reading body language,
especially when the sparks are flying. She barked a few sentences in his direction.
He shrugged; got up, and gathered the beach bag and towels. Then he stood there
like a dummy, something us old coots are masters at. She patrolled the sea of
chairs, sitting on one, hand testing another, measuring the wind, the ocean
spray, the angle of the sun.
Finally, the selection process came to an end.
She signaled to the “dummy” to bring the stuff. As he strolled to the sacred
place, she adjusted the alignment of the chairs, tilted the umbrella and
gathered a side table from another area. He plopped the towels down on a chair,
but quickly picked them back up, an appropriate response to the quick jerk of
her head and the sharp glare she hurled his way. She dusted some microscopic
sand pellets from the top surface and stood back to admire her work. The nest
was ready! He sat with a sigh, took a puff on his cigar and reopened his paper
to the sports page. Her work done, she headed up the beach to examine
merchandise in the shops along the boardwalk. She went by herself. Men don’t
know how to shop either.
The
Old Coot Takes a Dive!
Published April 22, 2009
I snuck into Hickories Park the other day. The
temperature was finally high enough to get me out of hibernation. I think we
all sneak around on these first few days of spring, afraid if old man winter
catches us he will come back with a vengeance. I set up my portable, reclining,
bag-chair on the bank overlooking the river. I put my coffee in the left cup
holder and an apple in the right. I climbed aboard with a good book, stretched
out under a blanket and soaked in the ambiance. The trees were drab and
leafless but they held the promise of better days, the promise of global
warming, the good kind. The river gurgled by in the background and squirrels
busied themselves in branches above my head. It was an oasis of warmth in this
otherwise stark and chilling month.
It was heaven until I opened my book. The page
was unreadable. I’d left my glasses in the car and couldn’t read a word. I let
out an old coot grumble and started to get up, but I couldn’t! I didn’t have
enough agility to lean forward and step out. I’d set the chair on a small hill,
“cleverly” getting my feet higher than my head so I could achieve maximum
comfort. As a result, I’d imprisoned myself. I strained and flexed but I couldn’t
get up. I gave up. There was no way I was going to dismount with dignity so I
rolled to the right and fell out of the chair. My coffee spilled and the apple
went rolling down the bank. I did a perfect imitation of a newborn colt
standing on wobbly legs for the first time.
I got up, retrieved my glasses from the car and
righted the chair. This time I placed it behind a tree to which I tied a short
piece of rope. I figured I could pull myself up and out. I gave it a test run
and failed. It seemed my only option was to duplicate the awkward, rolling
dismount I’d performed earlier, that demonstrating my utter lack of grace. I
considered calling 911. I help out on the ambulance squad as a driver and every
once in a while we have to send an SOS for lifting assistance, when it’s too
hard for a couple of old coots to maneuver a patient through a narrow hallway
and down a steep set of stairs to the ambulance. In just a few minutes a couple
of young, fit firemen and women show up and do the heavy lifting. That’s exactly
what I needed at Hickories Park, lifting assistance. I opted not to make the
call. It was bad enough to send a ripple of laughter through the dozen or so
people walking around the exercise loop. I couldn’t endure the roar that would
run through the fire department as news of the Old Coot’s 911 call got around.
I read; I snoozed, and when it was time to go, I rolled to the right, picked
myself up and went home. Red face and all!
The
Old Coot Knows His Numbers!
Published April 29, 2009
There is an old joke about a group of guys who
hung out telling each other jokes for so long they didn’t have to tell the
actual joke anymore. The guy whose turn it was just said a number and the rest
of them laughed. A similar phenomenon takes place with couples that have been
married for a long time. A wink, a shrug, an exhale or the old stink-eye says
it all. But, some married people never make it to this level unspoken
communication. They feel compelled to air a grievance even though it does
neither party any good.
I witness these little spats all the time, when
I’m doing what old coots do best, “people watch.” Just the other day an
exasperated man came huffing up to a woman sitting on a bench in the mall.
“Where have you been?” he growled. “I looked and looked for you. You said you’d
only be ten minutes!” This guy needs help. He hasn’t been paying attention. If
he had, he would understand that 10-minutes of shopping time is different than
10-minutes of clock time. He should know that a long windbag speech about her lateness
isn’t going to resolve anything. He should have simply said, “Number 29.” She
would have said, “I’m sorry,” and that would have ended it. Instead, they
marched out of the mall in a huff, he with a beet-red neck, showing how riled
he was, she, with stooped shoulders, showing how miffed she was by his lack of
understanding.
Men think that shopping is easy. We go to a
store for a pair of black slacks, pick our size from the rack and pay the
cashier. “Try them on?” – “What for?” The size is right there on the label!”
It’s different for women. Apparently, the guy at the mall hadn’t learned that
in four decades of marriage. I’m not saying I’m a lot wiser than he is, but I
at least have an inkling of what it’s like when a woman goes into a store to
get a pair of black slacks and turns to her husband and says, “I’ll just be ten
minutes.” It’s nothing like it is in the men’s department, where there is one
rack of black pants. In the women’s department there are rows and rows of black
slacks: different styles, different brands, different fabrics. Sizes mean
nothing. It’s just a number taking up space on the tag. Size twelve can have a
22-inch waist, a 44-inch waist size or anything in between. Every designer has
a different take on what a size means. Women’s clothes have to be tried
on.
Finding pants that fit is just the first step in
the buying process. Then, the pants are escorted around the store and paired up
with sweaters, shirts, shoes and other accessories to see if they are
compatible with similar objects in her closet at home. A woman has to be both
well coordinated and an acrobat to conduct this exercise. The pants are draped
over her legs and held at the waist. A sweater or a blouse is hung from her
shoulders and held in place by tucking it under her chin. A shoe is slid next
to the bottom of the pant leg. Then, she shuffles back and forth in front of a
three-way mirror, examining the “ensemble” from all angles.
If the pants pass the “compatibility” test, the
final phase of the “10-minute” shopping process begins. The garment is
thoroughly inspected in hopes of finding a microscopic flaw that can be used to
get something taken off the price. Lastly, a thorough search of the purse is
initiated, to find a 15% off coupon. It’s not an easy task; the coupon is mixed
in with a sea of credit cards, discount memberships, photos, notes and grocery
lists. The clerk waits as she digs, and says, “I know it’s in here someplace!”
Eventually, the transaction is concluded. She walks out of the store with a new
pair of pants, slumps down on the nearest bench and along comes Mr.
“Where-have-you-been?” In a good marriage, he simply says, “NUMBER 29!” She
responds with, “number 26.” He understands. He puts his arm around her shoulder
and asks if she wants to recover over a cup of tea before they go home.
The
Old Coot Makes a Living Will.
Published May 20, 2009
There was a big push on last month for people to
get health proxies. April 16th was National Healthcare Decision Day
and we all were urged to designate someone to be in charge when/if we get into
a health crisis, to let this person know our wishes and give them the authority
to make life and death medical decisions. Do we want to be resuscitated? Do we
want to remain on life support if a brain scan shows no activity? It’s a big
issue, something we don’t like to think about because we have to change the
verb in the phrase, “We might die,” from might, to will. That’s a big mental
leap. So, most of us avoid the whole thing.
I’ve never been a big fan of health proxies. It
sounds good in the abstract but I’m not sure how well it works in real life,
especially if you are an old coot and have offended a wide swath of the
population. I envision any proxy I might pick to be in the hallway while I’m
having a manicure, discussing my condition with Doctor Kevorkian. “He wouldn’t
want to live with that hang nail; you better give him an injection.” Or, on the
sidewalk, talking to some of my friends as I come out of the barbershop, “Look
at how awful that haircut is; he wouldn’t want to live like that; we should put
him out of his misery. Even his sideburns are crooked.” You can see why I avoid
the subject.
But, I’ve changed my mind. I’m making a
healthcare decision and going public with my wishes! LEAVE ME ALONE! That’s it,
a three-word living will. “What if you’re in a vegetative state?” -
“Not a problem!” I’ve been in one for decades. I like it there! “What if
you’re in a deep coma?” - What’s so bad about that? It’s just a deep sleep that
lasts 24/7. It’s not that unfamiliar to me. As it is now, I sleep all night,
take a mid morning nap, a late morning nap, an afternoon snooze, and then pass
out watching TV before I have to get up and to go to bed. Even so, I never get
to finish a good dream. They always get interrupted when I get to the best
part. Like, when I’m hovering above the rim, about to slam-dunk a basketball
and win the game. Or, just as I discover I can fly and start to glide above the
treetops in my neighborhood. I’d get to finish the good parts if I was in a
coma. So, “Leave me alone!” Let me stay in dreamland and win that Olympic gold
medal, the one I never get because the dog barks or a noisy garbage truck
rumbles past the house. I’ll lose a little weight, but that’s OK. I’d love to
be skinny again.
What if you can’t see? What if you can’t walk?
What if you can’t remember people’s names? The list of “living will” questions
is endless. They are based on what the young crowd thinks is a hale and hearty
condition. But, us old coots have become skilled at living with a long series
of physical limitations. We have learned to adapt, get along with less. Can’t
walk? A wheelchair is just fine, a power one, even better. Can’t see? That’s
OK; I’ll listen to the radio. Life is still special, even in a greatly
diminished state. Old coots don’t want to give up. So, I repeat, “Leave me
alone! Especially, if I wander outside on a cold, winter night and lie down in
a snowdrift to watch the stars. Just let me be. I’ll take a long nap and
finally get to dunk that basketball. Then I’ll fly above the neighborhood for
the last time, a happy man.
Get
Your “Second Opinion” From an Old Coot!
Published May 27, 2009
She came to the Rotary meeting late, limped
across the room, winced as she pulled a chair out from the table and sat down with
an ouch and a sigh and said, “I did something to my back; it’s killing me!” I
can’t mention her name because of the medical privacy regulations. It’s Jody,
from Armstrong Place.
She was lucky; she was at a table loaded with
old coots. One asked what her doctor told her. “Not much. He took an x-ray but
it didn’t show anything. He scheduled me for physical therapy. I can hardly get
in and out of the car. I think I pulled a muscle.” That’s when the old coots
went to work. “Did you do anything specific to cause it? Is the pain in your
lower back? Does it radiate down your legs? In less than a minute they had
enough information for a diagnosis. The “spine specialist” spoke up, “You have
a bulging disc, probably around L3 or L4. It’s pressing on the nerves that pass
by that section of your spine. It will probably go away on its own but therapy
will help prevent it from coming back. You’ll be fine in a week or two.”
Old coots know all things medical. As the saying
goes, “Been there, done that.” She was lucky; she came to us in time. We saved
her a lot of anxiety and helped her along the path to wellness. She couldn’t
have done better if she’d gone to the Mayo Clinic. The table she picked was
rife with medical specialists. In addition to spine expertise it was loaded
with knowledge on heart problems, bypass surgery, the gastro-intestinal system,
high blood pressure, hip and knee replacement, memory problems, vertigo,
cataracts and a slew of other maladies. The old coots at the table were
equipped to handle any medical condition.
If something is amiss, don’t go to the doctor;
go to an old coot. You’ll get a definitive answer in just a few minutes, in
English. We don’t hide behind Latin words like regular doctors do. And, you
won’t have to go through a painful series of invasive procedures. No poking, no
prodding. Of course, we won’t fix your problem. We don’t write prescriptions or
perform surgery, though we will show you what your scar will look like, even if
you don’t want to see it. You’ll get a clear-cut description of what lies
ahead. We know how long the pain will last, what side effects to expect from
the medicine, the complications that might pop up and how much it will cost.
All the stuff that doctors won’t tell you because they use the “one-step-at-a-time”
process, while we employ the “jump-to-a-conclusion” method. We do make
mistakes, like when we told Betty that her ruptured appendix was indigestion.
The only other draw back with going to old coots for medical advice is that you
can’t get anything if you sue us. We don’t have any money. It’s all tied up in
medical bills.
The
Old Coot Mourns the Neighborhood Mailbox.
Published June 3, 2009
She’s gone! You could see it coming. She knew
too much, too many secrets. Two burly guys came by in the afternoon, wrestled
her to the ground, threw her in the back of a van and took off. Now we just
have a stone monument, slightly askew, marking the spot where she proudly
stood. The little blue mailbox on the corner of Ross and Front was taken from
us. Ripped out of the neighborhood. Ripped out of our lives. No longer
efficient, a victim of changing times.
I don’t know how long it was there. They don’t
keep records on that sort of thing. I asked postmaster Dave Clark. He didn’t
know. All he could tell me was that it wasn’t used very much; some days there
was nothing in it, some days just a few letters, never more than a handful. One
neighbor said it was there when he was a kid. Another thought some sort of
mailbox had been at that location for 100 years or more. I know for sure it was
around to collect letters from loved ones sent to soldiers in Europe, Africa
and the South Pacific, fighting in the war, the big one, WWII. “Dear Billy, I
hope this finds you well. We’re praying for you. The scrap drive was a big
success. We collected 100 pounds of copper. Dad ran out of gasoline coupons so
we didn’t get out to the farm to see grandma this week.” If only it could talk. What stories it would
tell! But, it is no more. Modern technology made it obsolete and lack of
activity forced it into retirement.
A few neighbors used it faithfully, several
times a week. Now I watch them walk down the street to mail a letter in a box
that isn’t there. They stare dumbfounded into the empty space for a minute or
two, wondering, “What the heck?” It sat outside my kitchen window, in a direct
line of sight from my perch at the counter, a perfect set up for a nosy old
coot. “There’s Mrs. So-and-so,” I would yell to my wife. “Must be they are back
from Florida.” Or, I’d report, “Mr. Been-around-a-long-time just mailed a
letter. He was walking pretty well, no limp. Looks like he’s fully recovered
from his hip replacement surgery.” It was more than a blue chunk of metal. It
was the neighborhood “watering hole,” a place where we caught up with each
other, a place where we exchanged snippets about the grandchildren, the latest
round of aches and pains, and tips on where to get the cheapest gas in town. It
was more than a mailbox. And, we miss it.
It’s where we put our letters to friends and
relatives; it’s where we paid our bills and filed our income taxes, back when
everyone did their own, back before IRA’s, 401K’s and an endless list of rules
made it impossible for anyone but a CPA, back when the instruction book was
wafer thin, not the 82 page monster we have today. Electronic filing,
electronic bill payments and e-mail put our mailbox out of business. It’s a
done deal! It’s gone and there is nothing I can do about it. Except complain!
And that isn’t getting me anywhere. Everyone I complain to says the same thing,
“GET OVER IT!”
The
Old Coot Asks, “Tennis anyone?”
Published June 10, 2009
I’m sitting here in the Goat Boy’s coffee bar
watching two robins waddle around picking worms up off the sidewalk across the
street. Not too exciting you say. You’re wrong. It is exciting. For an old
coot, anyhow. It’s a nice distraction from a changing world. When you’re young,
you can’t wait for change – to graduate from school – to get a job – to get
married – to get your own place – to buy a new car. Eventually, you go the
other way; you don’t want change; you want things to stay the way they are.
That’s when you officially become an old coot. You’ve decided that most change
is for the worse.
It means you’ve lost another friend; he gave up
winter and moved to Florida. It means your favorite restaurant just went out of
business. It means you’ve heard yet another clerk say, “They don’t make that
anymore.” You just want to cover your
ears and block out the changes that pop into your life in an endless parade:
eggs are bad for you, coffee is bad for you, meat is bad for you, it can’t be
repaired, this mower is different – it
won’t start unless you squeeze the handle (and keep squeezing it the entire
time you are mowing). CHANGE! UGH!
Today’s change is my elbow. The right one, to be
specific. It hurts. It’s a new pain; I never had it before. So, I sit here
drinking coffee with my left hand, dribbling a few drops on my clean shirt,
distracting myself by watching two boring robins. Eventually, I’ll have to get
back to the elbow and try to puzzle it out, to wonder why I didn’t appreciate
it last week when it felt so good. And, I’ll have to face the question, “What
did you do to it?” When I reply, it will be the same answer I’ve had for every
other new pain. “Nothing!”
I did some push-ups. I painted an Adirondack
chair. I pounded a few nails and sawed a board. I didn’t do anything unusual. I
hate this conversation because it always ends up with the same response from my
doctor, my wife, my friends. “You’ve got to expect that at your age!”
I’ve learned to deal with these things. To use a
new pain to, as they say, turn lemons into lemonade. I’ll complain enough to
get out of some unpleasant chores. I’ll make a sling or buy an elastic elbow
support to let the world know that I’m sporting an injury. I’ll tell people
it's tennis elbow. I won’t mention that the last time I played tennis was in
1991, when my daughter Amy beat me for the first time. That’s when I faked
tennis elbow and used it as an excuse to save myself from further
embarrassment. Now, the pain that I faked so long ago has finally arrived. It
would be even more embarrassing than losing to a seventeen-year-old daughter if
I had to reveal the real cause of my tennis elbow. I figured it out as I sat
here watching the robins. I’m sure the pain was caused by constantly walking
around with a coffee container in my hand. My elbow finally gave out. I have
coffee elbow! Ouch!
The
Old Coot is a Victim of the No-Text Law.
Published June 17, 2009
It’s the law. You can’t send a text message
while driving in Broome County. Tioga County is next! It’s a big blow for old
coots. Not that we are capable of texting. We’re not. We have a hard enough
time entering a 7 digit number into a cell phone, usually getting the wrong
party and begging that person to make the call we were incapable of, to another
old coot, to tell him to hurry up; he’s going to miss the early bird special.
No, it’s not the new rule outlawing texting that bodes ill for old coots; it’s
the fact that government officials are watching what we do in our cars. When
they see what old coots are up to, we’ll be labeled, “Unsafe at any speed,” as
was the Corvair in Ralph Nader’s best selling book.
We’re already famous for driving 50 mph in the
passing lane for hours on end with our left signal blinking or pulling out of
the driveway without looking in a four-door behemoth. But, that doesn’t cover
the half of it; if law enforcement personnel start peering into our vehicles
there will be a whole new set of new rules, specifically aimed at old coots.
We won’t be allowed to tape a road map on the
driver’s side window so we can get to our destination without a fight. “Bill,
you’re supposed to take 87 north, not 87 south!” – “No I’m not!”
– “Yes you are!” We tape a map across the window to settle the arguments.
We won’t be able to reach around and whack the
record player on the back seat when a Lawrence Welk record gets stuck and keeps
repeating the same line - the record player we hooked up to a spare battery and
an inverter and tethered to the arm rest with duct tape because the radio
stations don’t play our kind of music.
They will make it illegal to shave in the rear
view mirror, something old coots do all the time. Not because of our busy
schedules but because we forget to do it and are tired of getting yelled at for
a scruffy face on the way to a wedding or a social event. If they start taking
a close look at us they’ll see a lot of the dangerous things we do while
driving: taking short naps, flipping a coin to decide which pedal is the clutch
and which is the brake or if up and to the right on the shifter is fifth gear
or reverse. We’re headed for trouble. No more juggling a Big Mac, shake and
french fries on our lap. No more turning around and yelling to
“hard-of-hearing-Joe” in the back seat. No more crossword puzzles.
It’s just a matter of time before we’ll be removed from the drivers seat entirely. We’ll be in the back seat gawking at the countryside with our heads leaning out the window, our thinning hair swept back by the wind and our tongues hanging out. The family dog will be on one side and the family coot on the other. We’ll be the one without a collar.
A father’s best lessons are
unspoken.
Published
July 1, 2009
We
made it through another Father’s Day. Mine would have been 106, were he still
alive. I probably would have given him a card and a tie. That’s about all a
father can handle on “his” day. Year after year we give him an ugly tie or
soap-on-a-rope; it’s our way of saying thanks. He wears the tie to work or
lathers up with the soap; it’s his way of expressing gratitude. If the truth
were known, neither party is happy with the arrangement. Most fathers are of
the “Aw shucks, it was nothing” variety. They don’t want any formal, mandated
recognition. “You’re a good kid; what more could a father ask?”
It started in the early 1900’s with Mother’s
Day. Anna Jarvis got the ball rolling She wanted to have one day a year when
everybody honored their mothers and gave them a day of rest. Woodrow Wilson
made it official in 1914 and soon thereafter, Hallmark and other merchants got
on the bandwagon creating a commercial feeding frenzy. Father’s day came later.
Now, we have Grandparent’s Day, Secretary’s Day and an endless stream of special
days. Most of the recipients are uncomfortable with the honor paid them,
because it’s forced, mandated and commercialized. And maybe you don’t feel like
giving the “old man” a card and a tie on Father’s Day; maybe you feel like
giving him a kick in the shins for running over your bike in the driveway.
Back in my day, fathers were more provider than
parent. Mom had us all day when we were little and after school as we got
older. Our major contact with dad came when dinner hit the table. The rest of
the day, he did his thing; we did ours. Our worlds were separate. Little
league, for example, was a summer affair for kids (parents not allowed). The
season started after the school year ended. Games were played on weekday
afternoons. Mine took place at MacArthur Park, about in the center of what is
now the quarter-mile track. Two adults were at the games, my coach and the
other team’s coach. I played on the Elk’s team, coached by “Mister” Lynch. All
coaches had the same first name, “Mister.” We played for the thrill of the
game, not to put on a show for parents. The same was true of all kid’s sports.
Games were for kids; fathers were at work; mothers were at home.
I can only remember three pieces of advice my
father gave me when I was growing up: “If you get bit by a coral snake, you
will die before you take ten steps.” – “Overlap the rows when you mow the lawn;
it won’t look so scraggly.” – “When you get a drink from a garden hose, don’t
put it in your mouth and turn on the water; you’ll blow your brains out.” If
there are others, I don’t remember them. He taught by actions, not words, like
most fathers did back then. They taught us by going to work every day, coming
home for dinner every night, paying the bills on time, fixing the furnace, the
squeaky spring on the screen door, the clogged toilet. The lessons they taught
were endless, but rarely verbalized. They taught us how to live, how to be a
grownup; we weren’t even aware that the lessons were taking root. So, every
year I say, “Thanks dad,” for the advice on coral snakes, lawn mowing and
drinking from a hose. And thanks for the things you never said out loud, the
things you taught by example. That was the important stuff.
The
Old Coot sits on a time bomb.
Published July 8, 2009
I fixed the toilet last month. The old coot way!
I started Friday morning at ten and finished Saturday afternoon at two. It took
eight trips to the hardware store, six for parts and two to have the free
advice repeated. And then one additional trip, that I’m not counting, to pay Aaron
back for the money he lent me when I got to the counter and discovered my
wallet hadn’t come with me. (It’s just another reason why Owego is the coolest
small town in America.) The trouble started two months ago. The floor was wet.
“I think the seal gave out,” I explained to my wife. “I can fix it.” She
smiled. Then she called the plumber. “We have an emergency. Our 1920’s toilet
is leaking and the Old Coot thinks he can fix it!” Mike sent Terry right over.
Terry took one look and then uttered those words we dread to hear a plumber
say, “Uh oh!”
He sat us down and gave us the bad news. “I can
try to fix it, but I don’t recommend going that way. The toilet is older than
the old coot! A brand new one would be cheaper.” He was right; it is an oldie.
The tank hangs on the wall and is connected to the bowl by a right angle piece
of pipe, making it hard to get apart without breaking it. Terry tightened the
fitting on the bottom of the tank and left us to think things over. It seemed
to do the trick; the rug on the floor dried out and stayed that way. We called
the office and asked to have the new toilet put on hold; we shifted into a
“wait and see” strategy, a favorite of old coots, of cheap old coots. That
worked for two months. Then it started to drip again, into a bucket under the
tank. At first, it was just a spoonful every day, then more. It was decision
time. It took two days of whining and begging, but I got the OK to pull it
apart and see if I could fix it. “If it breaks,” I argued. “We have nothing to
lose. Terry can come back and install the new one.”
I unbolted it from the wall and the floor,
disconnected the water supply and wrestled it out the back door, rolling it
over to the curb to hose it down and scrub out eighty years of rust and sludge.
That was a mistake. People passing by in their cars stopped and yelled to my
wife, “How did you get him to clean the toilet?” And, “Doesn’t he know that you
don’t have to take it outside to do it?” – “Ha, Ha!” But, little by little I
figured it out. Trip by trip to Home Central I got the advice and the fittings
to do the job. I hung the tank on the wall, bolted the bowl to the floor,
connected them together and turned on the water. No Leaks! Then, I pushed down
the handle and washed the floor. Oops! One more trip to the store for more
advice and two new washers to replace the ones I’d installed backwards. Another
try! It worked. No leaks! It’s been that way for three weeks. I should be happy
but I’m on edge. I have a bucket under the tank because I don’t trust my work.
It’s as dry as a bone at the moment, but it’s like living with a ticking time
bomb. I know it’s going to blow up. I just don’t know when.
An old coot buys a Cinnabon!
By Merlin Lessler
You see it all the time: in a grocery store
parking lot, along the street in a shopping area and at the mall. The driver’s
side door opens. An arm comes out and reaches for the roof. It lingers there
for a moment or two and then tenses as the door swings open. A stooped,
human-like form begins to emerge. Up, up it comes; soon, the entire world can
see the thing that has exited the car. It’s an old coot (could be me) that’s
struggled out of a decades old sedan, unceremoniously held together with gray
patches of duct tape. It’s like watching a chick emerge from an egg.
But, that’s just the beginning; the show is far
from over. The old coot locks the door. Twice! Then checks it to make sure it’s
really locked. He peers in the direction of the mall entrance and heads off on
a long and dangerous trek, having parked in the remotest corner of the lot,
protecting his prize possession from scrapes and dents. He makes it to the mall
and in the door, only to bolt back out a few seconds later and stride toward
his car in a panic. He dodges people in cars who dangerously back out of
parking slots while chatting on cell phones. He skirts around families that
insist on walking through the lot five abreast. He makes it to his car, opens
the door, bends down, reaches under the seat and retrieves his wallet. It’s
four inches thick, loaded with discount cards, ID’s, memory aids and a plethora
of items that he almost never uses. He can prove he passed his Junior Red Cross
lifesaving test 55 years ago; the crumpled, faded card is there, mixed in with
a stack of discount coupons, most of which have expired. He can’t drive with
the wallet in his back pocket; it makes him tilt too far to the left (not a
good position for a conservative old coot), so he drives with it under the
seat. Now, he jams it in his pocket, locks the door, checks it twice, and heads
back to the mall.
Ten minutes later, he’s storming back out,
clutching a Cinnabon box. His face is flush from a combination of embarrassment
and anger. He just told the manager of the men’s department in Penney’s what he
could do with a pair of pleated, 36 X 32, khaki pants, and then threw them at
him to make his point. He’d found them on a rack with a big sign that said,
“50% off.” The manager came over to the register to see what the ruckus was all
about. It erupted when the (snotty) clerk told the old coot that the 50% off
applied to a second pair of pants. “The first pair are full price; the second
pair are the ones that are half off.”
He stomped all the way to his car, put the
Cinnabon box on the roof while he unlocked the door and began a protracted
entering process. It took a full minute to bend, stretch and wiggle his way
behind the wheel. The cinnamon bun, that he was so looking forward to, fell off
the roof and rolled under a truck when he tore out of the lot. That’s an old coot
for you!
MEMORIES
ARTICLES
Unsafe at Any Speed!
Published Binghamton Press, August 2, 2008
The Old Coot on the left, Woody holding the flag
“You’re an accident waiting to happen!” That’s
what my mother said whenever she saw me push my homemade racer out of the
driveway and head to the top of our hill. But, I never had to wait, not very
long anyhow. I cracked up just about every time I raced down Chadwick Road with
my friend Woody (Walls). If Ralph Nader, author of Unsafe At Any Speed,
thought the Corvair was unsafe, he would have been horrified by the vehicles
that we raced down the hills on the south side of Binghamton. Vehicles that
started the trek on four wheels but more often than not, finished on three.
These downhill death traps were called soapbox
racers in some circles. We called them hot rods. None of ours were made from
wooden soapboxes, nor were they built to the design specifications of the Soap
Box Derby Association. Our venture into the four-wheel racing world was pretty
primitive. We used scrap lumber that carpenters left behind at new houses going
up in our neighborhood. One year I hit the jackpot. I found a “nearly” straight
piece of 2 X 6 that was perfect for the main body. I attached it to a 2 X 4
with a long spike. I bent the spike over so the connection between the two boards
was loose enough to allow the shorter, steering board to turn when I pushed it
with my feet. Wheels from a discarded baby carriage were fastened to the
“unholy” cross. A short scrap of wood was nailed to the side as a brake.
Theoretically, it would rub against the road and slow me down when I pulled on
it. Like the Corvair that Nader indicted; it wasn’t safe. (I eventually owned a
Corvair, too.)
The hot rod worked great the first few times I
came flying down Chadwick Road. But, design flaws began to show. First, the
brake came off, causing me to crash into the hedge of an elderly, neighborhood
couple that took meticulous care of their property. It was one of several
houses on the block that were off limits to Woody and me. I reattached the
brake and took another run. That ride lasted less than thirty seconds. The
right front wheel wobbled free and beat me to the bottom of the hill.
My father observed these technical failures and
decided to take responsibility for the mechanical aspects of my racing career,
forming a pit crew of one. He was an excellent mechanic. He made his living as
a designer for Ansco and always jumped at the chance to build something on a
larger scale than a camera. He was interested in my hot rod because he’d been
forbidden to start any new construction projects around the house. His last one
got a little out of hand. He built a travel trailer. My mother wasn't thrilled
about having it parked in the side yard, especially when a neighbor complained,
using words such as “eyesore” and “blight.” At any rate, my father was forced
to get it off the property. He took it to a friend’s house in the country,
where zoning laws were less restrictive and neighbors were more tolerant.
The
stage was set. He elbowed his way into the reconstruction of my hot rod with a
claim that he wasn’t starting a new project, “I’m just helping the kid!” He
used new lumber, screws instead of nails, and ball bearing wheels from a wagon
instead of a baby carriage. His design was radical. He installed two spring
loaded push brakes on the front wheels and crafted a steering system using a
yoke from a Piper Cub airplane. It was connected to a swivel mechanism at the
rear of the vehicle by an elaborate cable and pulley system. It was the only
hot rod in town that was steered by moving the rear wheels. The jitney, as he
called it, was museum quality. It glistened in a fresh coat of paint. Seven, my
favorite number, was stenciled on the front. He reluctantly handed it over to
me for a test drive.
I was happy with the hot rod that I’d made
myself, but learned long ago to "appreciate” one of his creations. I
pushed it to the top of the hill for its maiden voyage. Woody was next to me in
his rickety looking racer. One! Two! Three! Go! Down the hill we went! Woody
beat me by a mile. The wire cable slipped out of the pulleys in the steering
system. I traveled a serpentine route to the bottom, twice the distance of
Woody's. My father confiscated the vehicle, moved it into the "pit"
area, shut the garage door and started a major overhaul. Woody and I were free
to race on our own. He, in his homemade crate and I, on an Irish Mail, a
four-wheel vehicle that was propelled by pumping a handle, like the handcars
you see going down the tracks in old movies.
Finally, my father opened the garage door and
rolled out Version II. The race was on! Woody beat me to the finish line by
fifty yards. Everything worked fine on my hot rod; it was just slow. It took
all my father’s will power to let it be. I was certain he’d have another go at
it but he didn’t. "It needs to be broken in; it'll get faster with
time," he said, and then slunk back into the garage. A week later I had a
wreck. A hunk of the front section broke off when I hit a curb, giving my
father another chance to make it faster than Woody’s.
When it rolled out of the garage this time it
sported larger wheels and an aerodynamic front end. He replaced the flawed
cable and pulley system with a chain. My father didn't stick around to see the
race. He knew there wasn't anything more he could do. He couldn’t bear to
witness another defeat. I did beat Woody to the bottom of the hill, but he led
most of the way. Then, the nail holding his left rear wheel came out, sending
him off course and into the same elderly couple’s hedge that I’d run into
earlier that summer. His pruning job was more extensive than mine. I played
around with my father’s creation from time to time over the next several years,
but it never was as exciting as flying down hill on the one I’d built myself,
the one that was unsafe at any speed.
The Old Coot Goes to the Dogs
Published, Binghamton Press, August 30, 2008
A young woman was walking her dog on the
sidewalk in front of me as I did the old coot shuffle into town the other day.
Her pooch wore a pair of shoes, though I guess with one on each paw I should
refer to them as a “quartet” of shoes. The dog stopped and sniffed at a fence
post, a tree stump or a signpost every few feet. They were going so slow that
even at my gimpy pace I caught up and passed them. The woman didn't seem to
mind her lack of progress. She held a cell phone to her ear with one hand, and
clutched an empty “poop” bag and a leash in the other. She chatted while the
dog gawked and sniffed; it was a match made in heaven. It made me think about
the dog I had as a kid; His name was Topper. I was four when I brought his
mother to the door and said, “Mom, I found a dog; Can I keep it?” I was a lucky
kid; not many mothers would let a preschooler keep a stray dog. Especially one
about to give birth to seven puppies. 
The Old Coot and sister, Madeline with Lassie and Topper
The stray (Lassie) had the pups in our basement.
“Topper” was the first to make it up the stairs, earning him a name and a place
in our family. His siblings were dispersed throughout the area; he and his
mother stayed with us. I was one happy cowboy. I roamed the driveway and back
yard in my cowboy suit, a pistol on each hip and a pair of happy dogs at my
side. Lassie chased cars, and no matter how many contraptions my father rigged
up to stop her from running, she never failed to break free when a sedan came
past the house. She was a relentless pursuer, a tire bitter. She eventually was
exiled to a farm owned by a friend of the family, put out to pasture. From then
on, Topper and I formed a duo that rivaled that of Batman and Robin. We went
everywhere together.
It was a different era. Dogs were dogs; people
were people. The confusion we have today about the people - dog pecking order
didn't exist. Dogs were tougher, more self-reliant. My friends and I rode our
bikes to the movies in downtown Binghamton. We' d park them in a heap in front
of the Press building on Chenango Street. After a quick glance in the window at
the evening paper that was speeding across a giant set of rollers, we’d head
into the Strand Theater. (The Binghamton Press was an evening paper in those
days. The morning paper, the Sun Bulletin, was produced at the other end of the
block) Topper would plop down next to the bikes and stand guard. When we came
out three hours later, rubbing our eyes and squinting into the bright sunlight,
he'd be there, his tail wagging like crazy.
When my family left town for a few days, a rare
event I must admit, he stayed home in the garage. We propped the door open with
a cinderblock so he could come and go as the mood hit him. A neighbor kid would
come by every day to give him a can of Rival dog food and a fresh bowl of
water. On one occasion he apparently resented being left behind and wandered
off on an adventure of his own. We came home. No Topper! We asked around the
neighborhood but no one had seen him. A week went by, still no Topper. I was
one sad kid. My best friend was gone. I was hanging out in the driveway two
weeks later throwing a tennis ball up onto the roof and catching it after it
worked its way down a double set of valleys when Topper came running down the
street, turned into the driveway and stopped in his tracks. He stared at me. I
stared back. We both were dumbfounded. Then he yelped and ran to me, his tail
wagged a mile a minute. He licked and licked my face as we rolled around together
on the ground. It was one of the happiest moments in my ten years of life. My
parents thought he’d gotten impatient and went looking for us. I think he just
needed a break. At any rate, it was the last vacation he took. He was always
home waiting for us after that.
The relationship between dogs and people was
different in those days. Kids played outside and dogs in the neighborhood
played along with them. They provided a layer of security that gave our parents
a high level of comfort when we wandered out of sight and beyond earshot. A
stranger wouldn’t dare come after a kid with a dog or two around. We were free
to spend our days in the woods and creeks that surrounded the south side of
Binghamton. Every once in a while my sister Madeline and I put a dab of peanut
butter on the roof of Topper's mouth. We’d laugh ourselves silly as he licked
and licked to get it off. He'd do somersaults and twist across the floor in his
effort to be free of the foreign substance. It was a blast, until our father caught
us and explained how cruel we we’re being to a helpless critter. That’s when we
switched to Jujy Fruit candies and watched as he furiously chewed in a vain
attempt to get them unstuck from his teeth. We did this out of sight of Dad. We
guessed he wouldn’t think it was any better than the peanut butter game.
Leashes were seldom used back then. Pooper-scoopers didn’t exist at all. If a
dog left his calling card on the lawn, you simply found a flat stone and
covered it up. Nature went to work and took care of things. When you removed
the stone a week later there was nothing there. The microbes had done their
job. In another week the grass grew back. People who let the stones accumulate
ended up with a nice rock garden. Which, I hear, is how the concept got started,
just another positive contribution to the human condition from our canine
friends. Where would we be without our dogs?
Badge of Dishonor.
Published in Binghamton Press, November 8, 2008
Even old coots get embarrassed! We put up a
crusty front. We act cantankerous and indifferent. But, it's an act. My ears
burn and my face turns red just thinking about my stint in the Cub Scouts and
the “scout promise” that I left in tatters. It took place over fifty years ago,
yet it still makes me squirm. I joined a cub den when I was eight. Irma Ahearn
was our den mother. The weekly meetings were held in the basement of her
Overbrook Road home on the south side of Binghamton. I can still remember the
excitement I felt when I tried on a Cub Scout shirt in the scouting section of
Fowlers Department store. It was the "coolest" outfit I’d ever seen,
even better than the Hop-a-long Cassidy cowboy suit I got for my seventh
birthday. I proudly wore my new scout shirt to my first den meeting, but as
soon as I looked around the room and saw Bucky Ahearn’s shirt my euphoria
evaporated. His was ablaze with decorations: diamond shape wolf and bear
patches, two gold arrowheads and a sea of silver ones. He wore official Cub
Scout pants too; I had on a pair of rumpled dungarees. My mother had refused to
spring for scout pants. “All you need is a shirt. I’m not wasting your father’s
hard earned money on a pair of pants that you’ll have covered with grass stains
in ten minutes.” But it wasn't the pants that got me going; it was the wolf,
bear and arrowhead patches that took my breath away.
I learned soon enough, that I too, could get the
badges and arrowheads that Bucky sported (and I coveted). I simply had to
“earn” them. The first step was to learn the scout promise, a vow I’d break
before the end of the year. Then, after completing a few more simple tasks,
like learning the Cub Scout salute and the official handshake, I received a
“bobcat” pin. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to pin it on my scout shirt. It
could only be worn on “civilian”
clothes, to show the world that I was a Cub Scout. I wasn’t any closer to
having a shirt like Bucky’s. But, I sucked it up and started the process that
would earn me a wolf badge. Looking back on it now, it wasn't motivation I
felt; it was compulsion. Every night after school and on big chunks of my
Saturdays and Sundays, I slaved away, trying to complete the 12 “achievements”
that would earn me the badge. I was “following the wolf tail,” as it was
called.
I spent hours in the basement at my father’s
workbench working on projects that would make me a wolf. One was a ring toss
game. I nailed six, empty spools (mom never missed the thread) to a board,
painted a number under each to designate a point value, and attached a cup hook
at the bottom to store the canning jar rings that were used in the game. You
played by tossing the rings onto the spools until someone scored 100 points. It
took me two weeks to build it. I figured it would take forever to catch up with
Bucky at this rate, but I plowed ahead, wondering if he had really completed
all requirements to earn the badges and arrowheads he wore so proudly. I
wondered if it helped to have your mother, be the den mother? (It didn't, as I
later found out. Bucky earned every single one of his badges and arrowheads.)
I finished an “achievement” every few weeks; my
mother or father signed and dated the page and Mrs. Ahearn logged it in. Badges
and arrowheads were awarded at the pack meetings that were held every month in
the basement at Ross Memorial Church on Mitchell Ave. All the dens in the pack
came together for these monthly meeting. Sometimes it was combined with a
potluck supper where one or two of the dens put on a show. Six months into my
scouting career, my shirt still looked naked compared to Bucky’s. I eventually
earned a wolf Badge and then completed ten electives to get an arrowhead
(officially called an arrow “point,” according to the manual). But, I was a
long way from my goal.
Early one Saturday morning while I was rummaging
around in my father’s desk, I stumbled on a rubber stamp. It looked like his
signature. I found an inkpad and tested the stamp on a piece of paper.
"Wow,” I whispered to myself. “It’s exactly how he signs his name!” Then I
tried in on a page in my scout manual. I was so too excited to hear the Cub
Scout promise break when the signature stamp touched the page. I only knew that
I was on my way to a sea of arrowheads.
I brought the manual to the next den meeting and
handed it to Mrs. Ahearn. She didn't blink an eye; she noted the accomplishment
in her logbook and said I had enough to get another arrowhead. I was off and
running. “I’ll have a shirt full of badges and stars like Bucky’s,” I excitedly
told myself. The next week I came to
the meeting with four more projects signed by my father (unbeknownst to him).
In simple terms, I was a pig! The following week, Mrs. Ahearn sat us down and
lectured us at length on the meaning of honor. She told stories of famous
people who had dishonored themselves and repented, and gone on to a life of
valor. I didn't get it! The lecture went right over my head. But, I stopped
using the signature stamp anyhow. It simply wasn’t there when I went looking
for it. My rise to scout stardom was at a standstill. Oh sure, I eventually
added a bear and lion badge and a few silver and gold arrowheads, but I never
came close to catching up with Bucky. I did finally get the point of Mrs.
Ahearn’s lecture, but it was twenty years later. It came to me when an
eight-year-old kid pulled a similar stunt in a youth program I was running for
the Elmira Jaycees. When I discovered his forgery the light in my head finally
came on. “She knew!” Mrs. Ahearn hadn’t been fooled for a second! She had been
talking about me, that day so long ago. I still get embarrassed and my ears
turn red whenever I think about it. What happened to my father’s signature
stamp? I didn’t know it at the time, but Mrs. Ahearn talked to my parents and
they hid it. It came back into my life a few years later. I used it to sign an
eighth grade report card. I did it to “protect” my father, so he wouldn’t find
out that his son got a ‘D’ in History, his favorite subject. Oh yes, I got
caught, but that’s a story for another day.
We Learned More Than the ABC’s at old PS-13!
Published, Binghamton Press, December 13, 2008 
It’s tough for an old coot like me to take a
trip down memory lane to my grade school days when the old building no longer
exists. It was smashed to bits over thirty years ago. That’s the dilemma facing
all the former students of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow School. It’s not just the
place where we studied the three R’s and earned a sixth grade diploma; it’s the
place we learned about life. Our old school is gone. It’s a parking lot next to
the UHS medical building at 93 Pennsylvania Ave. It was torn down to make way
for a Giant Market, which occupied the site for a quarter of a century and then
moved down the street to bigger and better things. Now it’s in the hands of
U.H.S. No longer can we gaze on the old school and longingly glance toward the
side door where we lined up at the bell, that dreaded signal to go inside, to
walk away from an unfinished game of batball.
PS-13, as we referred to it on all our school
papers, served kids on the south side of town, roughly westward from Mitchell
Ave. to the Binghamton – Vestal border. It’s gone! We can’t stop by and kick
the tires and stir up old memories. Like the lessons we learned in “Bully”
survival! I took two semesters. Butchy taught the first. It started in
kindergarten. He decided who played with the toy fire truck, not the teacher.
He ruled outside the building as well, roaming the area on his bicycle, a
baseball bat resting on his shoulder. His demeanor radiated a warning, “Mess
with me and I’ll bean you.” I chose to go for a passing grade. I conceded the
fire truck to him. Kids who didn’t, ended up with lumps and bumps and an “F” in
the course. He was one bully you couldn’t outrun.
Denzel presided over my second “Bully” survival
course at PS-13. He wasn’t menacing like Butchy; he was gregarious, subtle, and
as tough as they come, but the theme of his lesson plan was the same, “Do what
I say or you’ll be sorry!” He lined us up on the playground for a weekly quiz
every Friday before the bell. The test question was the same every week. “Do
you want a sock in the arm or do you want to give me a dime?” It was a tough
decision. You could buy a soda and a candy bar for a dime in those days, but a
sock in the arm would ache through the first hour of the school day: through
the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lords Prayer and half way into the arithmetic
lesson. Most of us made the right choice, gave him the dime or accepted a punch
in the arm. We got an “A” in Denzel’s class. Some kids learned the hard way. I
watched them with a shrug. They followed the lame advice that parents have
pawned off on their naïve offspring for generations, “Stand up to a bully and
he’ll back down.” After discovering that the advice was bogus, they lined up
with the rest of us chickens. But in addition to a sore arm and/or a reduction
in their financial condition, they also nursed a black eye. They got an “F” in
the course, but surprisingly few of them were dumb enough to repeat the
class.
I didn’t pass all the life lessons at PS-13. I
failed a course called, “He dared me to do it.” It took place on the
playground, though I remember it unfolding in the library on the third floor of
the school. Billy Wilson pulled out a pack of matches in a “see what I’ve got”
taunt. I saw, and was impressed, jealous too. I dared him to light one. He just
smiled. I double dared him. His smile weakened. I triple dared him. He looked
around and then pulled out a match and struck it. Then he blew it out. Here is
where the story gets muddled. I remember him throwing it in the wastebasket in
the library. He claims he tossed it in on the ground in the schoolyard. I
remember the school filling with smoke and the janitor, Mr. Vanick, dousing the
papers in the wastebasket. He says I ran to Mrs. White, our fifth grade
teacher, and ratted him out. If his version is accurate it means I was involved
in another fire incident with another kid in the library. It wouldn’t surprise
me. One thing is clear to both of us. We were marched by the ear to the
principal’s office. I wasn’t afraid. After all, it was Billy who started the
fire, not me. But, would he tell the truth? Well, he did! He told Miss Lennox
that he brought the matches to school and lit one. But, then he added, “Merlin
dared me to do it!” I chuckled to my self. I knew he was in for it now. Anytime
I’d ever used that excuse it was thrown back in my face, with the standard
adult rebuttal, “And, if he dared you to jump off the Empire State Building,
would you do it?” That usually ended the discussion. I waited for Miss Lennox
to bring the Empire State Building into the conversation. She didn’t. She
reached over and gave me a swat on the back of the head. It still stings. Then
she imposed our sentence. We spent the rest of the day copying every word on
fire prevention from several encyclopedias. We spent the next day too. It
wasn’t until the third day, after my mother came to school and had a long talk
with Miss Lennox, that my sentence was commuted. I got an “F” in this life
lesson. I still wonder to this day, “Would Billy jump off the Empire State
Building if I dared him?”
Real Men Don’t Wear Jeans!
Published May 10,2008
The Old Coot in new Levi's driving, Woody hanging on.
Some men wear jeans but not old coots like me.
You might spot us walking around in denim pants, but they aren’t jeans. They’re
dungarees. Girls wear jeans! We wear dungarees! We wear the same rugged, denim
pants that prospectors wore during the California gold rush, that cowboys wore
when they settled the old west, that James Dean wore in the movie, “Rebel
Without a Cause.” They aren’t jeans, not to old coots who grew up in the 40’s
and 50’s. Jeans are the denim slacks that girls wore. Jeans didn’t have pockets
and they zipped up on the side.
A boy wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of
jeans. They were essentially skirts with legs. In the late 1950’s, the fashion
industry started calling dungarees, jeans. But we didn’t. We knew the
difference. We stuck to our guns, stuck to our dungarees. Sometimes we called
them overalls, but never jeans. There were a lot of makers of dungarees but the
Levi brand was king. I can still remember the thrill of getting my first pair.
My parents always bought the cheap ones but it didn’t stop me from coveting a
pair of Levi’s. They were the rage! They set you apart from the crowd, with a
distinctive double arch, stitched on each back pocket, a little red tag and a
leather logo on the waistband. They also had a unique, dark blue stripe on the
leg seam that was revealed when you folded up the cuff. And you had to fold the
cuff, because Levi’s weren’t pre-shrunk in the fifties. You bought them big. They
weren’t soft either. New Levi’s were as stiff as frozen canvas.
We
bought them two sizes too big and patiently waited for them to shrink, wash
after wash, until they fit. We started out with a six-inch cuff. Every time
they were washed the cuff got smaller. Eventually, a cuff wasn’t necessary. It
was a little sad when that day came. The distinctive blue stripe on the seam
could no longer be seen. We did everything we could to break in a new pair of
Levi’s. We ran and somersaulted across the lawn; we slid on the ground; we took
them off and dragged them through the dirt. It helped soften them up and it was
the only way we could get our mothers to wash them. It was a survival thing.
The stiffness made them hard to walk in and the bigness made us look like a
nerd, with a six-inch cuff and a waistline up somewhere near our armpits.
My first pair of Levi’s came from the Harris
Army and Navy store on Washington Street, in Binghamton, a few doors from the
old YMCA. I don’t think regular stores even sold them in those days. They were
expensive, around four dollars, if I remember correctly. Regular dungarees were
about half that. I didn’t think so at the time, but we were a fashion conscious
generation. The consciousness was limited to two items of fashion, at least for
boys: Levi dungarees and P.F. Flyer sneakers. Levi Strauss started making the
dungarees in 1872. BF Goodrich started making the sneakers in 1937. P.F. stood
for “posture foundation,” an innovative insert they claimed would reduce leg
strain. I got my first pair of Levi’s when I was nine. It took a year of
begging. I didn’t get the PF Flyers until I was twelve. Begging didn’t work for
shoes. We grew out of them too fast. Levi’s never wore out and because we had
to buy them so big, it was a year or more before we outgrow them. It was a
feature that helped convince parents to lay out the big bucks. When the bottoms
of our Levi’s started to rise above our shoe tops, we simply pushed the waist
line lower, making us look like the low waisted, hip hoppers of today. I
acquired (bribed the kid who had the route) a Binghamton Evening Press paper
route when I was twelve, to earn the money to complete my ensemble and buy the
P.F. Flyers. It made me a full-fledged member of the “cool cat” crowd. I was a
fashion pate (at least in my own mind) as I paraded around in Levi’s with a
blue stripe on a five-inch cuff and black P.F. Flyer high tops. But make no
mistake. I never wore jeans. My sister did.
Ross
Creek and the Tunnel to Hell!
By Merlin Lessler (the old coot)
We
were lucky, the kids that grew up on the south side of Binghamton. Nature
provided us with an endless venue of places to play: woods, fields, ponds,
swamps, ravines and best of all, the “Creek.” It was known as Ross Creek, named
after the doctor who donated land to the city for a zoo and a park. The creek
runs under the zoo and then meanders between concrete walls topped by a page
link fence to the Susquehanna River. The last leg of its journey is in a
quarter mile, dark, forbidding tunnel. We were introduced to the creek and the
abyss it descends into at the intersection of Park and Vestal Avenues by
chasing fly balls that cleared the fence bordering the playground at PS-13
(Longfellow Grade School). We vaulted over the rails on the Morris Street Bridge
and ran them down, sometimes all the way to the tunnel, where a giant mouth
gobbled them up.
I
don't why, but caves and tunnels draw kids like a magnet. The lure of the dark
and forbidding black hole at the end of Ross Creek turned from curiosity to obsession.
Even in the dry season, when water runs in a narrow trickle, it transforms to
white water as it slides down the steep pitch to the tunnel entrance. The slope
is so severe we were forced to descend feet first, on our backs, in a
crab-walk. My friend, Woody Walls and I scouted the mysterious cavern many
times, walking down the creek with a cocky strut, even descending to the tunnel
entrance with an eight-year-old swagger, only to look into its maw and quickly
scamper back up the slope to safety. The two of us couldn’t muster enough
courage to go through the tunnel. Maybe, with more guys we could? We recruited
two “explorers” to join us, probably Buzzy (Spencer) and Warren (Brooks). I’m
just never sure when I dig that far through the cobwebs into my memory banks.
We
lingered at the top of the slope, some thirty feet from the entrance to the
tunnel. We were stalling and we knew it. We did everything we could to delay
the mission at hand. We practiced yoyo tricks, searched for crayfish and told
“moron” and knock-knock jokes, anything that would keep us above ground and in
the safety of daylight. We might have continued the stall for the rest of the
day, if tough guy, Denzel Kelly hadn’t come along, leaned over the fence and
yelled, "Boo!" In our agitated state, it was enough to get the
response he wanted. We jumped! He liked that. One of his favorite utterances
was, “I speak; you jump. He followed it up this time with, "What are you
girls doing down there anyhow"?
"Getting
ready to go through the tunnel,” We muttered in unison.
“Good,
I'm going to stay right here and watch. I don't think you have the guts to do
it."
He was right, but now we had no choice. If we didn't, he
would make sure we never forgot it, and that the rest of the school never
forgot it either. Buzzy went first, followed by Warren and Woody. I was the
last to slide down to the tunnel, pretending to tie my shoes, a standard
delaying tactic of the day. Years later, when I first heard the expression,
"Caught between a rock and a hard place," I immediately understood
what it meant - Denzel on one side, the horror of the tunnel to Hell on the
other.
Our
fate lay ahead. We entered the dark, forbidding cavern, a round concrete
structure, fifteen-feet in diameter. There was an angled shoreline on each
side. If the water got any higher the walkway would disappear. We went in far
enough to block Denzel's view of us. We knew he was still there because he
shouted down, "I'm waiting right here in case you chicken out.” We knew we
had to give it a try, come hell or high water, two distinct possibilities for
four chickens crouched on a narrow pathway at the edge of a rising stream.
Our
eyes adjusted to the dark; we could see the route ahead. A dim circle of light
in the distance beckoned. Buzzy led the way, something that normally would have
been decided by a round of one-potato, two-potato, but today had been left to
fate. The ledge we perched on was too narrow to change the order, something I
took secret delight in from my safe spot at the back of the line. We moved
ahead, slowly at first, then at a good clip, considering how dark it was and
how scared we felt. After ten minutes we noticed that the circle of light in
front of us was larger and brighter, testament to our progress. It appeared to
be about the same size as the one at our backs, telling us we were about half
way there. We would have “high-fived” each other, were there such a thing back
in those days. Instead we settled for a "Whoopee,” from Woody, the most
vocal of our foursome. Buzzy jolted us out of our revere, "Shut up!
Something is moving up ahead!" A
normal group of ten year olds might envision the movement ahead as a snake, a
muskrat, or a skunk. Not us; we’d completed our second year at "Horror
Movie University." We visualized giant ants, radioactive rats or something
worse, the creature from the Black Lagoon.
"What
is it," I bravely asked from my secure position in the back. Buzzy didn't
know, but he reported that it was too big to be a rat, unless fallout from an
Atomic test had caused it to mutate. It crossed over from the other side of the
tunnel on a clump of branches that formed a crude bridge. We froze, listening
intently for clues that might tell us where it was. When nothing happened, we
forged ahead, a little slower and with nervous caution. We’d progressed about
fifty feet when all of a sudden, Buzzy splashed past the rest of us with a
yelp, and got behind me in line. His shoes, socks and pant legs were soaked,
but he didn't care, the "thing" wasn't going to get him first. Warren
led the way for the next few yards, but then it startled him and he fled to the
back of the line. The "beast" was as big as a giant cat, and
glittered and glowed as it crossed back and forth on one of the many haphazard
clogs of twigs, dirt and rubbish that littered the tunnel. It must be radioactive! What else could explain the glittering glow?
With
Woody in the lead, we pressed on, four terrified chickens. My position wasn’t
as secure as it had been, but I still felt safe. Woody would never back down.
Another hundred yards, and my biggest nightmare became reality; Woody freaked;
now I was at the head of the line, facing a radioactive monster. I was trapped.
I couldn't get my feet wet. I was wearing a brand new pair of P.F. Flyers. When
I left home my mother told me to put on an old pair of sneakers so I wouldn’t
ruin the new ones. Of course I hadn’t listened.
We
inched on in absolute silence, posed to flee at the first sign of attack. All
of a sudden, I could see what had frightened the other guys. The
"monster" did glitter as it scurried back and forth across the
tunnel, but there now was enough light coming in to make it out. It wasn't a
radioactive rat. It was a black cat with white feet, sporting a gemstone collar
that glittered. I accelerated the pace, my frightened companions anxiously
asked, "Are you all right?" Their view of the cat was blocked. Only I
could see it. I played out my "bravery," all the way to the river,
hoping the cat would scamper away before they saw it. But it didn't. When we
emerged from the tunnel, rubbing our eyes in reaction to the bright sunlight,
it sat on the river bank licking its' paws. The Radioactive-Rabid-Vicious-Sharp
Fanged-River-Rat was someone's house pet, probably with a name like
"Boots." I must have gone through the tunnel a hundred times after
that. My last visit was in 1962. Even then, when I was a nineteen-year-old
college student, it was still an eerie place, but nowhere near as scary as my
first trip into the tunnel to hell.
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