Dress To Impress

Selecting the perfect garments to wear in public so as to alert discerning viewers to the secrets of your vibe is an art.  Like painting.  Or cooking at its highest level.  My wife, Georgann, had the gift while I had the gaffe.

The one time in my life when I could match the appropriate apparel to the occasion was when I worked summers in the logging woods between college semesters.  I admit my outfits were not the result of my flair for woodsy attire but, rather, the dictates of the logging environment.

You wore a metal helmet to soften the blow of a limb striking your head.  You wore wide elastic suspenders to hold up your pants because a belt might snag on something and take you along on an unpleasant journey; the stretchy braces would at least give you a chance to survive.  And you cut the hem off your pants legs, leaving a frayed but snag-proof row of little dangling threads. Complete the ensemble with your calk (pronounced "cork") boots with metal spikes on the soles and you are styling as that most heroic of all common laborers: the Oregon Logger (never "Lumberjack").

My attempts at cool dressing have gone downhill since those days setting chockers.

In the early '60s I took a job as Alumni Secretary for the University of Oregon.  In 1958 Oregon's football team went to the Rose Bowl and the Alumni Secretary at that time had purchased neckties for the alumni to wear to the game.  The ties had regimental, alternating stripes of lemon and green.  Those babies were BRIGHT.  You might wear one on a hunting trip to avoid getting shot.  And, oh my, after the game there were hundreds of neckties that never made it to Pasadena. One of my early challenges in the job.

A few years later Oregon played Texas in football and at half-time those of us in the press box were served a lunch by Texas co-eds. A young lady approached me and asked, "Are you from Oregon?" After acknowledging that, yes, I was indeed from Oregon, she continued, "That explains it.  When I first saw your tie, I just thought you had bad taste."

Yeah, Texine, your first thought was right.  And we lost the game.

The Doors Are Closing

Her voice is perfect. Pleasing timbre with undertones of sincerely caring about your comfort and safety. "The doors are closing." A definitive statement of fact letting us know we are prepared for action.  "The train departing." She puts a slight up-rise inflection after the "ing" in "departing" that suggests we are about to share an exciting adventure and then she says with quiet urgency, "Please hold on." There is an accent mark in tone over the word, "on."

"The doors are closing.  The train departing.  Please hold on."

Whatever Max train you're on you will hear her (I think her name is Monique) repeat these three sentences at every station and it never becomes annoying. Not like those songs the Good Humor Man assaults us with every summer. Monique's calm message is an almost musical reassurance that we are moving out and we are going to get there.  Safe and sound.

I'm tempted to investigate how to find Monique so that I might retain her to record the words I will compose.

Everyone forgets things from time to time, Bill.  Just forget it.

It is OK to eat lots of ice cream because you can balance it by not eating lots of kale.

Being a bit older will only save you the annoyance of people stopping you on the street thinking you are George Clooney and asking for autographs.

Maybe I'll hop on the Blue Line to Gresham and give this some thought.

Oh, my Pa-Pa

My father was 47 years older than me.  No matter how old I got he was always 47 years older and so when I got to be in my teens he seemed like an old man.  At that age I was confident I knew about all there was to know and as the epicenter of the universe I made no attempt to find out about his life. That remains among the most serious regrets in my life.

He was highly intelligent, articulate (he loved words), funny, and gregarious. Once, returning home late from his job as a switchman for the Union Pacific Railroad, to a waiting group of friends on a Saturday night, he entered wearing his work clothing and announced to the the group, "I shall go upstairs, submerge, emerge and return immaculate."

He ran away from home to join the army when he was 16 and his mother was so pleased to have him gone she signed the papers that allowed his enlistment.  He was sent to fight in the Philippine Insurrection of 1902 and later joined the American forces sent to fight in the Boxer Rebellion. This was the start of a life as an American warrior who would go on to fight in the Mexican Border War, chasing Poncho Villa  around Northern Mexico and then going to France with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

His military life exposed him to adult beverages and he said he saw a billboard once that read, "Drink Canada Dry" and so he did what he could.  When criticized for excessive drinking he claimed it was a birth defect diagnosed as "Syncopation" which he defined as, "irregular movement from bar to bar."
Onetime he brought a gift home for his daughter, Virginia.  It was a stuffed bear with plastic eyes designed with little black centers that rolled around except the eyes had somehow been damaged with both black dots wedged together over the bear's nose.  Seeing the problem, Daddy told Virginia they would name the bear, "Gladly." (He got the name from the church song, "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear."
Virginia loved Gladly.

Sadly (as opposed to Gladly) we don't get overs in this life.  I should have known him better.

You Must Remember This

Of all the indignities visited upon old persons because they didn't die sooner, their faulty memory is the one many people find most amusing. Everything from the unzipped fly to the lost glasses perched on the forehead or the return to the front room with the glass of ice without water. The list is endless.  But the remarkable thing about your memory is that it contains multi-thousands of tiny chambers that old timers can often visit and bring back scenes with the brilliant clarity of a Norman Rockwell painting (who is Norman Rockwell?  Never mind, the man could paint). The number of years in the past when the chamber was filled is irrelevant.

For me, driving past a 7-11 market might trigger a call-up from the deep recess of my brain an incident that happened sometime around 1955.  Young and married with a couple of kids and just enough money to buy a bottle of cheap whiskey for the Friday night party with friends.  Late in the evening the ice runs out and I go for more to a close 7-11.  The ice is in a large chest outside the store next to the drive-up parking spots. As I lift the lid of the chest I catch, from the corner of my eye, the image of a woman waiting is the car parked next to mine and a thought flashes to my mind.

What if the ice chest housed an Ice Monster that lay in wait for half-drunk humans?  To grab them and rip them apart?  So I leaned deep into the chest and then jerked back, fighting off the monster with my left hand while making grunting sounds. Then I dove head first into the chest with my legs kicking as I fought myself back out, clutching the bag of ice. Then, not looking at the woman, I slammed the lid down and lurched into the store.  From the corner of my eye I saw her slumped over laughing.  When I returned with the ice the car was gone.

Don't ask me what I had for lunch.  I can't remember.

Get the Hook

Let's consider all these geezers who want to become president of the United States of America (or who already are).  The over-70 crowd.  Has everyone in this wonderful country of ours gone completely bat-shit crazy to think for even one micro-second that people in that over-the-hill situation have the physical energy and mental acuity to supervise this, the largest and most complex organization in the world, at the level it deserves?  Come on people, now...

For everybody except Tiger Woods and Tom Brady the age 42 is where you peak.  You still look great and you are as smart as you will ever be.  Your past life experiences will guide you to good decisions for the rest of your trip but now the small erosions start in physical and mental ability.  By the time you are 70 years old your best performance days are way, way back there.

America is a diverse nation of millions of exceptional citizens, some more intelligent and talented than others. Our duty, as voters, is to choose our leaders from that pool of the gifted and at some point the really old ones should get out of the pool.  They need to grab a towel and a sturdy chair and start writing their book. To bring our country back from this train-wreck of an administration it will take a  leader with vigor who does not require hearing aids and lots of sleep.

'Old' is Just Another Word for Screwed

First, let’s define terms.  If you think you’re old and other people call you “Sir”, you’re old. Screwed is what you think it is.  Some would use the stronger term but there may be children present.

An enormous economic engine is tuned to profit from the inevitable journey to “not young” experienced by the citizens of our great nation and, to enhance the possibilities for maximizing the take, soothing euphemisms are introduced into the literature of aging.  “Senior citizens” suggests wise patriots who are revered by younger men and women for their presumed willingness to contribute their wisdom to the crusade for national greatness. 

“Get the suction lines attached, Clyde, we’re going to milk these babies dry.”

What demographic consumes the major amount of pharmaceuticals in this country?  Oh, yeah.  So pump a little more profit in…no, wait… pump a LOT MORE profit in those little life-saving pills and don’t spare the TV advertising expense to let our Senior Citizens know that creating miracle cures is what we do.

And how about a place for mom?  Or dad (if he hasn’t already headed south). A nice place that doesn’t smell like industrial strength urine when you enter the lobby. Run by compassionate people who, depending on the level of care provided, will make it work for the budget of the individual old person.

The fact is that there are many facilities out there that set a high bar of excellence for taking care of old people with all  their special needs, both physical and mental.  None of them are cheap.  If you want cheap go where the smell is not so grand.

We won’t even discuss, “Golden Years.” That vile canard was laid to rest the first time the Senior Citizen just missed getting to the flusher in time.

Don’t bitch about your Chevy burning too much oil when your odometer can’t find enough zeros to keep turning over.  That’s why getting screwed by life’s referee is just part of the deal we agreed to when we continued to play the game knowing at the end the score would not be in our favor.  We kept playing because it was the most thrilling, frustrating, lovely, exhausting, wonderful, exciting gift any creature could dream of receiving. Even knowing the final score, who wouldn’t vote to play?

O.K.  Your joints creak and a couple of them are freaking painful.  You can’t see.  You can’t pee.  You can’t hear the request to turn the TV down and you don’t remember turning it on.  And on and on and then you die. Send me in coach.  I’ll take the chance to play this game every time.  So many exceptional experiences but most of all: being with the love of my life…those special times.  Ball game.