Old Coot articles published in December, 2011

The Old Coot knows why.

Published December 7, 2011

You see it on TV all the time – another promise to make you thin – “Buy my tape” – “Join my gym” – “Follow my diet” – “Take a walk!” None of it works. Not for long anyway. But, I’ve discovered the secret. We just have to do the stuff we don’t do anymore. 

Like, get up and walk over to the TV to change the channel. Lean way to the right in your car and use a hand crank to open the passenger window. “Push” the lawnmower; use a hand-powered trimmer. “Sweep” the clippings off the sidewalk with a broom. “Shovel” the snow.

The list of “stuff we don’t do” is a long one. I spent twenty minutes looking for the car keys so I could drive to the post office and get a stamp to mail a bill to a business five blocks away. I could have walked over and paid it in person, but we don’t do that anymore. Now, I do even less; I sit at a computer and pay the bill. I’ve become so sedate, I no longer turn pages in a book. I push a button on a Kindle. Presto! I’m on the next page. I don’t even expend energy to turn down the corner of a page so I can go back to it. My Kindle has a button for that too. 

We don’t take the stairs – up or down – even if we only want to go to the next floor; we push a button and wait for the elevator.  (And catch a cold from another passenger in the process). We push a lot of buttons – the one on the dishwasher. (No more scrubbing the plates and wiping them dry). The one on the dryer – no more strenuous trips to the backyard to hang out the clothes. More of the stuff we don’t do anymore.

It’s everywhere – this stuff we don’t do. It’s in our car. We don’t push in a clutch, shift gears or crank the wheel with our own muscle power. We don’t row a boat – climb a hill to ski or sled down. We don’t clean the oven – pull the stuff out of the freezer to defrost it. We don’t pick berries, can tomatoes. We nibble; we nosh; we sit and push buttons. And wonder why we’re an obese society? What’s the big mystery?

    

The Old Coot mumbles right along.

Published December 14, 2011

It happens every time. You walk in nervous, slink into a reclining zero-gravity chair that makes you feel like you’ll slide out head first and point to a tooth that was killing you last night, but seems fine at the moment. You wonder if you should try to escape the noose you’ve slipped your neck into when the dentist sticks a sharp pointy thing into the bad spot and asks, “Does this hurt?” You scrape yourself off the ceiling, wipe away your tears and weakly nod, “Yes.” The dentist gets you ready: shoots in Novocain with a 12 inch needle, packs in a cotton wad the size of New Jersey, forces a torturous, metal contraption around the troublesome tooth and says, “So what’s new with you?”

You mumble an incoherent, two-word, “Na mush.” Even if you just won the Nobel Peace Prize, you can’t say it. Doctor Driller skips right over your muttered reply and peppers you with questions, none of which can be answered with a wink or a nod -  “How did you make out with the transmission problem on your Jeep?” – “What was the best thing about your trip to the Adirondacks?” You stare back hopelessly, a mute in a verbal world. You give up, close your eyes and hope for the cold hand of death to tap you on the shoulder.  

They teach students in dental school to make it so a patient can’t talk and then ask questions. It’s an important technique. It distracts from the picking, prodding and drilling. It’s the hardest course in the curriculum. Students must learn to ask questions that can’t be answered with a nod or a grunt. Don’t ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?” the instructor lectures the class. Ask instead, “What are you doing to get ready for Christmas?” Don’t ask, “Did you have a good summer?” Ask, “What did you do this summer?” It’s not as easy as you think. Students practice the technique on teenage boys who are masters at giving one-word, or one-grunt answers. “How was school today?” an exuberant mom will ask her teenage son as he comes in the door. All she gets in response is a mumbled, “Kay.” She tries again, “What would you like for dinner?” He grunts and shrugs his shoulder. Dental students don’t get their degree until they can evoke a full sentence from a teenager. The dropout rate is high.

This technique works on normal patients. They try to answer the dentist’s questions, get frustrated and give in. But, not old coots. We are undaunted by a numbed mouth and a wad of cotton. Mumbling incoherent syllables is right up our alley. The dentist becomes the victim when an old coot is in the chair. It speeds up the process; we’re out of the chair in record time. But, not out of the office. The poor receptionist gets an earful. First, about the good old days. And then, about the high cost of the dental work. She’s at a disadvantage. She doesn’t have a wad of cotton to shove in our mouth.

The Old Coot won’t shake on it.

Published December 21, 2011

There are a lot of handshake bullies out there. You get introduced to one, stick out your hand and find your fingers clasped in a vice. The palm of your hand never made it into the shake. The bully looks at you with one of those “gotcha” grins and squeezes. You hear your knuckles crack, feel the joints buckle and fight with everything you’ve got to hold back the tears and stop yourself from screaming.

You need a “do-over” according to my friend Wayne Moulton, who is a long time student of criminal behavior. He’s right. You desperately want to do it over when a handshake bully catches you off guard. But there aren’t any “do-overs” with these guys. Not like when you were a kid and you could reverse a mistake by yelling, “Do over; I call it!” It applied to anything: that wild swing of the bat that earned you a third strike, the foul shot that lipped out in a game of Horse, that lame attempt at a back dive that you chickened out of at the last second. In the adult world, the golf adult world that is, they call a “do-over” a Mulligan. Blast a tee shot into the woods and you get a Mulligan. Usually, only one per round, but the guys I play with let you take one every hole.

But, not handshake bullies. When they’re done crushing your hand you don’t have enough strength to go through it again. Your hand needs a day to recover. So you grin and bear it and put a picture of the bully in a special place in your memory so you’ll be ready the next time. It won’t work; he puts a picture of you in his memory. If you stick out your hand, ready for his maneuver, he doesn’t make a quick grab for your fingers, he ducks down and gives you a “friendly” punch in the gut, “Ha ha, gotcha again.” The only thing to do then, is to stomp down on his foot with everything you’ve got, and say, “Oops, sorry. I tripped.”

This is why a lot of people don’t shake hands anymore. They hug, do a fist bump, a shoulder bump or a high five. Anything, to avoid getting trapped by a handshake bully. Old coots don’t do any of that stuff; it’s too complicated and we’re too uncoordinated – we miss the other guy’s fist in a fist bump and end up punching him in the upper arm – an attempt at a shoulder bump finds us staggering past the guy, headed for a spill to the ground – a high five ends the same way and we don’t hug. We step back, tip our hats and say, “Howdy; nice to meetcha.” It makes us look like idiots but who cares? Handshake bullies never get us.

November 2011 articles published

The Old Coot knows your name.

Published November 2, 2011

I’ve got a memory glitch. Names! There are some I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try. It’s not an old coot thing either; I’ve had this problem all my life. Now that I’m old, I can get away with it. Yet, it’s not senility; I’ve got that too, but my name problem is genetic. It came down on my mother’s side of the family. I can’t remember, or pronounce an embarrassing number of names. I’ll lean over and whisper to my wife, “Who is that guy we just met? Is it Greg or Craig?” – or - “Is that woman Carlen, Carlee or Carlie?”

It’s names that have similar sounds and names that have pronunciation options, like Boscov’s (Department Store). It’s a lot of names. They head for my memory and evaporate. I go around saying things like: “Hey kid, how are you doing?” – “Hi Governor; what’s up?” – “Hi little lady is your mother home?” I don’t think I’m fooling anyone. A lot of old coots do this; it’s our signature trait. 

The Indians worked out a great system for naming people. They picked out a personality or physical characteristic: Running Bear, Laughing Squaw, Chief Big Tooth. It’s a custom I wish we would adopt. It sure would make my life easier.

I’m trying it out on my own. Just the other day I ran into Woman-Who-Won’t-Stop-Talking in the supermarket. My ice cream melted before I got out of the store. A car almost hit mine as I pulled out of the parking lot. I know the guy. He’s Greg or Craig, I can never remember. Not a problem now. I renamed him, Thinks-He-Owns-the-Road.

I can never remember the name of our assemblyman. Why would I? He lives 70 miles north of us in Auburn. He serves in a gerrymandered district that wanders up the Route 38 corridor like a drunken sailor, a gift from our wise leaders in Albany who cut up the state to serve them, not us. I call him Leader-who-live-far-away, though he does make an effort to be here when he can.  When he does, I call him Man-who-travel-much. I have a name for everybody. When John’s Market finally opened, I walked back to the deli counter and didn’t have to say a word. “She-who-gets-me-cheese” handed me a package and said, “Have a nice day.”

In the morning I wander into the Goat Boy and “She-who-leaves-room-for cream” hands me a cup of my favorite blend without having to ask for it. It’s too cold now for the rooftop Beer Garden at Tioga Trails to open, but some warm day I’ll stop by and ask the owner, “She-who-makes-me climb-54 stairs-for-a-beer” if the Beer Garden is open. The town is loaded with people whose name I’ll never forget, now that I’ve adopted a Native American naming custom. It’s only fair; people have called me Old Coot for years. I assume they don’t mean anything by it; they just can’t remember my name.

The Old Coot has nothing to write about.

Published November 9, 2011

You think you’re a writer? Put a blank piece of paper in front of yourself and prove it! That is what I said to myself the other morning at Dunkin Donuts. It was a Saturday, 6:30am. The place was buzzing. “Um” people were at the counter picking out donuts – “A jelly – Um – a chocolate frosted – Um ……..” A couple of, “Gap People” (people who leave a big space between themselves and the person in front of them) added to the confusion of a long serpentine line. A few “Oh, I left my wallet in the car people” were sprinkled in the mix, making mad dashes to the parking lot when it came time to pay. A lot of fodder for an old coot to ponder. It should have been easy to come up with something to write about.

Yet, my pen was hardly moving. I’d written about all that stuff before. I needed inspiration – something more than a deadline. I needed an irritation, something out of whack. Something! Anything! Then a little girl started crying, 2 or 3 years old. She threw herself on the floor in a temper tantrum. She looked like she was going to be at it for a while. It was time for me to leave. But, before I could get moving her father picked her up and jiggled and hugged the mood right out of her. He was good! She was hopping around laughing in less than a minute. Nothing there to write about. Not anymore. And no reason to leave either.

Next on stage was a multi-car family on a trip: two young couples, a set of grandparents, five kids. They all ordered breakfast sandwiches, three bags worth. The trouble was, they ordered as families but weren’t traveling that way. It took ten minutes to pull out all the sandwiches, open them up to figure out what they were, and then put them in bags that matched the cars. It took long enough for the youngest of the group to duplicate the temper tantrum that the little girl unleashed not 10 minutes earlier. Her father tucked her under his arm and headed for the parking lot; she continued to kick and scream. Apparently, he didn’t know the jiggle-hug technique.

The cell phone people were in attendance too, standing in line, loud-talking in an unending dialog. I pictured a bored listener on the other end of the line – or even better, someone on the other end who had put the phone down and was taking a shower. A couple of old coots sat at separate tables watching the show, me and another guy. It’s what we do. I hope nobody was writing about us!

Old Coot learns from young coot.

Published November 16, 2011

People are tense! Unemployment is high; job security is nil; future prosperity is in doubt. Some people deal with this stress by exercising. They improve their body while cleansing their mind. I’m an old coot. Old coots are only bothered by the stress they bring on themselves. Some of my brothers do this to excess. They get worked up trying to come up with a guy’s name when telling a story. The listeners don’t care what his name is; they don’t even know the person. Yet, the old coot sputters and frets, trying to mine this useless gem of information, getting himself into an agitated state in the process. 

Not me! Not anymore, anyway. I have a young friend. I shouldn’t mention his name; it’s Matt. He’s known around here as Captain America, ever since he saved Main Street from the Great Skunk Invasion of 2011. He’s taught me the secret of dealing with stress and I’ve taught him how to be cranky. (So, he’ll be a legendary old coot when his time comes.) He calls his stress avoidance system the Head on Collision Technique. Here’s how he uses it. When a “Tie,” as the captain refers to corporate executives, comes into the work area to mingle with the “little” people, his co-workers shift into a subservient posture. Captain America thinks it’s because of the tie. A tie lets everyone know you’re special, you’re important. Workers step aside when a tie comes down the hall. The tie expects them to get out of the way. And, they do!

This irked Captain America. So, he showed them what to do; he met the problem head on. Literally! When a tie came toward him on a collision course, he didn’t move off to the side as the gap narrowed. It was like Little John and Robinhood when they crossed a stream on a log from opposite sides. Neither backed off and Little John knocked Robinhood into the water. In this case, Captain America was the victor; the tie crashed to the floor. Matt leaned over and helped him to his feet. And, with an ear-to-ear grin, said, “That’s OK; you don’t have to apologize. I know you’re sorry you bumped into me.” And, walked off whistling. He taught the tie something that day - “You’re only as important as people will let you be.” He taught me something too - “You don’t have to be old to be an old coot!” 

The Old Coot has a Goat Boy morning.

Published November 23, 2011

I was sitting at the front table by the window in the Goat Boy Coffee Bar the other morning. It’s a perfect spot for an old coot: good coffee and a clear view of the early morning stirrings along river row. The shops aren’t open but there is still a lot of activity: people going to work, trying to beat the light before it turns red - dog walkers, some with bags, some without – old guys (mostly bald) waiting impatiently for the barber shop to open - delivery trucks shuttling restaurant supplies to the Cellar Restaurant, the John Barleycorn and River Rose Café - Taylor Garbage trucks sweeping through, the driver and helper hustling in and out of traffic – joggers - walkers   - and the street people: Thelma and David on foot, and Eddy on his bike, a trash bag loaded with returnable bottles slung over his shoulder. It’s a scene right out of a Norman Rockwell picture. I’m the old geezer he always placed in the background.

As I sat there taking up space and scaring customers away, an old guy pulled up across the street in a big boat. He flung the door open, into the traffic lane without looking and stumbled into the road. He was a sight to behold, a fellow old coot – decked out in slippers, argyle socks, flannel pajamas and a topcoat. He dashed (see footnote) across the street without bothering to look, made it to the other side, grabbed a Pennysaver out of the box and did a 180. He then looked up and down the street (about time) and headed back toward his car holding up his hand to stop oncoming traffic. He opened the door, backed up to the seat, plunked down, squirmed around until he was behind the wheel (somewhat crooked) and took off in a puff of black smoke, the door closing on its own by the thrust. He never realized he was the feature attraction of the morning show.

Or, so I thought. I hadn’t yet made my appearance on the river row stage. I was a little paranoid about how I might be viewed on my way through town. I ventured forth with a dark cloud hanging over my head, stopping every few steps to stare at my reflection in store windows, checking for old coot errors: jacket on inside out, glasses on top of the head, or worse of all, a spectacle like my friend Daren (not scheduled to be an old coot for two more decades) who, in his salad days strutted his stuff in a New York City nightclub, moving through the crowd nodding to the girls and doing a Joey Triviani imitation (from the show, “Friends”) saying, “How YOU Do-in?” All this, with a six-foot strip of toilet paper stuck to his foot, trailing along behind him in full view of the whole bar and especially his cohorts, barely able to stand up they were laughing so hard. With that image in mind, I made my way home via the side streets and back alleys of Owego. It’s one thing to be an old coot; it’s quite another to be the feature attraction.

Footnote: Dash is defined in the old coot dictionary as a stumble, shuffle, half walk, half lurch effort to make haste, similar to a newborn colt taking its first few steps.   

The Old Coot lives in a time warp.

Published November 30, 2011

I made it through another old coot birthday a few weeks back – it’s a dangerous time – people want to know how old you are, what birthday you’re celebrating. You don’t know. Not for sure. Inside your head you’re 17, or some ridiculous age you cling to in hopes that all the years that have blown by are just a bad dream. You can’t be as old as the calendar and birth certificate say you are. Not me! I’m not that old! Am I?

It eventually sinks in. You are old. You reminisce through your aging history. Your first shock came when you turned 18 – old enough to buy a drink, legally for a change, old enough to be drafted, but not old enough to vote. It’s different now. At 18 you’re too stupid to drink, but just fine to vote. Three years later you get shocked again; you turn 21, a legal adult. But, you cling to that 17 year old that still lives inside your head. Thirty is next. Your life is over. Somehow, you continue on and make it to 40. Senility starts its assault. You tell yourself you don’t feel any different than when you were 20. Oh yea? How about those reading glasses you desperately need to buy – and that ache you get in your back when you bend over to tie your shoes – and those things you don’t remember: mailing the letters in your pocket or paying back the guy at work who lent you twenty bucks.

At fifty, you’re shocked again. Especially, when you realize that the things you talk about happened 30 or 40 years ago. You look back and realize how fast your journey to 50 flew by. And, in 15 minutes (that’s what it feels like) you’ll be 60, then 70, then 80. Not quite accepting it as real. And, sure enough, fifteen minutes later you’re 60. You take a nap and wake up to discover you get a Social Security check every month and have a Medicare card in your wallet. You look in the mirror and wonder, “Who is this person?”

It keeps happening: 66, 67, 68, 69- Zing! – Zing! – Zing! You never accept it. You stick with the 17 you’ve clung to for more decades than you can count. If you see an old coot going around town in black, high top PF Flyers, cargo pants and a hoodie, don’t judge him too severely. It’s just a confused 17 year-old making his way through life.

Tree huts; no adults allowed!

Published in the Binghamton Press, November 27, 2011

The hut was perched in Johnny’s back yard, 15 feet above ground in an old maple tree. Smoke wafted out of a dozen cracks blanketing it in a low-lying cumulous cloud. It was nothing more than an elevated hovel. Hacked off boards jutted out at all angles; the roof was covered with tar paper scraps; a bunch of gnarled two by fours nailed to the tree trunk formed a crude ladder to a trap door in the floor. Johnny Almy and his brother Mike built it, but this day it was occupied by Woody (Sherwood Walls), Johnny, friend David and me. We were ten years old and taking our first drag on a cigarette. David, John’s classmate at Saint Johns School, came to visit for the day and brought along a carton of Kent cigarettes that he’d requisitioned from his mother’s secret hiding spot. It was an unusual collaboration; two kids from Saint Johns (Johnny and David) and two from Longfellow (Woody and me). There wasn’t a lot of mixing with kids from other schools in those days. I didn’t know any kids from Lincoln Elementary even though it was less than ½ mile from my school. We were tribal and suspicious of anyone from another tribe (school, neighborhood or other side of town). Johnny lived in our neighborhood, so he was OK, but we welcomed his friend David with reservations. They disappeared the minute he pulled the carton of Kents out of his nap sack.

These huts were precursors to the man caves of today, a private space where you can shut out the world and its pressures, in our case, the pressures of multiplication tables, fractions and sentence parsing. A place to hang out and read 10-cent Superman, Little Lulu and Archie comic books. To down an endless supply of homemade chocolate chip cookies, dipped in metal tinged milk kept cool in WWII canteens. And this day, to lounge around smoking Kent cigarettes, drinking shots of whisky (root beer) while loading up our cap pistols in preparation for a shoot out on Junk Street (now Aldridge Ave) with the Vincent and Tommy Spangoletti gang at noon. Fortunately, none of us inhaled: we’d just puffed on the “cancer sticks,” as they were called back then, ten years before the Surgeon General came to the same conclusion and ordered warning labels be affixed to every pack. We didn’t exactly stagger to the OK coral to meet our fate, but we were a little green and had to stifle an urge to toss our cookies. We faked a macho swagger and strutted in with a fresh roll of caps in our Hop-A-Long Cassidy and Roy Roger’s guns, a “cig” hanging out of the corner of our mouths and intimidation on our minds. The guns blazed and everyone fell to the ground in a death spiral. Heck! Dying was the best part of a gun battle. We worked harder on our death throes than we did on our fast draw.

Woody and I erected a series of tree huts, each one a little sturdier than the last. The best was built a half-mile from home near the creek that runs along the side of West Hampton Road on South Mountain. In those days, the hill was part an overgrown pasture covered with wild blackberry bushes. It was a long way to drag lumber and tar paper from our Denton and Chadwick Road homes, but it was worth it. What a view! It must have been a good location. Some of the finest houses in the area now overlook the creek. The remnants of our 1950’s adventures are long gone. We were lucky, kids of our generation. We didn’t have TV, I pods, video games or other distractions to lure us inside the house. Ours was an outdoor childhood. Prowling through the new houses going up in our two-block neighborhood was a favorite pastime that yielded great rewards: lumber, nails and tar paper. We used the lumber to build hot rods and rafts, but most of it went into our tree huts. The carpenters left at five; we moved in at ten after. First to explore and play, and then, under the cover of dark, to requisition building materials. Most often from the scrap pile, but not always.

Woody shocked me one night when he came running out of a house with a whole roll of tarpaper on his shoulder, staggering under the weight. We dragged it to a staging area in the cow pasture behind Johnny Almy’s house. The next day we wrestled it a half mile to the creek. It was the most luxurious tree hut we ever built. You don’t see these Arial hideaways much anymore. There is one around the corner from where I now live. It has two by four, framed walls, windows, a solid entranceway and a waterproof roof. I suspect the kids that play in it didn’t build it. It has a “professional, fatherly” look. Even so, I’d love to climb in and read an Archie comic. Maybe puff on a Kent cigarette too.

Old Coot Articles published in October, 2011

The Old Coot forgot to read the warranty.

Published October 5, 2011

This vehicle (the human body, or in my case, nearly human) that I’ve been traveling around in for so many years is a marvelous mechanism, or was, until the mileage passed the design limit. Obsolescence is built in, just like it’s built into the cars that roll off the assembly line. Cars are designed to last just past the warranty; the human body is designed to last 30 years, 15 to get it to maturity so it can reproduce, and then another 15 to make sure the offspring makes it far enough to continue the line.

When mine first started falling apart I didn’t notice it. The first clue I got was when I discovered that my arms were too short to read the paper. I was forty, ten years beyond the limit. I gave in, with a fight, and bought some reading glasses. Other stuff was going to pot too, but so gradually that I didn’t notice. The eyesight thing was tangible, undeniable. It made me understand that I would get old. That’s when most of us go through a mid-life crisis. I bought a red MG to get through mine.

A whole parade of rude awakenings came next. It was always with disbelief that I met my doctor’s latest accounting: “What do you mean, my knee is shot?” - “What did you say is wrong with the disc in my back?” – “What do you mean you hear a funny gurgle in my heart?” That was the anatomy phase of my life. I learned more about the human body and the malfunction thereof than a fourth year medical student. A lot of parts didn’t work properly, or at all, but at least I knew why, my doctor painstakingly explained it to me, time and again. 

Still, it’s a wonderful machine. It only has one design flaw, an over active nervous system. Every square inch of the exterior of the vehicle is capable of causing excruciating, and debilitating pain. A lot of the interior too, but not all of it. The colon, for example, stays mute while a tumor the size of a grapefruit takes root. But, getting back to the nerves on the exterior, I get it that the brain needs to be alerted to danger: heat, cold, crushing, cutting. It needs to know the machine is under attack. But, something is out of kilter when an 85 pound, 4 foot 8 inch tall high school math teacher can disable a 6 foot 1 inch, 170 pound teenage student by simply pinching and holding on to the underside of his upper arm. That’s when I first discovered the design flaw.  

I’ll concede; the nervous system has some socially redeeming value, i.e. keeping teenage troublemakers in line with a simple pinch, but how about a stubbed toe that brings tears to your eyes and has you limping for days – or an abscessed tooth – a tiny bee sting – or the 10,000 other nuisances that send your nervous system into full alert, incapacitating you in the process? The next time around, I’m ordering the model with a dimmer switch on the nervous system. Then maybe I can make it through the day without moaning in public because of a little hangnail.

The Old Coot follows T-rex into extinction.

Published October 12, 2011

We’re on the same path to extinction that dinosaurs traveled sixty-five million years ago. They started out as small lizards, gradually got bigger and then disappeared. It’s a routine event in the cycle of evolution. A species dominates its environment, eliminates the competition for food and grows larger. When it gets too big, it dies out, the victim of a minor change in the environment.

It took a long time, but we humans worked our way up the food chain. We beat out the saber tooth tiger, the wooly mammoth and the monsters of the deep. One by one they moved off the stage and we took the starring role. We mastered agriculture and the distribution of goods. We did pretty well for a long time, increasing our dominance of the planet, increasing our life span in the process. Then came the Big Slurpy, super sized meals and a host of temptations that lured us into the land of “Pig-out-ville.” We started growing. Up and out! The six-foot basketball stars of the fifties were replaced with the seven-foot players of today. Six-foot basketball players are as extinct as dinosaurs. High school linemen topped the scales at 200 pounds in my day; today they are in the backfield.

Everything about us is bigger: our houses, our cars, our furniture. Everything, except the seats we waddle down the aisle to on a jet plane. We ask for a seatbelt extension in hopes we won’t be forced to pay for two seats (How does that work? One for each cheek?). We go around like T-rex did at the end of his reign, growling at anyone who messes with our food. Especially, the stack of Twinkies we’ve hidden in the back of the linen closet.

The obese police are on our case. They beseech us to eat right, exercise and diet. They label our food, set out lists of banned morsels and try to bring us around, but it’s too late. We’re fat and we like it. So what if we can’t make it up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath, or bend over to pull on a pair of socks. Socks are over rated anyway. So what if our car lists to one side as we chug down the street. So what if a picture of us walking into Wal-Mart in an undershirt, shorts with a stretched out elastic waistband and flip-flops goes viral on U-tube.   

We’re king of the jungle now, but it’s just a matter of time before a new species pushes us out of the spotlight. Some scientists think it will be the spiders, others are betting on the birds. I’m betting on the old coots. We’ve been extinct for years, waiting to make a comeback.

The Old Coot is a warmonger.

Published October 19, 2011

There is a war underway in my basement. Not exactly Godzilla versus King Kong, but pretty close. There also is a war going on in the streets. I call it the Great Mold War of 2011. The groundwork was laid decades ago, when the national media started an assault on mold. Story after story on the horrors of mold has been featured on TV: black mold, green mold, fuzzy mold and other forms of that mysterious substance that grows in damp places. It didn’t take long to have the whole country living in fear. No one dares admit it grows in their basement, in the dark corners of their shower stall or on the shady side of their house.

It’s another item on the long list of things the media has made us afraid of. We’re a cowering bunch, us “well informed” Americans. Let’s see, we’re afraid of coffee, black tea, french fries, cup cakes, thunder storms, snowfall, climate, bonfires, aerosol sprays, red meat and butter fat, to name a few. Now that we’ve been through another 100?, 300? or 500? year flood, mold is in the limelight.

The battle on the street is an intellectual affair. The one in my basement is a physical one. On the street, it’s vinegar (white distilled) versus bleach versus Shock Wave. Each faction has its proponents, but all are focused on the same outcome – “kill the mold.” I joined the bleach army at first. I sprayed the eye-burning, horrible smelling stuff on every joist and floorboard I could reach in my dank, damp, muck laden basement. My wife attacked it on the floors, from above. She won her skirmish. I lost mine. Green mold popped up everywhere.

I blasted it again, staggering around in muck, breathing toxic gas. To no avail! There it was, green, brassy and defiant. “Nice try, old coot,” it seemed to say. I switched sides. I went for the jug of Shock Wave. It worked! The green mold died. Most of it, anyway. A few more salvos got the rest. Or, so I thought. Then, my heating contractor walked off the job – halfway through. The snippy little deserter yelled to me, “You’ve got mold,” and then stepped into his van and fled for safety. I looked. He was right. There was green stuff here and there. DRY, green stuff. I brushed it off with a broom – he came back – the war was over, or so I thought.

Not so. New experts took center stage, “Tear out the floor,” they extolled. “Mold hides in the cracks; it will kill you!” Then along came Kevin. “What are you worried about,” he chided. “Your 200 year old house has been a mold factory since the 1800’s. It grows when it gets damp. It dies off when the humidity goes down. Besides, our basements are loaded with radon. It will kill the mold.” He’s right; I’m letting them fight it out. It’s comforting to sit here in my kitchen knowing that just beneath my feet, Godzilla (mold) and King Kong (radon) are battling away. I suppose the victor will come after me when the fight is over. But, I’m not afraid. I’m an old coot. Nothing is more toxic than that!

The Old Coot hates to, but has to look.

Published October 26, 2011

I’ve been studying feet of late. It’s not something I set out to do; it’s something I couldn’t avoid. They’re all over the place, riding around in flip-flops. All year long, even now in late October. You don’t want to, but you’re forced to look. It’s like an eclipse of the sun. The experts tell you to avert your eyes but you take a peek anyway. All you risk when staring at an eclipse is your eyesight. If you look at feet too long, you lose your mind.

Let’s be frank; feet are ugly! It’s not so bad if you just give them a quick glance: a lumpy blob with stubby fingers at one end, a bulbous glob connecting to a leg at the other end and mountain ridge that turns into a plateau in between. If you look hard, you realize what an odd appendage they are. Space alien, in a way. Some are gnarled; some are smooth; but all are strange looking things.  

People try to improve on nature. They decorate the poor things: nail polish, little piggy went to the market toe rings, piercings, tattoos – but it doesn’t work. Human feet still don’t look any better than pig’s feet. It’s why I avoid going into taverns that have a jar of pickled pig’s feet on the counter. I think the bartenders put them there so they can tell when someone has had too much to drink. If a customer orders a pig’s foot, they cut him off.

 Feet are like fingerprints; no two are alike. That’s another reason why it’s hard not to look. It’s like the freak show at the carnival. Except, you know what you’re getting there: a bearded lady, an ape man, a contortionist called Pretzel Man and Dirty Old Zola covered with snakes. A pair of human feet would fit right in but would always be a surprise.

Feet are weird enough to make good fodder for a coffee-table book. One that would beat out the “People who shop at Wal-Mart” picture book, the one that features some of the bizarre people that shop in pajamas, short shorts, bathing suits and other inappropriate garb. People with the oddest body shapes imaginable. I can just picture it. Two patrons at the library, one, thumbing through a book of Wal-Mart shoppers, the other looking at feet in flip-flops. First one, then the other, would turn a page, sneak a glimpse and then yell, “My eyes. My eyes!” The stern librarian with her hair in a bun would look up from her desk, her glasses sliding down to the end of her nose (I’m really dating myself with that imagery) and whisper loudly, like only a librarian can, “QUIET!” The other patrons would turn to look, see her scrunched feet swaddled in flip-flops and faint dead away. That’s feet for you. 

Old Coot articles published in September, 2011

The Old Coot is in a fog.

Published September 7, 2011

Fall is here. It’s always a surprise. I think summer will go on forever. Then, I get up and walk to town and it’s all fogged in. Only slightly different than the fog I usually walk around in. The real one hides everything in a swirling mist. It’s the topic of morning conversation, “Boy, sure is foggy out there,” Linda and Chuck say in unison as I step up into Sam’s diner. Everyone agrees. We’re a sharp bunch, us old coots; we notice things like fog.

We don’t notice things like our pants are on inside out or that our lost glasses are perched on the top of our heads or that the guy we just greeted with, “Hi Bill,” is really Frank. No, we don’t notice those things, but we do notice fog. Fog is good. You can’t see the crabgrass through the haze; the lawn looks flawless. The east side of the house that looked like it needed repainting yesterday seems just fine on a foggy morning.

Fog is one of the best things about fall. There is nothing quite so serene as a flock of geese ascending from a river blanketed in fog. First, you hear the resounding honks, then, one by one, the geese rise in a wiggly Vee and fly off to warmer places. Old coots do the same thing, except their formation is on the southbound lane of Route 95, interspaced among a sea of tractor-trailers.

Some of my old coot brothers (and sisters) don’t notice the fog; they haven’t had their cataracts fixed yet. To them, a foggy morning is just like any other. It’s not good to put off getting the cloudy lenses replaced with new ones, and not for the obvious reasons like it’s impossible to drive at night or it’s hard to recognize people. I get why some old coots don’t deal with their cataracts. It’s the, “there is nothing out there I want to see” syndrome. It’s similar to the condition that stops old guys from buying hearing aids, or turning them on when they do. They don’t want to hear anything either. Especially someone telling them it’s time to trim those cornstalks growing out of the their ears. 

But, delaying the inevitable (cataract repair) is fraught with danger. The kind that takes place when you get home from the hospital and look in the mirror. First, you screech. Then you yell, “What the heck did they do to my face?”  When you turn around to ask your wife what’s going on, you get another shock, “Who are you?” you ask. No, it’s better to nip the problem in the bud and enjoy the real fog, the one that comes rolling in on a nippy morning and announces the arrival of fall.

A wet Old Coot comes to the surface.

Published September 21, 2011

It’s Day Six of the Great Flood of 2011 as I scribble this essay. Day Six of mopping, hauling, bagging, swabbing, cringing. Day six of spraying bleach-water on everything in sight, sloshing through muck, gassing up the generator and a dozen other tasks that I’ve spent years convincing my wife I was incapable of. Now, the jig is up. I’ll be stuck helping around the house for years to come. It will be very hard to reestablish my incompetency.

We didn‘t have it too bad, a full basement and six to seven and one-half inches on the first floor, depending on where you stand. The house is a little crooked and unlevel, just like me. No, we were lucky compared to a lot of people. Five years ago, in the “300 year” flood of 2006 (where did the time go?) I was a little ashamed to admit we didn’t get flooded at all. Not even a drop in the basement. It sounded like bragging. Now I feel the same way because so many people have it so much worse than we do. 

We came through it pretty good. No water, no gas, no power, but we had something special, the Ross Street Café, where Rich Watkins, his wife Rachael and all the special neighbors on the north end of Ross Street set up a makeshift cafeteria and served three squares a day to all the flood victims around the block. The food crew was incredible. Kathy and Rudy even delivered coffee and tea to our backdoor every morning. It sure made starting a new day of scrubbing and hauling a lot easier.

No, we didn’t have it bad at all. Except for the first day when Marcia and I, Diane Wu and Carol Cavataio were standing in our back yard waving our arms and the American flag to a low flying helicopter. The pilot inched closer and a minute later we were in a wind tunnel. Water flew up from our polluted swimming pool, a row of pines along the back property line bent over so far the tops touched the ground, our fence blew down, two pair of shutters skipped across the yard and we were blown every which way. It’s the last time I’m waving to a chopper pilot.

I blame the whole episode on Diane. I bet she gave the international distress signal without knowing it and the aviator came in for a look. What goes around comes around, to quote a tired and over used saying. It came around for Diane the next day. She went up and down the street complaining to everybody on the block that her bike was stolen. She had hosed it off, parked it in front of her house to dry and went back inside to continue sloshing, hauling, mopping and scrubbing. While she was gone, “Some son of a gun stole my bike!” That night at the Ross Street Café, she yelled, “Attention everyone! And, then made a loud and profound public admission. “My bike was NOT stolen! I rode it across the street to the Merrills and forgot I left it there. Nobody stole anything!” It made our day. We rolled on the floor (street) laughing. It’s just what we needed. I especially enjoyed it; for once, it wasn’t me.

The Old Coot can’t complain

Published September 28, 2011

Now, it’s really getting old, this flood thing. Especially for people that don’t have a home or one they can live in anytime soon. It’s put me out of business, the old coot business. Last month I could go around carping about things: the weather, politicians, new government rules, rude cell phone users, kids who don’t play outside. I look back at my files and see that I’ve written over 400 Old Coot essays, complaining, complaining, complaining.

Now, I can’t get anyone to listen. All I get is, “Shut up Old Coot! I don’t care if you have a problem with people in line at Dunkin Donuts that can’t make up their mind (the Um People) – or – electric hand dryers in public rest rooms that are so loud they are making you deaf – or – people who put a ladder up against their house to fix something and a year later it’s still there – or – lawn mowers that force you to squeeze the handle to keep it running.”

I’m finished. I’m out of business. That’s what I thought. Then, along came FEMA. I always wondered what they did to provide relief in a natural disaster. Now, I know. They provide comic relief, something to complain about, to chuckle at. A FEMA rep came to our house – a very nice and competent person, but she was saddled with the “process.” She had to measure every room and ask how many outlets. Then, she went upstairs to see if any of the rooms had radios, phones or TV’s. Why radios? Mine is in the car. It doesn’t matter; it’s the process.” On the way out, she turned and said, “You’ll hear from us in seven to ten days.”

See what I mean. That’s the lamest complaint I’ve ever made. The trouble is, too much good stuff happened after the flood: people rushed in to help, dry neighbors took in wet neighbors, strangers offered a hand (and ended up with a sore back), Taylor Garbage workers helped clean up on their own time, fire fighters and cops kept us safe, utility workers swarmed in and put in 16-hour days to get service restored, big companies and small businesses made incredible donations. It’s a spirit I’ve never witnessed. How do you launch an old coot complaint against that backdrop? I guess I’ll have to work hard to get back on track. In the meantime, all I can say is THANKS! Now, please stop being so nice, and give me something to complain about.

Old Coot articles published in August, 2011

The Old Coot gets stuck.

Published August 3, 2011

So, there I was, in another old coot mess. It’s almost guaranteed to happen if I’m left home alone. This time, I was on the porch roof; the ladder was lying on the sidewalk; I couldn’t get down. I was up there to wash the clapboards on our 206-year-old house. I’ve convinced myself that a gentle wash with dish detergent keeps the paint fresh and helps the old siding make it through another year. Everything was going fine until I yanked the hose to stretch it around the corner to the front of the house. It looped over the ladder and sent it spinning into the bird feeder. Then, it careened into my wife’s prized flowerbed before coming to rest on the sidewalk. My first thought was, “Oh no! My wife’s not home.” (How will I get off the roof?) I quickly came to my senses. “Oh good! My wife’s not home."

Still, I was in a jam. I couldn’t get down without the ladder. I stood on the edge of the roof staring at it mournfully, wondering if I might somehow use the hose to pull it back up. Two squirrels looked up at me with smug grins on their faces. They were gorging themselves on the birdseed that spilled out of the feeder. We’ve been at war for years.  I try to keep them out of the feeder. How hard can it be, a human against a squirrel? But, they always win. I could tell what they were thinking by the wide grins on their faces, “Well, old man, we’ve beaten you again!”

I’ve tried every anti-squirrel contraption made and rigged up a few on my own, but the squirrels always end up dining in luxury, while I end up paying the tab. It wouldn’t surprise me if they somehow looped the hose over the ladder causing me to pull it into the feeder. Anyhow, I was stuck. I covered up my panic by continuing on with my chore, acting as though the ladder was exactly where I wanted it. I sprayed the front of the house, dipped the brush into the suds and washed away, while furtively looking up and down the street for a knight on a white horse. He came, half an hour later, but he was on a bicycle, not a horse, Damon Tinkham, (Tinkham with an i, as he informed me after it was all over, so I could get it correct for the paper) I yelled, “Hey Damon!” He screeched to a halt nearly colliding with his son Dason who was trailing him by a few feet. He looked around but couldn’t figure out where my bleat was coming from. Why would he; I was fifteen feet in the air, hidden in a dense growth of tree limbs.

“Up here!” I yelled, finally catching his eye. I explained my dilemma. I’m not sure which pair got up off the ground from a laughing fit first, Damon and his son, or the two squirrels. Eventually, the roar subsided and Damon placed the ladder against the side of the house. I was saved! I climbed down, removed the smashed flowers, evened out the mulch and refilled the bird feeder. It was just another day in Old-Coot-ville.  

The Old Coot sees the light.

Published August 10, 2011

It’s war! Right here in the Village of Owego. The big artillery came out this week. Four hundred watts of fluorescent light power. It all started weeks ago, when mama skunk took up residence under Matt’s front porch. I can’t mention his full name; the last time I did he put me on notice. He wanted cash if I wrote about his antics. It doesn’t matter anyway; he uses an alias most of the time - Captain America. So, when the aroma started waffling through his house, Captain America went into action. He slipped into his blue tights and brought out a have-a-heart trap. It worked. Five baby skunks were captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay with the rest of the terrorists. But, the problem wasn’t solved. Mama was still around and was too smart to stroll into a wire cage for a dab of peanut butter. Day after day, she left behind a little reminder that she’d found a home.

That’s when Plan B went into effect. Captain America loaded up on mothballs and scattered them under the porch. Now, his house was invaded by the delightful olfactory combination of skunk scent and mothballs. Not exactly the outcome he’d promised his wife. Then came Plan C. He hooked up an old radio, turned up the volume and placed it on top of the mothballs. The skunk loved it. Apparently she’s a fan of country music. So, Captain America tuned the radio so it only produced static. That didn’t work out so hot either. The static was intermittent. Every time someone walked by the house their presence affected the tuning and the radio started blaring pop music. Mama skunk was serenaded by Lady Gaga, and people walking by were startled by music coming out of thin air. 

That’s when Plan D and E were launched, simultaneously – boards were set around the porch to block ingress and egress and bright lights were wired up. The boards were nothing more than a nuisance to Mama Skunk; she simply pushed them aside. But, the bright lights, all four hundred watts, did her in. She moved on to greener pastures. Captain America declared victory! Now, he’s got to figure out how to pay his giant-sized electric bill. It’s really building up since this tactic only works as long as the lights stay put. The minute he shuts them off, she will be right back.

If you are among the people who were startled by the glow coming from under Captain America’s porch while strolling through the village, you can relax; it isn’t an alien spacecraft hiding under his porch; it’s just the aftermath of a brutal skunk war. Eventually, the whole village will be lit this way because the skunk will move from house to house until she finds a dark place to call home. Streetlights will no longer be needed; our taxes will go down, and we’ll owe it all to Captain America and the great skunk war of 2011.  

The Old Coot is a distracted driver.

Published August 17, 2011

I was riding around in my 34 year-old MG the other day. Don’t be impressed. It’s nothing special, just an old friend. I only take it out in good weather. The top goes down in May and stays down. It’s an old coot thing that often finds me racing home with a rain-splattered windshield. Needless to say, it spends a lot of time in the garage. But, the other day the sun came out and so did my British racing green MG with an old coot at the wheel. The car is a lot like me: old, quirky and slow to start. It creaks when it moves and you never know when it’s going to conk out.   

It does have a serious flaw; it doesn’t have a beer can holder. That’s what people from my generation called cup holders when they first started showing up in cars. You could drive around and sip on a cold “Bud” on a hot day back then. Get caught with an open beer can today and you’re in big trouble. With the law! With society!

I only take coffee with me when I go for a ride these days, but it’s still a challenge in my old MG. I either hold it between my knees or balance it on a flat spot behind the gearshift. Neither method works very well; I’m constantly tending to it. I’m more distracted than someone sending text messages. But, I don’t have it as bad as some people. I only have a single cup to keep an eye on. I see a lot of drivers with a bigger challenge. They have plenty of cup holders for their drinks, but they don’t have a place for their super sized meal from McDonald’s, forcing them to do what I do with my coffee, juggle it around on their lap or any flat surface within reach. I’m sure you’ve seen them; their dashboards look like a buffet table at an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. They can barely see out the window. It takes skill and agility to eat on the run. Especially, with a GPS yelling at you, a ringing cell phone, a wadded up Old Coot article on the empty seat that ticked you off and two kids in the back seat screaming because the DVD player stopped working.

It won’t be a problem for long. Several companies are working on a self-driving car. The Google Corporation is leading the way. (Yes, the same company that finds answers to all your questions on the Internet). Their test car has been spotted in the San Francisco area: sailing along the Pacific Coast Highway, weaving down Lombard Street, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and tooling around Lake Tahoe. Some people are horrified at the prospect of driving on a road with cars piloted by computers. Not me! It’s the drivers that are texting, munching and yelling at their kids that I’m afraid of. Or, even worse, a brother old coot coming up on my bumper, waving his fist and yelling at a talk show host on his radio. If this happens to you, it won’t be me riding your bumper. I have enough trouble keeping my coffee container under control.

The great dinosaur expedition. (a 1950’s Southside adventure)

A Binghamton Press Sunday feature article – August 21, 2011

“Look! A baby dinosaur skull!” I didn’t know it when John Almy announced his discovery, but before the day was over, I’d regret ever becoming a dinosaur hunter. He was the new kid on the block. This was his first venture into the hills on the south side of Binghamton that hovered above our new, 2-block, Denton and Chadwick Road neighborhood. Woody (Sherwood Walls) and I were old pros. We’d been scouting the nearby hills for three years, ever since we’d turned five and were allowed to venture beyond the confines of the block. Our release came when we started school at Longfellow Elementary on Pennsylvania Avenue. “If we’re old enough to walk to school, we’re old enough to explore the big woods,” we argued. And much to our surprise, we were allowed to venture forth. It was the 1950’s. Kids had a lot more freedom back then.  

We put aside our cap pistols and bow & arrow sets, deciding that playing cowboys & Indians was for little kids. We strapped knapsacks on our backs (brought home from WWII by our fathers and uncles), loaded them with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies, tied canteens filled with metal tinged milk to our belts and headed for the summit of the mountain in a quest for dinosaur bones. Twenty minutes later we crashed down on the first of three seldom used roads that traversed the hillside in long switchbacks that made a gradual assent to an aging farm-estate at the top. We were exhausted. It was a steep climb by the route we took, straight up. An even steeper and longer climb lay ahead. Two sandwiches and half of our milk supply disappeared before we started climbing again.

We eventually made it to the top, making sure to stay far away from the “haunted” house. It was run down and creepy; the old guy who lived in it hated kids and would race out the door with a shotgun if he spotted you messing around. That was the rumor, anyhow. It was barely a working farm anymore. There were some fenced in pastures. But, they were overgrown and only a cow or two was in evidence. We found an area in one of the deserted pastures with a dozen or so large mounds. We were sure they contained the remains of T-rex and his smaller relatives. We crawled under a rusted bob wire fence and started digging. We used Army-issued, folding shovels, “borrowed” from my grandfather’s attic.

Nothing! That’s what two hours of hard labor got us. We did unearth some bonelike fragments but they turned out to be old tree roots. We slunk back down the hill and through the neighborhood, passing the Almy family’s brand new house. Johnny was in the front yard and asked where we’d been. “Dinosaur bone hunting,” Woody grumbled. “We didn’t find any, but we’re going again tomorrow. Wanna go with us?”  So, bright and early the next morning, we set off on the hunt, 3 boys, 6 peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, a dozen chocolate chip cookies, a canteen of milk and my dog, Topper. So named, because he was the first of his six siblings to make it to the top of the basement stairs.

This time we went to the other side of the mountain, further to the west, the section that Powder House Road girds on one side and Hawthorne Road on the other. Back in those days, Hawthorne Road followed the creek all the way over the rise and connected with Powder House Road, about two miles from Vestal Ave. Now it’s only three blocks long, cut off to make way for the subdivisions that started popping up in the early sixties. We found a promising area on a level spot halfway up the hill. We split up and started searching. We’d only been at it for a few minutes when Johnny yelled out those fateful words, “Look! A baby dinosaur skull!” We circled it, and couldn’t believe our eyes. It looked exactly like the head of a miniature T-rex. Woody pushed at it with a stick and a swarm of maggots squirmed out. A horrible odor engulfed us. But we were not deterred. Johnny stuck a stick in the eye socket and we escorted the skull to the creek and plunked it down. The water washed through it, sending hundreds of maggots (and an ugly gray wad of gunk) downstream.

We looked like hunters on an African safari as Woody and Johnny shouldered a long pole with the head hanging from the center while I led the parade. Mr. Almy was in his back yard as we broke through the underbrush and marched in with our dinosaur trophy. He took one look and ordered us to drop it. Then, he rushed us over to the hose and started scrubbing us down with ice cold water and yellow laundry soap. But it was too late. We were already turning green from spending the past two hours messing around with a rotting deer skull. It took twenty-four hours for the unrelenting waves of nausea to ebb. I was one sick dinosaur hunter. My episodes of heaving and stomach cramps didn’t stop until my father got some coke syrup from the soda fountain in Armand Emma’s drug store on the corner of Vestal Ave. and South Washington Street.

We brought back out our cowboy & Indian gear, deciding it wasn’t such a “little kid” pastime after all, especially when we added BB guns and hunting knives to the mix. Even with the possibility of shooting out an eye, it was a lot safer reliving the days of the old west on South Mountain than it was hunting for dinosaur bones.

The Old Coot knows which way the wind blows.

Published August 24, 2011

I did it! I broke my record. I went one year and eleven months without going into a rant over the weather alerts on TV. My old record was one year, two months. It was the Antiques Roadshow that put me over the edge this time. The appraiser on the show was examining a Red Ryder BB gun from the 1940’s. It looked just like the one hanging in my garage that I’ve had since I was a kid. Just as he got to the good part, the thousands of dollars I could get for it, he was drowned out by a horrible squawk, followed by a robotic voice warning of a thunderstorm headed our way. Not a tornado! Not a hurricane! Not a tsunami! But, a common, garden-variety thunderstorm.

Now I’ll never know if my Red Ryder will put me on easy street. More than likely, it will get me thrown in jail because I feel like charging into the US Weather Service headquarters and shooting up the place with it. Chicken Little (my name for the US Weather Service) is in control of the airwaves, and the sky is falling in their world.  It started innocently enough, like most bureaucratic programs do, with the introduction of the Emergency Broadcasting System in 1963. It gave the president the power to interrupt TV and radio broadcasts in case of war, threat of war or a grave national crisis. Then the bureaucrats got involved and expanded it to cover weather hazards and civil emergencies. The name of the system was changed in 1997 to the Emergency Alert System. Several agencies fought for control and it ended up in the hands of three of them: FEMA, the Federal Communication Commission and the National Weather Service. It’s a horrible way to run things, by committee. It’s as bad as trying to get three old coots to decide where to go for the early bird special. 

The power to control TV has proved too much for the Weather service; they treat every anomaly as an emergency and come marching across our screens, a white knight on a horse to the rescue.  The slightest hot spell, cold snap, snow fall or thunder rumble is enough to get them going. And, they treat us as though we are too stupid to know what to do. Too stupid to come in out of the rain.  

“What’s the big deal,” you ask. “They are just trying to keep us safe.” It is a big deal. Giving them control of TV and radio was just the beginning. The next step is underway in the Washington D.C. and New York City areas. They have gained control of the cell phone systems there and plan to expand across the country over the next several years. The big three wireless networks handed over the reins without a peep. Even if Chicken Little starts out by just warning of tornados and violent weather, she will eventually alert us to everyday things. - “Put on your sun screen!” – “Watch those calories!” – “Don’t Jay-walk.”  It will turn us into Pavlov dogs, cowering in fear every time we hear that awful squawk. Chicken Little is getting louder!

Old Coot’s speak clearly.

Published August 31, 2011

I’m just plain stupid! The longer I’m around the more evident it becomes. The latest proof came in the form of a notice from the organization that manages my retirement fund. It started with a promise of understandability – PLAIN LANGUAGE - The Summary of Material Modifications (SMM) plan is a “PLAIN LANGUAGE” document that describes the plan amendment(s) to the Plan and provides the accompanying change(s) to the Summary Plan Description (“SPD”). I read it three times and finally got it, sort of. I then plowed into the actual document, proving once again just how stupid I am.

I flunked out on the first sentence – The Plan will not pay shutdown or other unpredictable contingent benefits, if any are provided, if the Plan’s Adjusted Funding Target Attainment Percentage (“AFTAP”) is (i) less than 60%, or (ii) would be less than 60%…… That’s where I quit, not even half way through the first sentence in the first paragraph with 11 more paragraphs to go. If this was the plain language version I can’t imagine what the fancy language version would be. I don’t know why I’m surprised. The plain language law that was passed by congress in 1980, forcing government agencies and businesses to provide information to consumers in plain language was itself unreadable, and hundreds of pages long.

They should have gone about it in another way – mandated that all government and business communications be written in old coot language. Take, for example, the plain language document explaining the changes in my retirement funding. If it was put in old coot language it would simply have said – “This info is something we’re forced to send you; we’re going to mess with your retirement fund and there is nothing you can do about it!” Sincerely yours …….

Life would be so much easier with things written in old coot language. And not just communications from business and government agencies. It would be great if the politicians were forced to have their words converted to “old coot language” too. How about the ever-favorite statement from politicians  – “The American people want bla bla bla.” It’s never what the American people want; it’s what the politician wants. They’ve used that phrase lately to claim we want higher taxes and less benefits. Why would anyone in their right mind want to give that crowd more money to squander; yet you hear them say it’s what the American people want all the time. The old coot language would never let that phrase pass through the filter. They’d have to tell the truth. That’s what the American people really want it!

July, 2011 Old Coot articles

The Bloods. The Crips. And, now the Old Coots!

Published July 6, 2011

It’s gang warfare! The Bloods & the Crips have been battling it out for fifty years. Both gangs sprung up in the 1960’s, in Los Angeles. They’ve spread their mayhem across the country and around the world. Even, as we found out last year on a Caribbean cruise, on the tiny Caribbean Island of St. Lucia. We were more than surprised when our tour guide complained that ten teenagers were killed in the previous 12 months in fights between the Bloods and Crips.

Now, a third gang is emerging, the Old Coot gang. The Bloods and Crips do it for territory, for power. The old coot gang is doing it for memory. None of us have one, a complete and functioning one anyhow. But, when we gang up, watch out. Not only can we tell you who is president of the United States; we can tell you who starred in “Titanic.” Sometimes, we can even come up with today’s date. Maybe not the year, though. We are a power to recon with when we gather in numbers, but when we are alone, we’re confused, bewildered, memory challenged and usually muttering to ourselves, “What was that guys name?” But, not anymore.  Thanks to modern technology

Like the Bloods and the Crips, we ‘re always armed. They carry guns and knives; we carry “smart” phones. We never would have figured out how to use them if we hadn’t done it as a gang. Mine cost $24, but it’s worth thousands more. It keeps me safe (and smart) when I’m out in the world on my own. If something comes up that I want to remember, I open the menu, go to the voice recorder, mumble into it, and then continue on my merry way. I never forget to retrieve the message because I changed the wallpaper from a picture of a south sea island to a large print text message that says, “LOOK AT THE VOICE RECORDER STUPID!” It’s right in front of me every time I use the phone.

I use the camera function the same way. If I see something I’d like to remember, I take a picture. Like, I did as I was coming down Mountain Road the other day. There was a dead snake in the middle of the lane. A rattlesnake! I took a picture and attached it to an e-mail to Carole LaPlante. She’s a wildlife rehabilitator and storehouse of information. “What kind of snake is this, in the attached picture?” I wrote. “It looks like a rattler to me. My wife says it’s a milk snake.” Her response, “You didn’t attach anything, you old coot! Try again.” So, I did. It turned out my wife was right (as always); it was a common milk snake. I never should have checked. My story sounded so much better when I went around telling (and boring) everybody with my report on the rattlesnake nest on Mountain Road. Now, I have nothing interesting to say, even my old coot gang has turned on me. They renamed me, “Rattlesnake.”

The Old Coot mourns the loss of chocolate milk.

Published July 13, 2011

It’s the law! “No chocolate milk!” Los Angeles is the latest public school to ban this evil, dark liquid, placing it on a growing list of taboos, right up there with tobacco, alcohol and drugs. It’s another salvo in the war on obesity. “It’s why kids are fat,” according to public officials implementing the new ban. L.A. joins the District of Columbia, Boulder Valley, Colo. and Berkley, Calif. as the first schools in the nation to only serve plain milk in school cafeterias. Yet, they all continue to sell fruit juices that contain more sugar and more calories.  

It pained me to the quick when I learned of the “No Chocolate Milk” policy. Chocolate milk was the highlight of my day, starting in 7^th grade when I moved on from my neighborhood school, where I walked home every day for lunch, to junior high where I ate in the cafeteria. Chocolate milk wasn’t on my mother’s menu. My parents wouldn’t spring for such a luxury, though they did allow us to make our own every once in a while, dumping globs of Hershey’s chocolate syrup into a glass of whole milk. Our homemade concoction never measured up to the variety that came from the dairy. I was amazed on my first day in 7^th grade when I spotted chocolate milk in the school cafeteria, on the milk tray right next to the cashier – 10 cents for a pint of regular milk, 12 cents for chocolate. My day in prison took on a new dimension. For a 2-cent premium, there was a reason to endure the Math, History, English and Latin classes that came before lunch. Chocolate milk and gym class, the only highlights in my day in prison. 

But, it won’t work! It never does. Politicians ban stuff and people find a way to get it. Even kids. There will be a legion of shady characters in long trench coats all around the L.A. schools, saying, “Psst, hey kid, I’ve got some chocolate milk for sale. It’s the good stuff. $5 a pint.” Kids will try to smuggle it into school in thermos bottles wrapped in gym shorts and stuffed into their book bags. Guards will be stationed at the entrance to check bags and pat down the students. It will be as bad as the ordeal you go through to get on an airplane. Delivery trucks carrying chocolate milk will be hijacked. Speakeasies will open up in the back rooms of soda fountains. A whole new crime war will be launched. This one, focused on chocolate milk. I’d hate to be a “cafeteria lady” when the 688,000 students in the L.A. school system go back to school this fall and find out that chocolate milk is no longer on the menu. It will be worse than a bunch of old coots finding out that the early bird special has been outlawed.

The Old Coot is a bubble person.

Published July 20, 2011

“Think outside the box!” You hear this all the time. It’s a rouse, aimed at getting you to agree with someone, a not so subtle suggestion that you’re stuck in your ways, a dinosaur. I don’t get it. What box? I think in a rounded bubble, not a box. If you read the comics (funnies, to people my age), you know that characters in the strips have bubbles floating above their heads: it shows what they are thinking. It’s the people that tell us to think outside the box that are the dinosaurs. I tell them, “I’m thinking outside the bubble, why don’t you join me?”

These “outside the box people” are the ones who created the box in the first place. They live in a world of square corners. But, to us bubble people, corners should be curved, especially street corners. My car can’t perform a square turn, yet every time I turn right or left I’m forced to try. The road should curve at the corner. But, box people like straight lines. It’s why trucks navigating the intersection at North and Main in Owego run up over the curb and onto the sidewalk.

Round corners would make it a lot easier for the trucks, for pedestrians too. It doesn’t matter to me. I already round off the corners. Usually, it’s when I’m on foot, but once in a while when I’m in the car, daydreaming or thinking outside my bubble. If it’s your lawn I cross when I round a corner, I apologize. My wife doesn’t cut across. She walks to the corner, makes a sharp, military left or right and catches up with me half way down the block. It’s a perfect system for the two of us. I’m a slow, nosy (gawking) walker; she goes at a fast clip. It’s the square corners that let me keep pace.

The State DOT doesn’t like my “round corner” suggestion. They say pedestrian safety is first and foremost in intersection design, and claim that round corners would make it unsafe for people to cross the street. I don’t cross at corners anyway, nobody should. It’s too dangerous. It used to be safe, but when the turn right on red after “stopping” law transformed into the turn right on red after “stepping” (on the gas) law, getting across the street took on a whole new dimension, sort of like running with the bulls in Pamplona. The only safe place to cross is 25 feet down from the corner. Round corners would put you in the perfect spot to cross, but it won’t ever happen. The people in charge have a box mentality; they love square corners and straight lines. They tell us to think outside the box. But, us bubble thinkers know the box people are the ones trapped in a rigid thinking pattern. It would burst their “box” if they found out!

The Old Coot learns to put things off.

Published July 27, 2011

People are wrong! They think old coots are forgetful. It’s not true; our memories are pretty good, but we do suffer from a chronic illness that makes us appear forgetful. It’s called “the do-it-right-now” syndrome. It’s the exact opposite of the syndrome we had when we were teenagers. I know; it’s hard to believe that old coots like us were ever teenagers, but we were. And, just like today’s teens, we suffered from “the put-it-off-until-the last-minute” syndrome back then. Now, we’ve gone the opposite way.

We walk into the living room to get the paper and spot a smudge on the mirror. Our “do it right now” disease sends us back into the kitchen to get the Windex and a paper towel. But, on the way, a hairball on the rug attracts our attention. We bend over to pick it up and the trip to the kitchen for window cleaner flies right out of our head. “Where’s the paper?” our wife asks when we pass her on our way to the garbage can. “Right here,” we reply, and hold out the hairball.

This happens all through the day. Whenever we go to do something, the “do it right now” syndrome sends us off in another direction. We never finish anything. We’re as bad as the teenagers who never start anything. Thank goodness for the generations in between; they get things done. But, you have to give us credit, teenagers and old coots alike; we have good intentions.

I went to the Betty Ford Clinic to see if I could beat my addiction. It was tough! They made me go cold turkey. I spent the first week in a simulated house. They sent me to the front door to get the mail. They had distractions set up all along the way. Two aides walked with me, one on each side. When I reached for a jacket that was lying on the floor, one of the aides slapped my hand with a ruler; it did the trick. The nuns in my catechism class subjected me to this behavior adjustment technique when I was a kid. They used it to make me (and the rest of the class) pay attention and to drive the lessons into my thick skull. I thought I had built up an immunity to it, but when the Betty Ford aides whacked my hand with a ruler, I felt like I was 10 years old again. I pulled my hand away from the jacket and shrieked. It took three days of intense treatment, but I’m completely cured. My wife asked me to go into the living room and get the paper the other day. I said, “Sure! In a minute.” My teenage grandson piped up and said, “Same here!”

June, 2011 Old Coot Articles

The Old Coot can buy it.

Published June 1, 2011

The buying techniques of men and women are very different! There, I’ve stepped into the abyss again, to try and explain yet another difference between men and women. In the 1950’s, pundits called it the battle of the sexes, in the 1970’s and 80’s we tried to blur the lines, to claim there weren’t any differences. Then the truth was trotted back out and we learned that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. So, I guess it’s safe for an old coot to make social commentary on the differences in the buying habits of men and women.

I don’t know much about the specifics of women’s shopping habits to tell the truth. I know it’s a continuous process, involves discounts, coupons and comparison-shopping. And, never is consummated until the price of an item is at the lowest point possible. “It would almost be a sin not to buy it!” The husband is never told how much something costs. He’s only told how much money was saved. It’s a technique that’s been perfected by women.

Men go a different route. They bring in poor “Uncle Fred,” their ace in the hole when buying an expensive item that they have no right to buy without a family conference. Most boats are bought this way. “Honey, now before you get mad, I didn’t buy the 26 foot cabin cruiser by myself, Uncle Fred went in on it with me!” What can she say? Uncle Fred is her favorite uncle. And to cinch the deal, the husband says, “I’m naming the boat after you!” The same thing happens with motor homes, cottages and hunting camps. They are always bought with Uncle Fred and named after their wives.

She’s never told that poor Uncle Fred was bullied into the joint purchase, and only gave in when his share was negotiated down to 1%. No, men never buy expensive items (cars excluded) without a partner. If it isn’t uncle Fred, it’s Jim-next-door. Jim-next-door is brought in on things that can be shared: a pool table, a 55 inch TV for the man cave in the garage, a lawn tractor, chain saw – anything that’s somewhat extravagant and seldom used. “I don’t know why you’re upset with the (log splitter, 40 foot ladder, lawn roller, you fill in the blank), I bought it with Jim-next-door.

The final straw in men’s buying techniques, is the schmooze that comes at the end of the purchase discussion. After the wife asks, “If Uncle Fred and Jim-next-door are in on all these purchases, why is everything in our garage?” Now comes the schmooze, at least when dealing with an Alpha Male purchaser, “Because their wives aren’t as hip as you, dear!”

The Old Coot can’t handle it!

Published June 8, 2011

This is one of those, “You know you’re an old coot if you (fill in the blank),” things. I had a battle with a shower faucet the other day. One of those joy stick doohickeys, where a single handle controls the temperature and flow rate. I can never get it to do what I want. When I try to nudge the water a tiny bit hotter, I scald myself. When I want to go the other way, a blast from the Arctic sends my heart into fibrillation. I know in theory how this mechanism should work: push forward for more force and to the right or left for hot or cold. Theory is wonderful. Real world is a disaster, for me anyhow.

I don’t know how long these things have been around. Probably decades. Alfred Modem invented the device before World War II.  I’ve avoided them like the plague, but they’re all over the place. I wonder about the genesis. What was so bad about a separate cold and hot water knob? A set up where you had perfect temperature control. If the flow was a little on the hot side, you made a minor adjustment to either knob, that was it. You could even do it with your toe when the bath water started to cool down. When I try this with a joystick faucet, the temperature shoots all over the place. First, I push to the right and the water goes cold. I jerk the handle to the left to compensate and steam pours out. I’m OK at getting all hot or all cold, but the delicate balance of luke warm or semi-hot eludes me. I know I just need to push it a slight bit, a right-ish or left-ish maneuver but the “ish” part gets me every time.

It reminds me of when I was 14 and driving my father’s car back and forth in the driveway, never sure what gear I would get when I moved the shift lever. Every once in a while I had to run it around the block because I couldn’t find reverse. It’s the same with the joystick. I end up “going around the block.” I’m starting to get real concerned. These controls are all over the place, not just in sinks and showers. The kids that grew up playing video games (and parents who played with them) are now old enough to be making the design decisions for many products. They have put the joysticks on tractors, riding lawn mowers and a whole slew of devices. The steering wheel is being phased out, just like the two knob sink and shower faucet. Eventually, I’ll really be sunk. If I don’t   get the “ish” part down pat before they put them in cars, I’ll end up like the Corvair, unsafe at any speed!

The Old Coot takes “dad” for a ride.

Published June 15, 2011

I took my father for a ride the other day. He died in 1970 but it doesn’t stop him from showing up every year around Father’s Day. To kid me about those ugly ties I gave him when I was a kid. He was the old coot then; now it’s my turn. He was a car nut. He was there when the Model T rolled into automobile showrooms across the country. He was an electronic and camera nut too. He grew up when electric lights and radios first started showing up in peoples’ houses. And, he spent his entire working life designing cameras. I like to show him all the new gadgets when he pops in for an update. This year I showed off the stuff in a modern car.

He was what the marketing people call an “early adopter” – a consumer who wants the latest thing on the market. He proved it in 1958. He bought an Edsel the day they went on sale. I think it was the automatic transmission controls in the center of the steering wheel that caught his attention. There were five push buttons in the hub, one for each gear: Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Low. It had a lot of other gadgets too: a power seat, a power antenna and a radio with a “seek” button. It could find any AM station within range. (There weren’t any FM stations, at least not where we lived.) The car didn’t have air conditioning. Very few did in this part of the country. A good heater was more important. It didn’t have power windows either. You could get them, but he was too thrifty (cheap) to indulge in such a luxury.

The Edsel didn’t have any gages. Just a speedometer. It had “idiot” lights instead. He hated them. Everybody did, but all the cars had them. It was Detroit’s, “We know best,” attitude that pawned off this technology on car buyers of the day. A light came on if your radiator was about to overheat or if the oil pressure dropped to a dangerous level. You didn’t get to monitor things in real time. You were treated like an “idiot,” incapable of monitoring the status of a running automobile.

As we drove along, I pointed out all the cool features on my state-of-the art automobile. I’ve got a gage for just about everything, a computer screen that tells me how many miles I can go before I need to fuel up and what my gas mileage is. Plus a lot more! He was startled when the door locks engaged as we started to move. And, then again when the wipers came on after we went through a puddle and a few drops of water splashed on the windshield. 

I tried to distract him by focusing back on the neat gadgets on the dash. He was impressed at first, but little by little his perspective shifted to skepticism as he learned how much the car did on its own. When the GPS yelled, “Turn around! Go back!” he really became dismayed. I turned on the radio to play a Frank Sinatra CD, determined to win back his approval. He asked why the clock was off by an hour. I explained it was on standard time. Then, I confessed that I didn’t know how to set it without reading through the 63-page radio manual on my computer. He gave me a funny look. All of a sudden his 1958 Edsel didn’t seem so primitive, even with the idiot lights. At least he was in control. Next year I won’t try to show off so much.  Maybe I’ll buy an ugly tie that says, “Happy Father’s Day!”

The Great Swamp War.

Published in The Binghamton Press, June 19, 2011

The “Great Swamp War” took place in the autumn of 1954. The fur flew in a hidden marsh on the south side of Binghamton. Woody (Sherwood) Walls and I stumbled onto (and almost into) the swamp by accident. We were exploring a dense woodlot in the area where MacArthur School now sits. The stand of trees was so thick that when we broke through we nearly tumbled into the murky, black water that collected in this low spot on its journey from the hills above Denton and Chadwick Roads to the Susquehanna River. For years we played sandlot football and baseball in the “Flats,” as we called this area between Vestal Avenue and the river. Archibald MacArthur donated the plot to the City for public use. He owned The Boston Store at one time; it became Fowlers, and is now Boscovs. An extensive complex of temporary veteran houses was also built on the site, stretching along the north side of Vestal Avenue, from Brookfield to Denton Roads. We never suspected a swamp lay hidden in the middle of the woodlot on the eastern end of the plot. 

We were two surprised explorers when we broke through the undergrowth and saw the open expanse of water, hidden from us all our lives, all 11 years. A raft beckoned from the other side, so we worked our way to it along the muddy shoreline and hopped on. Water crept over the surface of the raft, soaking first, our sneakers (PF Flyers, of course) and then the bottom of our pant legs. The raft floated all right, but did it three inches below the surface of the water. If anyone had seen us on our maiden voyage, they might have thought they were witnessing a miracle, two boys walking on water. We maneuvered around the swamp, pushing the raft with poles. The water was only a foot or two deep. It was yet another perfect venue for two kids messing around in the 50’s. All the elements were right: water, woods and no adult supervision. The latter, was a major benefit of growing up in that era. Kids were allowed to explore their world. And we did! Nobody had to yell at us to go out and play. We had to be yelled at to come in.

Binghamton was a boomtown back then, busting at the seams. The veteran houses in the flats were temporary, but it took ten years for the building boom to catch up with the need. The structures weren’t razed until the mid fifties, a few years before Binghamton’s population peaked at 85,000. The boom gave us an endless supply of construction materials. We put them to good use, building tree huts, soapbox racers and now, an armada of rafts. A pile of scrap lumber was all we needed to improve on the seaworthiness of the raft that we’d gotten soaked on. A fresh pile lay next to a new house going up across the street from our partner in crime, Warren Brooks. Two nights later, it lay hidden in the woodlot next to the swamp.

We hammered and sawed and three crude looking rafts emerged. We pushed off from shore and transformed into Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Injun Jim. When that got old, we took turns being pirates attacking the Spanish Armada. It was a delightful ten days, but then word got out. Our secret swamp was discovered and confiscated by a gang of older kids from an adjacent neighborhood. But not without a fight. It was a battle to the death on the high seas. That’s what it seemed like. Actually, it was three eleven-year olds getting bumped into the water by some older kids with longer poles and stronger arms. We were banished; the swamp was theirs. We never signed a peace treaty, so every once in a while we snuck back, making sure the bullies were elsewhere. But it was never the same. Eventually, an even bigger bully came along, the State Highway Department. The trees were cut down; the swamp was drained and construction of the Vestal Parkway was started. Lew Caster lost his gas station at the bottom of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Red Robin Diner lost its visibility (eventually moving to Johnson City) and we lost our swamp. The parkway opened in November of 1956, forever changing the landscape and cutting off the Flats from the river. It’s just another reason why old coots like me, hate progress.

The Old Coot helps a new recruit.

Published June 22, 2011

I took a bike ride the other day. The Dave Franz quint-annual birthday ride (I had to look it up too; it means every five years). Dave turned 55 this year. I like to help youngsters through the aging milestones. I bet when Dave was 18 he never thought he’d be 55. But, time flies, and I was there to help him adjust to his inevitable march to old-cootdum. .

I was also there when he turned 50. We peddled out of the CVS parking lot on a 50-mile celebration ride, one mile for each year of his visit to planet earth. I made it to the edge of the parking lot. It was a little chilly and rain was in the forecast so I said goodbye and waved him on his way. He and his friend Bob kept going. This year I promised to stay till the end, the whole 55. The question was, “55 what?” Miles were out of the question. Oh sure, I probably could do it, but Dave would become so frustrated with my turtle-like pace he’d blow a gasket. Dave looked for an alternative measure, a coot-friendly measure. Then along came the Kentucky Derby, 10 furlongs, 1.25 miles. A light bulb when off in Dave’s head. Furlongs were the answer. “We’ll go 55 furlongs!” he exclaimed. “The old coot should be able to do that.”

So, we did! Dave and the old coot. Last Friday. The crowd assembled at Draper Park on Front Street. Both of them. We hopped on our bikes. Dave hopped; I lumbered awkwardly. We headed north on Route 96. I had as much trouble negotiating the intersection at Main and North as the big rigs do. I clipped the curb in front of Shear Paradise and then sailed through a red light by John’s Fine Foods. I wanted to show Dave first hand, that old coots don’t obey traffic laws. He was out of control: stopping for lights, giving hand signals when he turned right or left. It was embarrassing. The only hand signal old coots use can’t be discussed in a family-friendly paper. We use it when someone tries to cut us off. 

I had trouble getting up the hill under the RR track, but I found a hidden reserve of energy when a big fracking tanker truck blasted his air horn, sending me to the summit in record time. We continued along Route 96 without further incident, crossed Turner’s Bridge and were about to pass Metro’s Restaurant when my bike veered into the parking lot. Dave, riding ahead, glanced back; a puzzled look crossed his face as I dismounted and headed for the door. I waved for him to follow me. He parked his bike, took off his helmet and joined me at the side entrance. I glanced down at his helmet and gave him a dirty look. Old coots don’t wear helmets! I turned to go in the door, but it was locked! Metro’s was closed. I was puzzled. It was a little after three, dinnertime for people my age. Early bird special time, anyhow. We knocked and knocked, hoping someone would let us in, but we finally had to give up.

We hopped on our bikes and grudgingly hit the road. The thought of an ice-cold adult beverage was the only thing that had kept me going. Now, I was in a funk. We still had 25 furlongs left. Dave was optimistic. He led the way north on Route 96 and turned onto Glen Mary Drive. Ten minutes later we pulled up to the Barleycorn. Our goal accomplished, all 55 furlongs, 1 for each of Dave’s 55 years. (6.875 miles in human terms) Dave was one step closer to becoming an old coot. He wanted to go into the Barleycorn to celebrate, but I begged off. I needed a nap.

The Old Coot had a bad spell.

Published June 29, 2011

The National Spelling Bee ended many weeks ago, but it’s taken me this long to get over it. A 14-year-old girl from Pennsylvania won by spelling a word I never heard of. A word nobody ever heard of: cymotrichous. It means - having wavy hair, as in, “You will know it’s Chris at the Elks flea market. She’s the cymotrichous vender selling decorated doll heads. The contest was carried on the ESPN sports channel, elevating it to the level of championship basketball or football. That’s a good thing, putting the spotlight on intellectual prowess for a change. But, for those of us who are spelling challenged, it just served to emphasize our lack of talent. 

I can still remember my first spelling bee. It was in third grade. I was knocked out in the first round. “Spell city,” Mrs. White challenged, as I stood at my desk on the boy’s side of the room. I chuckled to myself, “She’s trying to trick me. She thinks I’ll capitalize it.” It was a cocky eight year old that boldly sounded out the letters in his head and then released them to the class, “City – C-I-T-E!” How else would one spell it? C-I-T followed by a long E. The laughter that erupted signaled my fate; I sat down knowing I’d spelled it wrong. I’d probably been in the cloakroom when Mrs. White taught us about words that sound like they end in E but really end in Y. I missed a lot of things while I was in the cloakroom doing time for a minor crime. Even more when I was sent out in the hall or to the principal’s office. I did better when my misdeeds placed me at the front of the room facing the black board. I could at least hear what was going on in class. I may have bombed out on the spelling bee, but the day wasn’t a total loss. I won the dodge ball game at recess.

The winner of the National Spelling Bee won $30,000 in cash, a $15,000 US savings bond, a $5,000 scholarship and other prizes. The winner in Mrs. White’s third grade class, Alex (Alexandra) Palmer, won the “ink” privilege, the first kid in class to use ink. Ours was an envious watch as Mrs. White presented her with a wooden pen point holder, a small round box of pen points, a blotter with a local insurance agency logo inscribed on it and a small wipe rag. Then, came the coup de grãce, she filled Alex’s ink well with black ink from a quart bottle with a snorkel filler on top. The inkwell was in the upper right corner of the desk; Alex was left-handed. She dribbled ink all over her paper on her first try. It pleased us losers to no end.

By the end of the year, we were all better spellers. And, we all were writing with ink. I came home every day with the proof: ink stained fingers and ink stained clothes. My test papers were covered with black blobs as well. But, I knew how to spell city. I even learned to spell the longest word in the English language – antidisestablishmentarianism. It’s slipped down the scale since then. Now it’s only the seventh longest word.  A few kids in my 3^rd grade class had wavy hair, but we never called them cymotrichous. We called them girls. 

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