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.
