SAugust 2012 articles

The Old Coot is a stranger here.

Published August 1, 2012

 

I rode my bicycle through the school grounds the other day. It was a bright and sunny, Saturday afternoon. The swings behind the elementary school were empty, the basketball court too. All seven tennis courts sat silent. I took a few laps around the perimeter fence and found two fuzzy balls, but still no people. A lone woman was working the quarter mile track in the football stadium, passing empty stands and silent public address speakers.

 

The baseball field nearby told a different tale. Two dozen boys of summer hurled hard balls and swung metal bats, the clanks echoing off the hills. Their uniforms matched and professional umpires made the calls. A pick-up game this was not. It was an organized event, as are most athletic activities these days.

 

I crossed the creek to a cluster of baseball diamonds in what was once a productive cornfield. Silence was all it produced this day. No, “Go team go!” from the stands. No, “Come on pitcher; get that batter!” from the outfield. It was a baseball graveyard this warm sunny afternoon.

 

My next stop was the swimming pool. “Surely,” I thought, “It will be crowded. A place to beat the heat.” But no! The “maximum capacity” listed on a sign by the door was not an issue today. Less than a dozen swimmer’s arms broke the surface. The story was the same on the practice soccer and lacrosse fields. No one was to be seen! A chill ran down my spine; perspiration broke across my forehead. Had I entered the Twilight Zone? Was Rod Serling about to introduce a new episode? One, where an old coot was in his basement when a neutron bomb vaporized the populace in a tiny upstate village?

 

I pedaled hard and I pedaled fast, racing along the dyke bordering the creek toward a chorus of cheers and jeers, boos and yeas. The girls of summer were slugging soft balls on two Little League fields. The other three stood empty. Parents and siblings were scattered here and there. In the stands and in the shade. The score was kept, the statistics too. For this was an organized outing, not like when we grew up, me and you.

 

Through the “Flats” I rode. My head in a puzzle. No hose was used to squirt a friend – No rope was jumped to a cadenced chant. The skates sat silent, the trikes and scooters too. For this was a ghost town I did not know. Then I looked up. And saw the answer! A giant metallic snake had taken over our town. It slunk along the pole line and probed its way into every house. Trapping the kids, and exiling an old coot in a strange new land. Then I remembered, I better get home. The Lawrence Welk reruns were on at four.

 

The Old Coot can outrun a bear?

Published August 8, 2012

 

The phone rang the other day. It was a call from a reader just starting life as an old coot. He told me he spent the entire day playing golf with his shirt on inside out. None of his buddies said a word. He thought he heard a few snickers when he walked to the tee, especially when the group behind caught up and waited for his foursome to hit their drives. The chuckling was even louder when he stopped by the clubhouse for lunch. The waitress acted a little strange too. He didn’t find out about his shirt until he got home; his wife spotted it in a second. He couldn’t believe his friends never said a word.

 

But he’s wrong. His friends did say a word, a lot of words. All day long! It’s just that he wasn’t within earshot when they did. They also were behind him pointing to his shirt whenever they came across anyone on the course. They practically burst a gut laughing when the waitress came to the table and one of the group pointed to his “inside-out” fashion statement and then gave her the shush signal. That’s what old coots do when a member of the elder tribe shows a weakness, any weakness: can’t remember a name, sports a new piece of medical apparatus (neck brace, cast, bandage), adds a new gimp to his walking style, gets mad at the car, kicks a tire and breaks a toe. We don’t strive to “Be all you can be” like that old US Army recruiting ad. We strive to be next to an old guy doing something foolish.

 

It’s kind of like the old joke; where a guy bends down to tie his sneaker when a bear comes down the path toward him. His buddy tells him not to bother. “You can’t outrun a bear.” But, he keeps on tying and replies, “I know; I just have to outrun you!” Us old coots just have to outrun one of our own. We spend all our energy and craftiness trying to be next to a bungler worse than us.  We love it when the guy next-door mows through his wife’s flowerbed. Or, when we run into an old schoolmate who doesn’t remember our name and doesn’t dare ask what it is because we remembered his. We walk away knowing he’ll drive himself nuts for days and days trying to dig it out of the mush inside his skull. We never tell a buddy his zipper is down, his lost glasses are on top of his head, a cop is coming down the street toward his car parked in a tow away zone. It’s not mean. It’s just the law of the “old coot” jungle. I often find myself in the inside-out shirt guy’s shoes. It’s not a nice place to be.

 

I was there just the other day. On the porch roof scraping paint. I’m not supposed to go on the roof when I’m home alone. Not after last fall when I knocked the ladder down and was stranded up there. But, there I was again, this time with a paint scraper in one hand and the hose to a shop vac in the other. I never saw it coming. An angry horde of wasps flew at my face. One got me just below the eye; hitting me with a blinding, burning pain. What a sight, an old coot on a roof, arms flailing, a shop vac hose in one hand and a putty knife in the other. A mother passed by, pushing her little boy in a stroller. He squirmed around and yelled to her, “ Mommy, Mommy! Look at that man dancing on the roof with a black snake!” She turned in my direction and then started running down the sidewalk as fast as she could. She said something that I could only partially make out. Something about a crazy old coot. I didn’t outrun the bear that day.

 

The Old Coot strings himself along.

Published August 15, 2012

 

This really sounds archaic, almost childish, but people used to tie a string around their finger to help them remember something: “Don’t forget to get milk on your way home.” – “Today is Ted’s birthday!” Or, in my case, an old coot’s case, “Don’t forget to stop boring everyone in town with your bellyaching about how bad things are these days and how great they were in the good old days.”

 

When was the last time you saw someone with a string around their finger? Metal rods through their noses? Sure, you see that all the time. Fish hooks in their eyebrows? Yes indeed. Studs piercing their tongues? You bet. But a string tied to someone’s finger. Now, that would be downright freakish! Of course, back in the “string around your finger” days we didn’t have a lot to remember. (Here comes an old coot trip down memory lane) Life was simpler back then. Especially for a kid. Adults had their world. Kids had theirs. There weren’t any soccer moms. Mom’s role in sports (dad’s too) was to say, “Go out and play!”

 

The rest of it was up to us. Drive you to practice? To the playground? “Are you kidding me? You’ve got feet, walk! Peddle! Skate!” We added two variations in my neighborhood. We traveled to the school playground on stilts and pogo sticks. It took us as long to get there as it did to play when we finally made it. Need a new baseball because the cover came off?  - “No! Get the friction tape and wrap what’s left of the ball in it.” Crack the bat because you hit it on the label? (Only wooden bats were available then) “Tape it!”

 

What to do after supper?  Mom knew. “Do the dishes! – What’ll it be? Wash or dry?”  Then what? We didn’t have TV back then. We had a thing called “You figure it out.” Read a book. Listen to the radio and play Monopoly or checkers or War. It was simple for mom and dad. And a good thing! They were plenty busy providing food and shelter for us. Too busy to bother with our boredom. They let our creative juices do that. And, we did figure it out. We didn’t need help then; and, now that we are old men and women, we don’t need help now. We’ll find our way; a string on our finger will get us by. I just hope the price of twine doesn’t go up. I use a whole ball every week!

 

 

The old coot is a guest?

Published August 22, 2012

 

I was in McDonald’s the other morning. Standing with a clump of old coots, gawking at the dollar breakfast menu. We won’t buy one of their $4.78 meal packages; we’re too cheap! So, we buy five things from the dollar menu and somehow convince ourselves that we’ve beaten the system. One of the workers looked out from her command post and made an announcement, “I can help the next guest over here.” GUEST? We’re guests? I was confused. I’m a “guest” at the Holiday Inn, where they let me stay overnight and sleep in their bed. I don’t even have to make it when I get up. I’m a “guest” at my sister-in-law’s house in Florida, where I mooch a room until she leaves a Day’s Inn discount coupon and a map of how to get there on the nightstand. But, not at Mac Donald’s. I’m a customer there, not a guest. Not unless I come in carrying my sleeping bag. Then, I might be a guest.

 

I’m sure the servers, workers, co-workers, hostesses, or whatever the people who work at McDonald’s are required to call themselves, hate to say, “May I help the next guest?” It has to be part of a corporate marketing campaign. “We want you to treat our customers like you’d treat a guest in your house.” But, instead of investing in the training and the supervision it would take to treat us like guests, they just force the employees to call us guests. Corporate bullies, that’s what they are, plain and simple. None are worse than the bunch of old dinosaurs that run the golf course where the Masters Tournament is played every year. They force the TV announcers and news reporters to refer to the fans that come to see the tournament as PATRONS. As in,” There is a large crowd of patrons in the gallery waiting for Tiger to tee off.” Patrons? Not at any golf tournament I’ve ever been to. Beer guzzling, hot dog eating gawkers is more like it!  

 

A lot of corporations do this. They come up with a slogan or some superficial gimmick, force it on the employees and expect customers to believe it. Subaru brags that their cars are “built with love.” If you buy that, you need to repeat 9^th grade Health Class.  When I was growing up, G.E. told us, “Progress is our most important product.” No more. Now they claim that GE is “Imagination at Work.”  I guess they want us to imagine we’re not really paying over $1,000 for a refrigerator. Nike says, “Just do it!” (But, make sure it’s in a pair of our $290.00, Hyperdunk – SportPack sneakers). IBM kept it simple for years. “Think” was their thing. Now, they are done thinking. They call them selves the “On Demand Business.” What does that mean? (I guess we’re supposed to think about it.)

 

I shouldn’t complain, especially about McDonalds. I should be thankful. The clerk could have leaned over the counter and said to the clump of old coots gazing at the cheapskate menu, “I can help the next, opinionated, wrinkle faced, bald guy, wearing giant glasses and shorts that are too short with yellow knee socks and black wing tips over here.”

 

The Old Coot grew up in the dumb generation.

Published August 29, 2012

 

I was in Martha’s Vineyard last month. I’m as surprised as you are! That this exclusive resort island would allow an old coot like me to invade its turf. But it was easy. A ferryboat ticket was all it took. I spent my mornings at the harbor in Edgartown. There is nothing like sitting on the dock in the early hours of the day. The waves gently lap the pilings, the boats rock with the beat. Shore birds perch on piers and sea ducks weave through the trash carelessly tossed into the drink by uppity tourists. Sleepy bankers, lawyers and stock peddlers stumble out of BMW’s, Jaguar’s and Audi’s, and head for the charter boats. A line of upright fishing poles stands at attention to greet them.  Well used, old boats with names that reflect the owner’s point of view on life: Splendid, Tenacious and my favorite, My-Old-Lady. The Wall Street titans, decked out in Armani shorts, Chap’s shirts and 300 dollar boat shoes are greeted by local boys, sailors and fishermen alike, smoking Camels and sporting jeans, work boots and stained T-shirts, one with an inscription, “Will trade wife for boat.”

 

It’s the meeting of two tribes: the blue-collar clan that makes things work and the white-collar clan that reaps most of the fruit. Hands are shaken. Grips made strong from swinging hammers and turning wrenches are matched with grips firmed up from grasping tennis racquets and swinging Arnold Palmer golf clubs. Money changes hands and off they go. Their craft sends back a wake that rocks the tethered vessels in a goodbye wave. Uniformed waitresses sit passive, killing time before their 8 A.M. shift in the Yacht Club, catching a few precious rays before they spend the day under manmade light. An old coot sits to my left, in knee socks and sandals, reading the Wall Street Journal and saying, “Howdy,” to every passerby.

 

A father came by one morning, pushing two kids in a double stroller, a two-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl. He was wearing a pair of gray sweat pants rolled up to his knees, sandals, a sixty dollar T-shirt and drinking diet ice tea from a leather ensconced water bottle. His skin was alabaster white, the sun having never penetrated the layers of sunscreen he religiously lathered on every morning. A group of ducks floated into view. I expected him to say, “Look at the ducks!” But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Melissa, can you count how many ducks there are?” “Tree!” she answered. “No, count again,” he replied. “Two?” she said this time, trying to please her mentor. “Right; you’re a good counter Melissa.”

 

But he was wrong. There were three ducks. He couldn’t see the one peeking out from behind the pier. She did. So, he just taught his daughter how to count wrong. We have such a hard time these days, letting kids be kids. We have to make sure they can count, say the alphabet, write their name and otherwise be prepared for kindergarten. We were lucky, my generation. We were brought up dumb. We learned all the stuff in school that today’s kids know before they get there. And, we stayed dumb. We didn’t learn to read until first grade, had no homework until seventh grade and took college courses in college, not high school.

 

We were allowed to be kids. We were school dumb, but life smart. We knew how to climb trees and build forts in the branches, to ride a bicycle sitting backwards on the handlebars, catch tadpoles and raise them into frogs, to make and shoot sling shots and get a yo-yo to spin long enough to “rock the baby” and “walk the dog.” We learned how to get a drink from a hose without blowing out our brains. The hard way! We explored the world in person, not via an electronic device. We were lucky; we grew up dumb.