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 9th 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.
