October 28, 2105 Article

The Old Coot rides the rails.

By Merlin Lessler

I was sitting in the Amtrak train station in Sanford, Florida the other day, waiting for my car to be unloaded. A 30-something guy was on the bench next to me, talking about his experience on the auto-train. It left northern Virginia at 4 pm and arrived in central Florida at 9 am. It was his first time; I’m an old pro.

 I asked him how he’d slept. “Not well, not well at all,” he replied, and went on to describe just how bad his night was. He woke every hour; first it was his hip that got him up, sore from lying sideways on a reclining train seat, even though it was longer and wider that those in first class on an airplane. He’d turned to the other side, but an hour later, his shoulder started to ache and woke him up again. A little later, a cramp hit his calf, forcing him to leap over his wife, waking her in the process as he rushed to the aisle to shake it out. An hour later, the train stopped to change crews. The quiet roused him from slumber. He’d gotten used to the click, clack of the steel wheels on the metal track. Sore hip, sore shoulder, leg cramp, quiet and finally, a 2 am call from Mother Nature that sent him down a narrow, winding staircase to the rest rooms, just as the train hit a bad section of track, sending him reeling into the wall. “I got 8 hours of sleep, 1 hour at a time,” he said, in summary.

I chuckled, but only to myself. He’d just described a typical night’s sleep for an old coot. I didn’t want to depress him, so I refrained from telling him that he had many of those nights ahead, in his not too distant future. Thirty or forty years by the calendar that will seem like fifteen minutes when he gets there and looks back. It’s a speeding, rocking train, this thing we call old coot time.

Finally, our car came rolling out of the automobile container unit; I said goodbye to my 30-something friend. That was 30 seconds ago, by old coot time, 28 days by the calendar. Pretty soon, 10 days from now, I’ll have to face up to a train ride back home. I won’t be able to complain to my wife about the fractured sleep we will endure, the rocking motion of the passenger car, the long wait to get going, a longer wait for our car to be unloaded. I’ve shot my mouth off too many times about how fast time flies. If I start bellyaching, she’ll look me dead in the eye and say, “Why are you complaining; it will be over within 10 seconds?” She is right (as usual). I’ll be home before I know it and complaining about something new. The weather!

October 21, 2015 Article

The Old Coot isn’t saved by the bell.

By Merlin Lessler

There are two kinds of bike riders: athletic, physically fit, serious riders, who approach a ride as though it was an Olympic event, and then there are the fun peddlers. I’m a fun peddler; I ride without a helmet, in regular clothes, on a cheap, heavy bike. I face traffic when the road is narrow (in violation of NYS’s motor vehicle regulations). I even glide down the sidewalk when it’s the only safe way to go. My friend, Jeff Poulin, is an athletic biker. When I take a ride to Newark Valley and back you’ll hear me crow about it for weeks. When Jeff (who by the way is the race director for the Chris Thater Memorial races) completes a quick 50 to 75 mile run in less time than my Newark Valley ride, you have to pry out of him how far he rode. 

He’s definitely a different rider than I am; he cruises along on a bike that weighs less than my Medicare Card. He’s swathed in Spandex and a perfectly sized, aerodynamic helmet. Expensive bike shoes interlock with his pedals, pulling the pedal, as his foot comes up and achieving maximum energy efficiency. Water is supplied from a camel pack on his back through a tube that runs over his shoulder and lets him take a sip by simply turning his head whenever he feels the need. A safety light blinks on the back of his vehicle when it’s dark or foggy; a rear view mirror prevents him from “getting it” from behind. He obeys the NYS traffic laws; my crowd ignores stop signs, red lights, one-way street markers. But, we never ever exceed the speed limit, not that we don’t try. Sometimes I come close, like when I’m peddling through a school zone. But usually, I’m riding along the side of the road with a red face, embarrassed by the number of joggers and speed walkers who catch up to and pass me. 

Now comes my rant. It wouldn’t be an Old Coot column if it didn’t have one. I won’t criticize the Spandex, the cost of the bikes or any of the other differences between my crowd and Jeff’s. I’ve done all that and all it ever gets me is a protest poem from Bill Schweizer. No, my issue today concerns the lack of a bell on athletic bikers handlebars. I have a bell, I use it to say hello to friends as I “fly” by, to warn walkers that I’m coming up from behind them on the sidewalk (slowly and carefully) and to signal a biker on the road ahead of me that I’m about to pass. A rare event. Nevertheless, I’m prepared when it does.

And, that brings me to the genesis of my complaint. Those speeding, athletic bikers silently sneak up on us fun-peddlers and scare the heck out of us when they elbow past. No warning whatsoever. No jingle, jingle, to prepare for someone coming up on your shoulder. Just a swoosh, as they fly by, startling us and nearly sending us tumbling into a ditch. It’s bad enough when they do it to one of their own, or to a young and fit, fun-peddler. But, it’s a bigger issue when they pass an old coot. We don’t ride in a straight line; we weave and wander in a meandering route along the shoulder. Sometimes I’m listing left just as one of Jeff’s friends pulls along side. I haven’t ended up in the ditch yet, but I’ve had a legion of close calls. So, I say, “Please; buy a bell.’ I know you’re loath to add weight to your bike, but a bell won’t really add much, not enough to put you at the back of your pack. You’ll still be an Alpha biker. But now, a polite one. 

October 14, 2015 Article

The Old Coot gets a bargain?

By Merlin Lessler

So there you are. You walk into a small antique shop; the bell rings, announcing your presence and the nightmare begins. You look around and discover to your dismay you are the only customer in the store. You came in to kill time, not to buy anything, now you are in an awkward situation. The owner greets you, delighted that she has a customer, it’s been a long day and you’re the first human to cross her threshold. “What can I help you with?” she asks. You give her the standard “just looking” response and hope she’ll go back to her knitting or Candy Land game or whatever she was doing to stop the boredom from driving her insane. But, she doesn’t; she hovers. You pick up something to see how much it is, to get some sense of her pricing philosophy, hoping it’s low, bargain basement low. It’s a clock, a wind up Roy Rogers’s alarm clock from the 1950’s, something you desperately wanted as a kid, but never got.  It’s in mint condition; it works, and the price tag says $6.50. “Wow! That’s cheap,” you say to yourself. “I’ll get it.”

Before you can turn it back over to study the face, she says, “I can do better on the price.” Do better? Wow, it’s dirt-cheap and she can do better? I like this place. A minute ago I hated “this place.” Hated that I was the only customer and would feel uncomfortable looking around and leaving without making a purchase. Now, all the tension had dissipated. “How much better?” I asked. Out of curiosity more than anything. How much lower on $6.50 for an antique, tin, Roy Rogers’s alarm clock in mint condition can she go? “I’ll do 60,” she responds. Now, I’m confused. 60? Sixty cents less? Down to $5.90? “I’ll take it,” I announce. And, put it down, saying I want to look around some more. And I mean it; the pressure is off.

She takes the clock, telling me it will be at the register and I continue on my mission, to kill time while my wife is next door examining an endless selection of flip flops. That’s the trouble with small town shopping, there isn’t a Radio Shack or hardware store for a man to carouse in and avoid following his wife around like a five-year-old, and constantly asking, “Can we go now?” It’s what drew me into the antique shop, into the nightmare of being the only customer and determined not to buy anything.

But now I was safe. So, I moved through the aisles examining the goods: a Duncan yoyo marked $40, A Daisy BB gun marked $110 and a pack of unopened baseball cards with a $50 sticker on the back. Wow! I got the only bargain in the place! Then, doubt started to seep in. Did I misread the price tag on the Roy Rogers clock? The more I looked the more convinced I became. There was a toy clock waiting for me at the register that probably had a $65 price tag on it, which caused her to say, “I can do 60.” That’s the only thing that made sense. I had no intention of buying it. I needed a rush of customers to distract the owner and allow me to slip out the door. My worst nightmare came true; I was the only customer in a store with the owner waiting for me to pay for something I didn’t want. This is a perfect example of why old coots hate to go shopping. 

October 7, 2015 Article.

The Old Coot is unbendable.

By Merlin Lessler

Old Man School – Lesson #27 – ELASTICITY (How to cope when you’ve lost it.) It’s the latest in a series of lessons on how to survive as an old coot. It follows Lesson 23 – dealing with your first eye floater, Lesson 24 – going toothless, one broken tooth at a time, Lesson 25 - walking straight while listing left and Lesson 26  – “Ouch’ is a perfect word, get used to using it often.

The loss of elasticity is the one that sneaks up on you. You ignore the phenomena for years and all of a sudden, realize that your flexibility has taken a hike. You took it for granted for 40, 50 or more years, and then one morning, you find you can’t pick up your leg high enough to get your foot into your pant leg without falling over. You have to throw your pants on the floor, poke around with your foot and hope to maneuver it into a leg hole. The first time it happens, it’s like a slap in the face! You wonder, “What happened to the guy who could bend over and touch his toes, who could touch his feet to his forehead, who could do a split? (Well, almost).” As you go through life it doesn’t register that your bendability is slipping away. It’s a long, gradual process, and when it finally dawns on you, it’s too late to do anything about it. Bend over and touch your toes? Not ever again. 

The first time I threw my pants on the floor to get them on, I remembered how I snickered at the old guys in the YMCA who sat down on a bench in the locker room to get dressed. Now, I’m on the bench with them.  And worse, I know I’ll eventually join with my pants on the floor; it will be the only way I can get into them. I just hope I don’t end up spending the day with my pants on backwards. .

The lack of elasticity isn’t limited to the body parts that are bend challenged; it affects your entire physical structure. Skin, for example, that tight, smooth hide you paraded around in for years, sags and droops and you didn’t notice it sliding toward the floor. Why should that be a surprise? Your muscles and tendons did the same thing. Everything went down hill – you end up with waffle neck, old man sag gut, knee globules, ear lobes that brush your shoulders and more, so much more. It’s as though you were made of wax and wandered too close to the fire.

It’s a fright, when you see this inelastic, gone south, image of yourself in the mirror for the first time and not the fake “memory” image you’ve been pretending to see. If you have cataract surgery, you can’t avoid it. The lie becomes obvious the minute the bandages come off. My advice - if your world is cloudy and your eye doctor suggests cataract surgery, don’t do it! Unless the surgical procedure is followed up with grief counseling along with the surgery. You might fall over backwards the first time you pass by a mirror, and with your lack of flexibility, it could be the last thing you see. Ever!