Saturday, January 28, 2017

January 25, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is getting pushed into the dark.
By Merlin Lessler

Only an old coot would have a complaint as irrelevant to everyday life as this. But, that’s what us old coots do. Some people call it nitpicking; we call it enlightened thinking. We are of the same school of thought as the mayor and police commissioner in New York City when they launched their “nitpicking” plan to reduce crime. They went after the little stuff on the premise that then the big stuff would fall in line. I’m not sure what the little stuff was, maybe jaywalking, littering, loitering, public intoxication and the like. But, somehow it worked and eventually the crime rate came down. Dramatically. Might just have been a coincidence. We’ll never know.

That’s a long justification for launching yet another petty attack on something most people don’t notice or care about. It’s the TV schedule published in the newspaper. The morning paper. The schedule covers the hours from six pm to midnight. What about the rest of the day? What’s on at noon, two pm, 4 o’clock or in the middle of the night when we wake up and can’t get back to sleep? Inquiring (old coot) minds want to know.

All daily papers are like this. If they were evening papers I could see it, having been an evening press delivery “boy” some sixty years ago. We got our bundle of papers dropped off by the circulation “guy” around 3:30, a little after we got out of school. Our orders were to get them delivered by five o’clock so when “Mr.” breadwinner came home from work he could sit in his easy chair, maybe with a cocktail or a bottle of beer (no cans in those days) while the “little woman” (sometimes referred to as the “old lady” by some unenlightened husbands) fixed dinner. What can I say, ours was a “Father knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet world? Men had their role; women had theirs. And, the twain shall never meet.

Anyhow, I’ve got to get this gasbag (me) back on the topic at hand, “Less than useful TV listings in the daily papers,” for the sake of my old coot brethren who want to know what might be watchable at odd moments in the day. We know a full week’s worth of schedules, 24 hours a day, is included in the Sunday paper, which if we thought to save would still be of no use since we’d never remember where we put it. At one time, there was a channel that scrolled through a list of what was on or coming on, but that’s gone and it wasn’t much good anyway. It took ten minutes to scroll the channels, well beyond the attention span an old coot. And, cheapskates that we are, most of us turned in our control boxes, that afford access to a schedule, to save the $8.50 monthly rental rate. So, we’re in the dark, literally, wondering what’s on TV this afternoon. Now, I feel better, getting that off my chest. I bet you don’t.


Comments, complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

Saturday, January 21, 2017

January 18, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is prepared.
By Merlin Lessler

The Boy Scout motto is, “Be prepared.” (It’s also the Girl Scout motto, so I was just informed by Mrs. Google). I’ve confiscated the motto for use by my old coot crowd. Our present motto isn’t working so hot, and is quite long. The old coot motto is - “Observe, and then complain about modern society, comparing it to the good old days, to everyone you encounter.” Who wants to be saddled with that as a credo? Nobody wants to hear from us anyway! WE, us old coots, need to take over the “Be Prepared” motto, to reconfigure our persona.

Those young scouts don’t need it anyway. It doesn’t matter if they’re prepared or not – they are well equipped to deal with whatever fate throws their way. They’re limber and fit, can hear and see clearly, have reflexes that respond to stimuli, have intact memories, cognitive brain function and many, many attributes that us old coots lost so long ago we scarcely remember ever having them.

Staking a claim to the "Be Prepared” motto will make up for our shortcomings and help steer us through the daily dangers that lie in wait. Like the scouts, we have a uniform that identifies us to the world: big, off-white, leather-like, Velcro fastened sneakers – pants that are belted just below the rib cage – shirts that proclaim, “Old guys rule,” or some such idiotic sentiment – soiled, worn out baseball caps with Mickey Mantle’s #7 stitched onto the brim, or some other player from the inky dark shadows of the past – glasses with lenses the size of bagels, and coolest of all, flip phones in a case fastened to our belts, right next to our sun glasses holder.

That paraphernalia is a good start. I’ve added a shoulder bag to my gear. It contains band-aids, a sign that says, “I’m lost; help me get home.” It’s handy to have on a bad memory day, when I wander into a place that doesn’t look familiar. A can of pepper spray is in the bag too, in case a mugger thinks I’m an easy target and makes a play for my $19 flip phone. There is a problem with this plan; I’ll have to ask the mugger to hang on a minute, and then hope he waits while I fumble through my bag for the spray. I have a series of fake names at the ready too, for when I get in a jam. Like the day I was accosted by a store manager for careening into a stack of merchandise at the end of an aisle and the sound of broken glass echoed through the store. That time I pulled out “Jim Steel.” It’s served me well on several occasions. A pen and notebook are in my bag too, in case I stumble on something to write about. That’s what I tell myself, but mostly I use it to write down the names of people and places I encounter for the first time. I’m tired of calling people Governor, Pal, Big Guy, Beautiful and Kid. And, referring to places in descriptive terms, not by their actual name: “That green building where the Smith’s used to have a candy store,” or “That place on the corner where Newberry’s used to be.”

I’m off to a good start; I’ve only been operating with a “Be Prepared” motto for a short while; I welcome any suggestions that will improve my preparedness. I’d appreciate it, “Governor.”   


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Saturday, January 14, 2017

January 11, 2017 Article

It’s hard for the Old Coot to be a cheapskate.
By Merlin Lessler

It’s getting harder and harder to be a cheapskate. And, get away with it. Restaurants, some of them anyway, are starting to add a 20% tip to your bill. Others, like the ones around here, provide such good service you can’t deal with the guilt that comes from leaving a cheapskate tip. Cruise ships don’t give you envelopes so you can tip your head waiter, waiter, assistant waiter, wine steward, maĆ®tre d’ and cabin boy at the end of your cruise, they add it to your bill, and automatically charge it to your credit card. Cafes and coffee shops place a tip jar right next to the cash register; it’s hard to walk away without tossing in enough coinage to rattle the jar to earn a thank-you smile from the clerk. If you try to toss in a handful of pennies you’re out of luck; pennies have a distinctive flat sound that screams, “Cheapskate!” Everyone in the place will turn to stare at you in disapproval.

Even the federal government is in on the conspiracy. They changed how they sell savings bonds. Gone are the days when a cheapskate like me could go to a bank, any bank, and buy a $25 bond for $18.75, and give it as a present to an unsuspecting birthday-boy or girl, “Wow, the Old Coot gave me $25!” What did they know; their parents wouldn’t let them cash it in until they reached college age. By then, the evidence of cheapness would disappear. The bond would be worth face value, and more.  And, your name would be on it to remind them of how generous you were.

But, not anymore. The jig is up. First of all, you can’t buy a bond at a bank; you must go on-line and set up an account for yourself. Then, you have to cajole the kid’s parents into setting up a bond account for themselves and another for their kid. You can then purchase the bond, hold it in your account for five days and then authorize its delivery to the kid’s account. He doesn’t get a bond to hold in his grubby little paws, something tangible that looks like official currency. He ends up with an e-mail or an account statement that shows the birthday bond you bought him.  And, to the bane of a cheapskate like me, the face value is the purchase price. My overstated generosity is eliminated from the picture. Yes siree Bob! It tough to be a cheapskate these days.   


Comments? – send to mlessler7@gmail.com. Complaints?  (keep to yourself)

Saturday, January 7, 2017

January 4, 2017 Article

The Old Coot Mourns the Neighborhood Mailbox. AGAIN!
By Merlin Lessler

This holiday season brings with it the anniversary of another memorial, though a somewhat insignificant event, the disappearance of the mail box on the corner of Front and Ross. It’s gone, but the cement pillar it hung from remains, crumbling and leaning 15 degrees to the west. It looked so forlorn that I hung a Christmas decoration on it and am repeating the article written seven years ago, as a testament to its demise.

A day of infamy in 2009:

She’s gone! You could see it coming. She knew too much, too many secrets. Two burly guys came by in the afternoon, wrestled her to the ground, threw her in the back of a van and took off. Now we just have a stone monument, slightly askew, marking the spot where she proudly stood. The little blue mailbox on the corner of Ross and Front was taken from us. Ripped out of the neighborhood. Ripped out of our lives. No longer efficient, a victim of changing times.

I don’t know how long it was there. They don’t keep records on that sort of thing. I asked postmaster Dave Clark. He didn’t know. He just said that it wasn’t used very much; some days there was nothing in it, some days just a few letters, never more than a handful. One neighbor said it was there when he was a kid. Another thought some sort of mailbox had been at that location for 100 years or more. I know for sure it was around to collect letters from loved ones sent to soldiers in Europe, Africa and the South Pacific, fighting in the war, the big one, WWII. “Dear Billy, I hope this finds you well. We’re praying for you. The scrap drive was a big success. We collected 100 pounds of copper. Dad ran out of gasoline coupons so we didn’t get out to the farm to see grandma this week.”  If only it could talk. What stories it would tell! But, it is no more. Modern technology made it obsolete and lack of activity forced it into retirement.

A few neighbors used it faithfully, several times a week. Now I watch them walk down the street to mail a letter in a box that isn’t there. They stare dumbfounded into the empty space for a minute or two, wondering, “What the heck?” It sat outside my kitchen window, in a direct line of sight from my perch at the counter, a perfect set up for a nosy old coot. “There’s Mrs. So-and-so,” I would yell to my wife. “Must be they are back from Florida.” Or, I’d report, “Mr. Been-around-a-long-time just mailed a letter. He was walking pretty well, no limp. Looks like he’s fully recovered from his hip replacement surgery.” It was more than a blue chunk of metal. It was the neighborhood “watering hole,” a place where we caught up with each other, a place where we exchanged snippets about the grandchildren, the latest round of aches and pains, and tips on where to get the cheapest gas in town. It was more than a mailbox. And, we miss it.

It’s where we put our letters to friends and relatives; it’s where we paid our bills and filed our income taxes, back when everyone did their own, back before IRA’s, 401K’s and an endless list of rules made it impossible for anyone but a CPA, back when the instruction book was wafer thin, not the 82-page monster we have today. Electronic filing, electronic bill payments and e-mail put our mailbox out of business. It’s a done deal! It’s gone and there is nothing I can do about it. Except complain! And that isn’t getting me anywhere. Everyone I complain to says the same thing, “GET OVER IT!” 


Comments, Complaints? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com