December 30, 2017 Article

Old Coot not too old for toy trains

By Merlin Lessler

This is a repeat holiday article, on a four-year cycle. (If I remember in four years.)

I’m an old coot now but I still believe in Santa Claus. In spite of how he tricked me when I was eight years old. I snuck down the stairs on that snowy Christmas morning. The room was dimly lit. Just the flicker from a set of bubble lights on the tree. I perched on a step near the bottom, studying the scene through the newel posts. A dollhouse loomed behind a stack of presents. I knew it was for my sister. But where was my “big” present? I didn’t see anything. Then, I spotted a gleam of light, a reflection from a metal track. Could it be? Was it the train set I wanted so badly? My heart skipped a beat! I hopped over the railing and raced to the tree. There it was! An electric train! A black engine, four metal cars and a red caboose. There really was a Santa Claus! What I didn’t know, was that it would be nearly four decades before Santa delivered MY train. This one was for my father.

Oh sure, I was allowed to place it on the track, switch on the transformer and crank up the dial to send it speeding down the rail. I was even allowed to take the extra track out of the box and change the oval layout to a figure eight and to set up a “Plasticville” village for the freighter to run through. But, it wasn’t my train, not really. It was my father’s. He was the one who carved out a space under the basement stairs two days after Christmas in order to slip in a four by eight sheet of plywood to accommodate a complicated layout. He put lights in the houses, added electric switches, and created an alpine village on a mountain, the same mountain that the train disappeared into after leaving Plasticville. The rest of the fathers in my neighborhood did the same thing. Only Billy Wilson escaped the great train robbery. His trains made it to the attic before his father got his hands on them. Several train sets and a sea of accessories were scattered over the floor. It’s where we went to be railroad men. Nobody was there to stop the fun, to prevent a speeding freighter from crashing into the back of a passenger car or to make us take a cow off the track before it was sent flying into the school house. Billy’s attic was our toy train sanctuary.  

I finally got my very own train set when I was well into my forties. My wife was sick of my drooling, every time we passed by the set of “big” trains in the window at Miniature Kingdom on Front Street, Owego. The store is gone now, but once was the place to go for all things miniature: dollhouses, furniture, figurines and LGB trains. My wife bought a set and put it under the tree. I was eight years old again as I tore the wrapper from the box. I was still there, lying on the living room floor, sleeping like an eight-year-old when the clock struck midnight. The clickety clack of the wheels on the track had lulled me into slumber. It was a sad, drab day in January when the tree came down and the trains went back in the box, forced into hibernation until the next Christmas. Things come slow to old coots, but it eventually dawned on me; I didn’t have to be deprived of my train for eleven months. I could build a high shelf around the room and put the track and train on it. So I did!  Now, I “play” with my trains throughout the year. It’s the best cure in the world for insomnia. Two laps around the loop and I start dozing. When I dream, I’m eight years old and coming down the stairs on that long ago Christmas morning.

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

December 20, 2017 Article

The Old Coot didn’t shoot his eye out.

By Merlin Lessler

(A Christmas repeat article)

I didn’t shoot my eye out. Not with a BB gun anyhow. And, not in one of the many BB gun wars we waged in the cow pasture next to the neighborhood where I grew up. (The area is now populated with houses, but back then it was a kid’s paradise, a war zone in the summer and a toboggan & ski resort in the winter). No, I messed up my eye much later in life, when a tree branch snapped back and hit me in the eye while I was clearing the riverbank in Owego. But that’s a story for another day. An old coot story. This is a kid story.

My, “didn’t” shoot my eye out tale took place after I’d paid my dues for years and waited expectantly, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, to find a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun under our Christmas tree. I’d posed for dorky Christmas cards with my sister, year after year. I’d forgone my desire for a BB gun and asked for eye safe toys: footballs, sleds, board games and electric trains. But when I turned 10, I launch my campaign for a BB gun. My friend Woody, from the next block, had access to BB rifles and BB pistols. I used him and his gun friendly parents as the centerpiece of my campaign. But, things looked glum. My mother batted aside every pitch I threw her way. “Woody has one, why can’t I?” - “Because you’ll lose an eye!”  This was before the term “shoot-your-eye-out” came into vogue. You “lost” things in those days. Your eye. Your arm. Your life.

“No I won’t! Woody didn’t!” She pointed out that Woody wore glasses; his eyes were protected. Something I knew all too well. Especially after so recently doing the dishes for 25 cents every night until I’d earned three dollars to pay for the pair I’d broken in one of our backyard disagreements.

“We don’t shoot at each other. We just pretend to shoot,” I argued, lie that it was, with me sporting a tender, red-rimmed pockmark from taking one in the leg just that morning.

“We only shoot at stuff,” I said, adding to my lie. She was too smart for that. She was as concerned for the “stuff” as she was for my eye. She knew the stuff included dopey robins that remained on a branch, enduring shot after shot, squirrels that scampered back and forth making the adventure even more exciting, the glass window panes in Mr. Soldo’s garage, Mrs. Bowen’s tulips and the Merz’s dog. But, I had an answer for all those damaged goods. It was homemade arrows that misfired in a game of cowboys & Indians that caused all those mishaps. “A BB gun is accurate; it would never damage stuff, ” was my weak-brained argument.

The whole thing was of her fault. She’s the one who dressed me in cowboy suits since before I could walk, who equipped me with two six-gun cap pistols and helped me mount a wooden rocking horse in the driveway with my faithful dog Lassie at my side. How did she not see this growing into lust for a weapon that could really fire? A BB gun!

Christmas finally came, in those waning days of Truman’s presidency. It took what seemed like years, those four weeks following Thanksgiving, when the count down started. I came down the stairs and to my glee, a three-foot long slender package with my name on it was in the back, under the tree. I saved it for last. I unwrapped the mittens knitted by my aunt in Connecticut. And, like the ones she sent every year, they were too short and would leave me with red, raw wrists when I played outside in the cold.

Next came a pair of ski pajamas, the fashion rage of the day. Then, a big surprise, a radio of my own. A radio for my room, so I could listen to Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Suspense and The Shadow in private. Finally came the long skinny box. I tore off the paper. The carton underneath didn’t say Daisy Air Rifle: it was unmarked. I didn’t care; I’d settle for an off brand. I pried open the lid and pulled out the weapon. A single shot, ping-pong ball rifle!

My chagrin lasted less than an hour; I found the lemonade in the lemons. I could shoot at people. I could shoot at stuff! I no longer have that eye-safe, engine of warfare from the 1950’s. But, I do have a BB gun, a Daisy Red Ryder Carbine, No. 111, Model 40. My wife, tired of my complaining, found it in an antique store and gave it to me for Christmas in 1983, the same year A Christmas Story aired and Ralphie got his. It’s a little scuffed up and the squirrels laugh out loud when I stand guard at our bird feeder, but it shoots just fine. And, I haven’t shot out my eye out!

Comments, complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

December 13, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is “Hip” smart.

By Merlin Lessler

Ok, so you need a new hip. A lot of people do. For some, it hits early, in their 40’s and 50’s. For most folks it comes later, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. That’s when our whole darn body starts to fall apart (as so adroitly stated by Henry Fonda in the movie, On Golden Pond). Hips rank high on the replacement list, 400,000 a year in the U.S. Some people, mostly men, claim it’s due to a sports injury. We go for the macho factor, but like most things men claim, especially old men like me, it’s a lie. Most likely the joint got damaged showing off. In my case, doing a running flip in the backyard at my daughter’s 5^th birthday party.

The damage actually started in high school. Not on the football field, but in the halls and walking to and from school. I was too “cool” to use a brief case to carry my books like the nerdy kids. Bookbags weren’t available in that era. So, girls held their books in their arms, pulled to their chests. Boys, held an eighteen-inch stack on their hips and walked at a slant, straining not just their backs, but their hips as well. A classmate would often sneak up on us from behind and push the pile to the floor. Then, with a big grin on their face, say, “Drop a few subjects, did you? Ha Ha.”   

Girls escaped hip stress in high school, but caught up and passed us when they had children. Carrying those rug rats around on their hips does the damage. I marvel every time I watch a young mother doing it. One pulled up at Dunkin Donuts the other day as I was walking by. She hopped out of her car, opened the back door and reached in to untangle a one-year-old from a network of clasps and fasteners that Houdini would have trouble escaping from, placed the kid on her hip, strode around the car to the other door and pulled an infant out of an equally complicated mechanism and staggered inside to get coffee and donuts, I presume for hubby, who was home in his man cave watching a football game. Her hip joint is most certainly suffering from this stress; the damage is slowly but surely taking its toll.

Many fathers do the child-hip-carry thing too, but to a much lesser degree. I did. And, can still remember how much it hurt, especially after a long stint, like watching a parade. But, when my male crowd explains why we’re going in for a hip replacement, we don’t mention it; we stick with the sports injury thing.  I don’t think doctors have made the connection between child rearing and hip problems. If they did they’d use a rating system based on the number of kids lugged around. Minor damage if you have a one-kid-hip, major, if you have a five-kid-hip. Five-kid-hip women need a replacement earlier in life than one-kid-hip women. Fathers, are exempt for the most part. As we all know, they rarely carry their weight (excuse the pun) in child rearing. Yet, with all these hip replacements going on, you would think more parents would use a papoose.

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

December 6, 2017 Article

The Old Coot is in hot water.

By Merlin Lessler

I’m a frog! Lounging in a pan of water over a lit burner on a gas stove. Everybody’s a frog. It’s just that for us old guys (*) the water is warm enough to notice, unlike the water that people in their twenties and thirties are swimming in. As you age, the temperature rises, but so slowly you don’t notice it at first. I never felt the change; I just lounged and luxuriated in this unique envelope we call the human body. [Did I lose you? Stay with me; I probably have a point to make, but won’t know for sure until I finish scribbling on this piece of paper while I sit in McDonalds, nursing a “senior” cup of coffee.]

Every once in a while, you get a hint of what’s going on, that rise in water temperature. Those acrobatic maneuvers you pulled off in your teens turn into a disaster when you try them later in life. In my case, it was a running flip in the backyard at my oldest daughter’s fifth birthday party. The next day I was introduced to chiropractic medicine. I felt the water go up a few degrees. A few years later, those three sandwiches I had for lunch, every day since high school, started producing a “beer” belly; the increase in temperature had slowed my metabolism. It does this to everyone. If we fail to recognize it, we end up on that TV show, “My 600-LB Life.”  

Oh sure, there are (or will be for you youngsters) early signs of the predicament we’re in, but for the most part, they appear and then quickly are forgotten, except when a milestone birthday comes a knocking. That 30^th birthday was a shock to me; I never saw it coming. I grew up in the hippie era, when we didn’t trust anyone over thirty. Now, I was one of them. Forty came so fast after that I was reeling. Then I realized that the horror of all horrors loomed ahead. FIFTY! The end of life.

But, the inevitable happened and I slid past the half century mark, babbling inane statements like, “Fifty is the new forty,” or “I don’t feel any different than when I was in my twenties.” That’s what happens when the temperature of the water heats up so slowly. It hides the fact that your goose (frog) is getting cooked.

BAM! The next milestone slams you against the side of the pan, your first social security check. You sense a little more heat. You make the mistake of looking in the mirror, not the quick glance from afar that you usually take, but up close under bright lights. You wonder, “Who is that guy”? But, you get distracted; you look down and notice that the nail on your big toe is orange, distracting you from further study of the image in the mirror. You don’t notice that your ears are bigger than they used to be, as is your nose. Both are sprouting a forest, but you don’t see it. You also don’t realize that when you walk down the sidewalk, it’s not in a straight line. Or, admit that you must sit down to put on your socks, otherwise you will topple over. And, many of “my” people, realize what a mistake they made when they encourage their wife to have cataract surgery. When she came to in the recovery room she covered her eyes and yelled, “WHO IS THIS PERSON?”.

At this point in life, the water has passed the tepid mark and “Ouch” becomes your favorite word. One day it’s your knee that causes it, the next, it’s a crick in the neck that prevents you from turning right on red, because you can’t look left to see if anything is coming. How about that cramp in your leg at the movie theater? It forces you to leap out of your seat and into the aisle to kick it out. You get a look from the people around you that says, “Is this guy possessed?” I have to stop here. Just writing the word, cramp, caused my hand to do just that; I can no longer hold my pen. It’s also getting a little warm.

(*) Guys in this context, applies to both sexes, as approved by the usage police in 1993

Complaints, comments can be sent to mlessler7@gmail.com

November 29, 2017 Article

The Old Coot speaks softly.

By Merlin Lessler

The creation of a LOUD TALKER starts young, around the “terrible twos” stage of development. Not loud talkers at that point. I call them SCREAMERS. They screech and scream about everything. Their sounds make us cringe when we’re within earshot of one at a playground, on the beach, in a store and worse of all, on a plane. We (old coots) turn to each other and give a look that says, “Why don’t their parents teach them not to scream?” Or, more likely, “Why don’t they make that kid SHUT UP!”

But, the parents rarely do, because they have a hearing deficiency; they don’t hear their own children’s screams, just those of other kids. It’s like a high frequency dog whistle to them, well out of their hearing range. So, the kid grows up volume-challenged and the world is “blessed” with a LOUD TALKER, a polite term created by Seinfeld on his innovative 1990’s sitcom. The rest of us use a more familiar term, LOUD MOUTH. Everything a loud mouth does is LOUD! Talk, laugh, sing, sneeze, belch, hick-up. Even their cars are loud, motorcycles even louder. They ride around with their radios blasting so high, it feels like a tsunami has hit you when they pass by. You have to cover your ears to avoid damage to your hearing. The only redeeming value of their loudness is that they always get caught when they try to sneak in and rob a house.

My aunt and uncle were LOUD TALKERS. Aunt Letty and Uncle Harold. They came to visit once a year, leaving their house in New Haven, Connecticut for two weeks every summer. At least they had an excuse for their loud talking. Uncle Harold was hard of hearing and kept his hearing-aid turned down to “save” the battery. He only turned it up when there was something he wanted to hear. He was a loud talker as a result. Aunt Letty became one too, so she could get him to hear her say, “Turn up your darn hearing-aid!”

It drove my mother nuts; she liked the quiet, but I loved it. It distracted her so much when they were around that she didn’t notice my antics. The best part was when they went to bed for the night. They’d talk about the day before falling asleep. LOUD TALK! It carried well beyond the bedroom wall. “Letty, what did you think of that meatloaf? I thought it was so dry I practically had to gag it down!” She’d try to shush him, tell him he was talking too loud. Of course, we could hear that too, since she had to yell to get him to lower his voice. (Which he never did). “Letty, I thought Madeline’s friend was pretty pudgy for a girl her age. A little snippy too.” It was like listening to the late-night news, a recap and commentary on the day’s events. It’s the thing I love most about LOUD TALKERS. They make it so easy to eavesdrop.

Comments, complaints. Send to mlessler7@gmail.com