Old Coot is a flake. (February 26, 2020 Article)

The Old Coot is a flake! A snow flake.

By Merlin Lessler

I gave myself a treat the other morning at Dunkin Donut’s; I ordered a jelly donut with my coffee. It’s something I’d like to do every day but would look like a blimp if I did. It takes all my willpower, but I space out my jelly donut binges.

Anyhow, this particular jelly donut was covered with a layer of powdered sugar. Some Dunkin Donut Shops use granular sugar or go light on the powder, but this place marches their jelly donuts through a blizzard of sugar. I sat at a table, took the snowball out of the bag and carefully placed it on a napkin. Sugar flakes flew into the air; I was surrounded as though in a Nor’easter snowstorm. I could barely see across the room. Ever bite sent a new snow squall into the atmosphere. The napkin, the table, my pants & shirt, the seat and the floor were speckled in a layer of snowflakes. I looked like Pig-Pen, the character in Peanuts who lives in a cloud of dust. Anyone seeing me would be tempted to ask the manager, “Why do you allow a slob like that in this place?”

It doesn’t bother me, those dirty looks from strangers. I deserve the “Pig-Pen” comparison: I look as unkempt as he does, and even worse. I look like a one year old when I get up from the table. One that grabbed a spoon out of his mother’s hand and sprayed pablum all over himself and his surroundings. Most people come out of a restaurant carrying their leftovers in a doggy bag. Not me! I don’t need the bag. I transport my leftovers on my shirt, pants and shoes. I’m saving the eco system from Styrofoam pollution.

I’m not sure exactly when I became a food & drink slob. I know there was a time when I looked presentable in public. But for years now, I’ve sported coffee, mustard, spaghetti sauce, ketchup and wine stains on my clothes. I sloshed so much coffee on myself, that for a while I wore beige to hide the stains. I gave that up and now face the world just as I am – a shirt stained old coot who is well along the return trip to babyhood – It’s where I started and it’s where I’ll end up. It’s just taken me a lifetime to make the round trip.    

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The Old Coot misses pipes. (February 19, 2020 Article)

The Old Coot misses the whiff of pipe tobacco.

By Merlin Lessler

It is an era long gone, and for good reason, yet I miss it. Hadn’t thought about it for years but the other day I spotted a picture of Sylvester Stallone in an old news photo lighting a pipe. Oh my, how politically incorrect! A pipe? Not in this day and age!  Not a common sight. It hit me how much I miss being in a world with pipe smokers, letting that sweet, mellow aroma tickle my senses. And, hearing the tap, tap, tap as an indulger empties the ashes and unburned stubs of tobacco to rest the bowl until the next time it’s called into service.

Just seeing a pipe smoker with a briar protruding from the side of his mouth, a contented man, at peace with the world, would make my day. It was a male vice for the most part, yet women did puff on them as well. Not very many and rarely in public, though I recall a picture of Katharine Hepburn puffing on a briar back in the 1950’s.

I was fifteen when I bought my first pipe. It was on a display at a neighborhood mom and pop store, attached to two tins of Raleigh Tobacco with a rubber band.  A holiday special, for only a dollar! I thought I’d give it to my father for Christmas; he’d recently given up cigarette smoking, along with five minutes of coughing every morning. I thought it would help him stay with the program. My mother said it would only get him started again so I kept the pipe for myself. And, with a couple of like-minded knuckle-headed friends, walked around town puffing away, thinking how adult we must look. A pipe was a nerdy thing to smoke, long before nerdy became a word, so we switched to cigarettes. Winston’s, the ones with the catchy advertising jingle, “Winston’s taste good like a cigarette should!”

Not the worst mistake I ever made, but right up there near the top. I took up the pipe again in my twenties, to get off the cancer sticks, as we called them, well before the Surgeon General got around to alerting the public to the dangers of cigarette smoking. The pipe did the job: I quit cigarettes, at least for a while, and eventually forever but I still remember how nice it felt to have a pipe protruding from the side of my mouth and to be enclosed in an aromatic cloud. I wasn’t alone; a lot of famous people were pipe smokers – Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Darwin, Gerald Ford, Walter Cronkite, FDR, Einstein, Stalin, and Mark Twain to name a few.

Now, no one smokes them in public, not that I ever see. I miss it. But even more, I miss the sweet aroma of pipe tobacco. Almost as much as the scent of burning leaves on a crisp fall afternoon. When I turn eighty, which isn’t that far off, especially now that years slip past me at the speed of light, I’m going to buy a pipe and go in my back yard and put a match to it and to a small pile of leaves. If the authorities come charging in to stop me, they’ll have to pry, both the leaf rake and the briar pipe from my cold dead hands. Want to join me? Be at my house on November 15, 2022; we’ll light up the world together.  Ha Ha!

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five dollars a tooth? February 12, 2020 Article

The Old Coot sold out too cheap.

By Merlin Lessler

I’ll never forget losing my first tooth. It was at my grandfather’s house: I was five years old and had not an inkling that some day I’d be an old man like him. All through our youth, and well beyond, we never think old age will come our way. We know it intellectually, but for some reason, think we’ll escape it, and the infirmities that go with it. Some people actually do escape the infirmities. You see them paraded out on TV all the time, like the 103-year-old woman who climbed aboard a bull at a nursing home making the highlight reel on the evening news last week. It was one of those feel good endings that they tack on to make us feel warm and fuzzy after blasting us with 30 minutes of dreadful news and life threating weather forecasts.   

But, back to the tooth, that first one I pried out, grasping it with a handkerchief because the looseness was driving me nuts and the dime from the Tooth Fairy that would await me under my pillow when I woke up the next morning. Not as exciting as waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney loaded with presents, but still a big deal for a five-year-old. I slipped the tooth under my pillow that night and woke to a shiny dime. I was a little disappointed. I was hoping for a nickel. I thought a nickel was worth more than a dime because it was bigger.    

That baby tooth was soon replaced with a so called “permanent” tooth, but as us old coots know, permanence is not guaranteed, not if you crunch down hard on an un-popped, popcorn kernel. I broke a few corners off doing that. There are plenty of other oral surprises that lurk in the dark, waiting to visit you at the worst possible moment. You can also lose some teeth by shooting off your mouth to the wrong guy and discover that your ducking skills are no longer what they once were.  

I also didn’t consider the expense I’d incur, over a lifetime, when I yanked out that milk tooth and invited in my first permanent one. I ended up with a mouthful of liabilities, eventually receiving 32 of those white devils. I parted company with the 4 wisdom teeth before I left my thirties. Down to 28. Over time, another three rats deserted the sinking ship, two lost to my love affair with popcorn and one that just woke me up one morning and said, “I’ve got to get out of here!” They were all in the back part of my mouth and didn’t really need to be replaced. Not like those front teeth, that make you look like a goober when they’re gone. The tooth fairy skipped my pillow when that threesome came out; she slipped the cash under my dentist’s pillow instead, depositing a lot more than a shiny dime.

I have no regrets on that score. I love my dentist; she’s been a savior on many instances over the years. I got a dime to welcome in a permanent tooth when I was five, but now spend about five dollars per tooth to get them professionally cleaned. I think the disparity of getting a dime to make room for a tooth that costs five bucks in maintenance, twice a year, is a lopsided financial transaction. I should have held out for a dental plan when I lost the first one. 

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Head full of mush - Old Coot February 5, 2020 Article

The Old Coot’s head is full! (of junk)

By Merlin Lessler

Well, it finally happened; my head is full. I can’t put another thing in it. I thought it would be names that would put me over the top. But it was numbers that did it. I discovered the issue when I went to the college swimming pool after a 7-month absence. I had to renew my membership to get in. “What’s your old entry code,” I was asked? “Uh… I think it’s les.” But no, that wasn’t it. I had to start from scratch: full name, driver’s ID. Then my code popped up – les1942. I’d forgotten the “1942.” I paid up and made it over that hurdle. It was similar to what happens when you check into a motel and they ask for your license plate number. I never know mine. We have two cars and I can’t remember which plate goes with which car. THAT’S A LIE! I don’t know either plate number. As I started out to saying; my head is full.

Anyhow, I got registered at the pool, headed down the hall to the locker room door and punched 756 into the keypad; nothing happened; the door wouldn’t open. Wrong number? Back to the main desk to ask if I remembered the code correctly. “Oh, we changed it; it’s now 648.”  Off I went chanting 648, 648, 648. I didn’t want to have to go back to the desk and remove all doubt of how much of an idiot I really am. I made it into the room, got into my suit, and using a combination lock, secured my clothes, wallet and cell phone inside the locker. My combination is 7-28-5. That didn’t come out of my head; it came from the back of the lock. I never removed the sticker that came with it. I knew at some point I’d forget and wanted to avoid going to the front desk, dripping like a drowned rat, to ask if the janitor might have a set of bolt cutters to cut open my lock.

That’s the issue; all those numbers in my life, in everyone’s life. Three sets to go for a swim. Four digits to get cash from an ATM. Go to the doctor and be asked, “What year were you born?” Knowing your name isn’t enough to get you into the exam room. It’s not a problem for me. I may not know how old I am, but for some reason I never forget my birth year.  I guess it’s because I use it all the time to figure out how old I am and then gasp in shock.

When cell phones went mainstream, society got a reprieve. The phones took over the task of keeping track of the numbers we frequently call. But it only lasted a few years. Eventually, a bunch of new numbers to remember came our way. Now I can barely remember my own phone number. I can retrieve my childhood, five-digit number along with several others from that era. They are deep inside my brain and apparently insulated from memory lapses.  

We’re inundated with numbers and codes: ATM pins, Social Security ID’s, passwords, library card ID’s, license plate numbers. It’s a long list and a challenge to keep track of them. I hope I’m not involved in an emergency; even 911 is getting difficult to extract from that swamp between my ears. Think it’s not a problem for you? Have you dated a check or a document this year and found you’d written 2019 instead of 2020? No? Then your head’s not full yet. But it will be.

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