The Old Coot strings you along. A Tioga County Courier article of 7-27-2022

 The Old Coot remembers the “String” era.

By Merlin Lessler

 I was looking around for a piece of string the other day, to seal a paint brush in a plastic bag, so I could use it again. I found a ball of twine in a box of seldom used odds and ends. It probably sat there, unappreciated for months. We don’t use string much these days. Or rope either for that matter. But both were once vital to everyday life.

 We used it all the time when I was a kid. A ball of string was in the kitchen, in the garage and I had one in my room. Mom wrapped our sandwiches in wax paper and tied them with string. It was the same thing the butcher did when you went to the grocery store; the meat purchases were wrapped in butcher paper and tied with string from a giant ball on a spool, right there on top of the counter. No plastic bag problems in those days. No plastic bags.

 Kids couldn’t live without string. We needed it to make a bow from an unseasoned tree limb. How else could we play cowboys and Indians? Fix a yoyo with a broken string? Fly a kite? String was the thing. You needed it to pull out a loose baby tooth, tie one end to the tooth and the other end to a door knob. Then, get your courage up and slam the door shut. Kids, and adults too, tied a string around their finger to help remember to do something. Our moms used it to tie turkey legs together and to sew up a flap so the stuffing stayed in the bird.  

 Rope too, was invaluable when I was growing up. The kind we used, clothesline rope, was made from cotton. It wasn’t like today’s rope, made from plastic that unravels when you cut it; the end has to be singed to keep it from fraying. We couldn’t dry our clothes without rope, held up by a pully on the house and a pole off in the distance or lines of rope fastened to the basement ceiling.

 We used rope to tie up the “bad guy” when we played cowboys and Indians. We got pretty good at it and the “outlaw” often had to beg to be untied. But it was no problem for our dogs to get free when we tied them to a tree; they just chewed through it.

 You had to have rope to pull your Flexible Flyer up a hill. And, especially when you were brave enough to come down the hill, standing up. It’s how you steered and kept your balance. We needed it to jump rope, with two people spinning a long piece of rope, while others jumped inside the arc. I’m sure we used string and rope for a lot of other things. Maybe you can add to the list.

 Comments? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

The Old Coot digs deep. An Owego Pennysaver Article of July, 23, 2022

 The Old Coot is skin deep.

By Merlin Lessler

 Whenever I’m in the little waiting room, after first doing time in the big waiting room, I’m told, “Just sit here; the doctor will be right with you.” Well, that never happens. You’re going to wait. I don’t sit there like a dummy, as instructed, I get up and check out the room, wondering if they’d miss a pair or two of those latex gloves or any other useful medical items laying around; gauze, bandages and the like. Not the high-ticket items.  But I leave the gloves, not worth the embarrassment of getting caught red handed, though they really should let us to take what we need for what they charge for a visit.

 Instead of pilfering, I switch to education, study the charts on the wall or those replicas of body parts: the human heart, the knee, hips, finger joints, eyeball, ear canal, tooth structure, skin layers and the like. You can see from my list; I’ve been in the offices of many different specialists over the years. Most old guys have.

 It never ceases to amaze me, all the stuff going on inside the human body – hidden by a protective covering of skin. All those complex functions, monitored and controlled by a part of my brain that runs things while keeping me in the dark. We get a peek inside every once in a while, when the doctor shows us an x-ray, cat scan or MRI image. We’re a gooey collection of tissue, muscles, bones and organs, each with specific duties. Highways of red blood vessels carry food, oxygen and other substances to where it’s needed, and blue vessels coming back for more.

 It’s an interesting exercise to look down at yourself and try to visualize what’s going on under the skin. It looks so calm from the outside. I have a half-size skeleton that’s been with me for decades; I study it whenever my framework gets out of kilter. It helps me understand what might have gone wrong. It came with a red bulging disc between L4 and L5, long before my disc, at that location, put me on the operating table. Irony? Or maybe Voodoo? I also have several anatomy books to help understand issues the doctor explains to me in a foreign language, Latin. I go home, open the book, and figure out what he said.

 If you have friends over thirty and you can’t figure out what to get them for their birthday, give them an anatomy chart that works its way, layer by layer, from the skin to the skeleton. They will love it even more each year, as they approach, and then get well into old coot age.

 Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com  

End of an era. Old Coot article of 7/13/2022 (Tioga County Courier)

 The Old Coot marks the final end to an era

By Merlin Lessler

 This is the 13^th anniversary of the demise of the mailbox at the corner of Front and Ross Streets. The crumbling, leaning cement post it once hung on, fell down after all those lonesome years and was removed just a few days ago. The following is what I wrote when the mailbox was removed 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, all we have left, is a stone monument, slightly askew, marking the spot where she proudly hung. 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 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 to soldiers in Europe, Africa and the South Pacific, fighting 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; 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 on the pedestal for a minute or two, wondering, “What the heck?”  The mailbox sat outside my kitchen window, in a direct line of sight from my perch in the kitchen, 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.  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!”  So, Good-bye Old Blue!!

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

The Old Coot turns 80, almost - A Tioga County Courier Article of 7/6/2022

 The Old Coot Fails a Pop Quiz.

By Merlin Lessler

 I had a SURPRISE, pre-80^th (six months prior) birthday party a few weeks ago. They seem to come so fast when you’re an old coot. Not at all like the year when I was 15 and counting the days until I could get a permit and drive my “old man’s” sedan. That year took an eternity. But after I turned fifty, the years began to fly; ten minutes later I was signing up for Social Security. My birthday cards are loaded with “old” jokes. They cause trouble for old coots like me. Not because of the “old” jokes, I’m used to that stuff. No, they cause problems because I don’t know what to do with the cards after I open them. And guess what? There are rules. Most men don’t know it’s impolite to tear open the envelope, read the card, smile, chuckle and throw it away. That’s a serious violation of the rules. You are supposed to save it, put it on display on your dining room, or your mantle if you have one. You can’t toss it in the garbage. And, if you are smart, you’ll memorize what it says. For the pop quiz that lurks in your future. You’ll know the quiz has started when you hear someone say, “Did you like my card?” If you didn’t follow the rules, you can only lamely respond, “Yes I did. Thanks you very much.” That won’t work, not when the sender asks, “Did you think the little dog with the eyeglasses was funny?” Now, in big trouble, you feel like a kid again, slumped down in your seat with the teacher standing in front of your desk staring down at you as you squirm and get ready to tell her the dog ate your homework.

 You can redeem yourself. You can go home and read the card again. Do your homework, so to speak. When you see the person who was nice enough to give you a card, you can mention the little dog wearing eyeglasses and the chuckle it gave you. You might add a statement or two about how funny other people thought the card was. This might earn you enough credit to get your pop quiz grade raised from an F to a D.  Which is quite an accomplishment. For an old coot.     

 The rules aren’t specific about how long you should keep your birthday cards on display. I go with a two-week rule. But, that won’t work for everybody. Old coots who don’t get out much, should keep the cards for a month or more, because they may not get to some of the pop quizzes for several weeks. They can bone up for the test every time they leave the house. They won’t have to use the, “I had a senior moment and can’t remember your card,” defense. They can ace the test!

 When the viewing period has run its course you are permitted to throw the cards away. But, only a foolish old coot would do it. Smart ones put them in a drawer so they can pull them out a week before their next birthday and do their homework. When they get hit with this year’s pop quiz they can compare the new card to last year’s. “I thought your card with the little puppy last year was the funniest card I ever saw, but this one, with the snail tying his shoe laces, is funnier yet!” It’s techniques like this that get you into the old coot, hall of fame. I only have one request. When I get inducted, please don’t send me a card.

 Ps, The party was great! Even better than my 7^th when I was surprised with a pair of Hopalong Cassidy cap guns.  

The Old Coot can read the "read." A Tioga County ny Article of 6/29/2022

 The Old Coot is book smart?

By Merlin Lessler

 I wandered into a “Hudson Books” store at the airport in Sandford, Florida the other day. I didn’t know Hudson was still in business. So many bookstores have gone out of business over the past few decades; it’s a pleasure to find one still in business like Riverow Books in Owego. Anyhow, there I was with an hour to kill, walking around and checking things out: candy bars for $3.50, gum for $2.00. Airport prices are high on everything; food, booze, you name it, they clean out your wallet.  Nothing like a captive audience and merchants with monopoly power. But we pay it. Have no choice.

 The book store drew me in. I could kill some time; see what book I might want to add to my reading list and get it from the bookstore or the library when I got back home. The display of books in the airport was the best I’d ever seen. Perfect for an old coot. The books weren’t on the shelves edgewise; they were facing front. You didn’t have to strain to read the title like you do when tilting your head to the right in libraries and bookstores. It’s even worse at a yard sale where some are right-side up and others aren’t

 All this straining, because the publishers refuse to line up the letters on the spine of the book in a vertical, top-down alignment or in smaller horizontal letters. Instead, they make you crane your neck and stretch to the right to see the title and author. It’s not so bad for the top few rows but by the time you get to the bottom, you have to squat, get down on your knees and finally, lay down on the floor and do a military crawl from one end of the rack to the other. When I walk around in public after a book search, I’m listing to the right, my neck is bent in the same direction, dust is on my knees and the rest of my clothes are soiled and rumpled, you get the look! The one that says, “What has that old coot been up to? Is he homeless?

 What is it about book publishers? Literate, educated to the point of being highbrow and with all the knowledge of the world passing through their hands, yet they haven’t figured out how to print titles on books so you can read them when they’re stacked on a bookshelf?

 And, what about the poor authors whose books end up on the bottom row. A modern-day Shakespeare could go undiscovered. Readers just don’t have the physical fortitude to squat low and risk tipping over on the off chance a book title or an author’s name might catch their eye.

 Well, at least the Hudson Books people have figured it out. Turn the books so customers can shop with ease and stack the duplicates behind them.

 Comments? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com