The Old Coot checks some old postcards. Article #1055 Published N0vember 11, 2023

 The Old Coot checks the mail.

By Merlin Lesssler

 I’ve used a couple of old postcards as bookmarks for the past several years. Keith (of Keith & Phyllis from London, Ontario, Canada) found them in an antique shop in Daytona Beach; he bought them and gave them to me because they were from Binghamton, NY, where he knew I grew up. The one I’m using at the moment, marks my page in the book, Stateless by Elizabeth Wein. It features the New Armory building, downtown on Washington Street. (An excellent book, by the way)

 

The card was sent by Alice of Binghamton to Mrs. Elmer A. Lawrence of Stamford NY. (Delaware County), postmarked, October 5^th, 1907, 9am. It’s interesting that the name of the county was part of the address. A one-cent postage stamp got it there, arriving at the Stamford post office at 9am, on October 7^th. Pretty fast service in those days, probably by rail. I’m not sure we can match it today.

 

The armory looks like a castle; it sports a two story tower on one end of the facility and a five story tower on the other. It was built in 1904 and existed as an armory until 1932, replaced by a more modern facility on the west side of Binghamton. It became a college in 1948 when New York State created five institutions of Arts & Science around the state, to serve the flood of GI’s returning home after World War ll. Locals called it State Tech. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1951, leading to the construction of a new campus on upper Front Street, called Broome Tech, where I went to college in the early 1960’s. Now it’s referred to as SUNY Broome.

 

The second postcard, addressed to Ella Whitaker in Hancock, NY pictures the city post office, now a piece of rubble, buried someplace under a parking lot. The postmark shows the card left Binghamton at 9:30 pm on July 5, 1912. No date is noted on the receiving end.

 

The third postcard, residing in Moby Dick, a slow read I’ve been working on for over 6 months, sports a picture of the United States Post office and Court House. The facility is still in operation today, but the postal function has moved down the block. This card was sent in 1937 to Mrs. John Jacob of Seneca Falls, NY. This too, made the journey with a one-cent stamp, 37 years after the first card was sent. Wouldn’t it be nice if postal rates held up that long these days? The stamps on the earlier cards had a picture of Benjiman Franklin in a frontal pose. The 1937 stamp showed him in profile, revealing long locks of hair. The country’s first hippie. You’ve got to love it!

     

The Old Coot questions modern medicine. Article # 1054, November 15, 2023

 The Old Coot isn’t sure who’s right.

By Merlin Lessler

 My grandparents never (or almost never) went to a doctor or entered a hospital. They were born in the late 1800’s and passed away in the 1950’s. My grandmother, of “hardening of the arteries, as they called Alzheimer’s back then, my grandfather of a strangulated hernia, which he treated with a truss for 20 years, (but should have gone to a doctor and a hospital to get it fixed). But, people from their generation didn’t run to a doctor, as a rule. Or, a dentist, except for an abscessed tooth extraction or to get a new set of choppers. They treated most of their ailments with home remedies, and made out pretty well for the most part.

 They were in their 60’s by the time I came into their lives. I had more doctors than golf league partners when I was their age. I’m in pretty good shape, yet my annual calendar is sprinkled with checkups and investigative procedures. It makes me wonder who had the best strategy – home cures or modern medicine in a relentless struggle to keep me going with a stash of prescriptions and medical appointments in an endless, repeating stream.

 Maybe, a little of each is the way to go. Besides, I’m now used to a doctor saying, “You have to expect that at your age.” It’s been going on for more than 20 years. It taught me not to pick up the phone at every new physical adventure that comes my way.  Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. I grapple with it every so often. I thought if I wrote it out I’d come to some conclusion. Not this time. I guess I’ll try to accept the inconvenience of sitting in waiting rooms, thumbing through old magazines and watching TV with the sound turned off, and closed captions NOT turned on. It’s especially hard on me, because I can’t lip-read!

The Old Coot's car was keyed! Article #1053, November 8, 2023

 Old Coot – My car was keyed! Ouch!

By Merlin Lessler

 I love the electronic devices of our modern day world – smart phones, tablets, computers, GPS and all the goodies making life easier. EXCEPT! Automobile ignition keys, car fobs, remote entry and other such devices. How did automobile company innovators get so out of control?

 They should have stopped at the remote door openers, attached to a simple key. I loved that era. You could go to the hardware store, get some duplicate keys made and put one in a magnetic key box and stick it under a fender or behind a bumper, before they were made from plastic. I used to hide one behind the license plate, held in place by the screw holding the plate. All I’d need, if I lost my keys or locked them in the car, would be a screw driver or a Swiss Army Knife. Easy enough to get from a bystander.  

 So what’s the big deal, you’re probably wondering at this point? The big deal is the $180 I just paid a locksmith to get a new key fob; the old one fell apart, the second one to do so in the last few months. The dealer wanted even more, upwards of $300. It took a few days of opening the door with the key, hidden in a compartment of the fob, causing the car alarm to go off, repeatedly sounding the horn, to get me to cough up the $180 replacement cost. The car thought someone was breaking in, or I was being mugged in the parking lot.

 I never liked that panic, horn blowing function. No one pays attention, except to chuckle and wonder who the numbskull is that just hit their panic button by mistake and didn’t realize it. That was me, for a while. Now, $180 poorer, I’m free of that embarrassment.

 Comments? – Send to mlessler7@gmail.com

The Old Coot knows how to wait. Article # 1052 (November 1, 2023)

 The Old Coot is on a waiting list.

By Merlin Lessler

 I listened to a woman yell into a smart phone in the grocery store the other day. Actually, it was a flip phone, and it wasn’t the other day, it was 18 years ago. But nothing has changed. People always talk loud when on a cell phone. It takes all the challenge (and fun) out of eavesdropping. This woman told a friend she just bought a rotisserie chicken for dinner. Maybe it’s me, but I think the smart phone has eliminated the last shred of patience in our society. We can’t wait anymore; we have to report on things as they happen, no matter how miniscule.

 The news media has adapted to our inflated lack of patience. They used to focus on the day’s events, but now they focus more on the future, knowing we’re too impatient to wait for it to unfold. We need to know now! The media, talk radio and most especially, sports commentators, spend their airtime speculating on what’s to come, bringing in an endless string of “experts,” to forecast what will be. These prognosticators are cocky and self-assured, but more times than not, they are wrong! I chuckle when their predictions prove false.

  My old coot crowd was brought up in a world of waiting. Patience was embedded deep within our psyches. It started with cereal box tops for me. I’ll never forget the months it took to eat my way through three boxes of Wheaties so I could send them and three dimes in for some cheap toy. Even then, the wait wasn’t over, the wooden glider kit took two months to come, an eternity for an eight-year-old. (Just for the record – the plane didn’t fly any better than one made by folding a piece of paper.)

 I even had to be patient with what I wore. If my mother caught me putting on a freshly ironed shirt, she’d tell me to put it back in the closet. “Get that shirt off; I just ironed it!”  Clean shirts had to age for three days in my house. Same thing with new clothes. “Where are you going in those pants?” I just bought them last week.”

 It wasn’t just clothes; I was forced to exercise patience when offered food at a friend or neighbor’s house. I couldn’t say yes until it was offered three times. “Would you like a piece of pie?” - “No thanks,” I’d say, looking over to my mother for an indication she would suspend her 3-offer rule. She never did,! And, I missed out on a lot of pie. I’ll never forget my mother’s reaction, when she asked my friend Wally if he would like a piece of pie. He said, “Yes I would, Mrs. Lessler,” (after only one offer.) Boy, that made her mad. I could interpret her mumbles as she turned to get the pie; luckily, he couldn’t. He would have heard, “What a rude young man; what kind of mother does he have?”

 Yes, I learned patience, but it never did me any good. I went around in dirty clothes and still have an insatiable hunger for pie. It’s an affliction I can’t shake.