Old Coot makes movies in his head. Published 11-04-26

 The Old Coot is a movie maker. 

By Merlin Lessler

When I was a kid, 7 or 8 years old, I pretended I was making a movie as I went through the day.  I’d narrate the scene in my head. “He’s on his bike, heading down the street. He turns on Vestal Ave toward Medola’s grocery store. He enters; he goes to the walk-in cooler, grabs a Pepsi in a glass bottle, hands Mr. Medola a dime, plus two pennies for the deposit; goes outside; sits on the bench and watches people walk by.” On and on I’d go, as the day played out. At least when I was by myself. I’m still doing it! I guess it’s my subconscious that takes over. Just like it does when I write an old coot article.

Anyhow, I have a file cabinet full of these “movies’ that I tap into. They go all the way back to when I was three years old. That’s when a stray dog wandered into our driveway and came over to me as I sat on my rocking horse, dressed like a cowboy and sporting two holstered six-shooters. I got off and hugged him and then asked my mother if I could keep him. She said I could, until she and my dad found its owner.  They never did; it was a “drop-off” dog and not a he, because “she” had seven puppies in our garage two weeks later.

That was my first movie and my favorite, since I got to keep one of the puppies, Topper. He was with me until I was fourteen. Of course, it’s not a movie, it’s a memory. But, as I wander back to visit my past, it seems like a movie. Some scenes anyhow: the yo-yo contest I almost won – my patrol-boy days, helping the younger kids cross at my assigned corner. The campfires in the woods with my friend Woody, blackening hot dogs on a stick in a leaf fire.

It’s a treasure vault. And, a nice place to visit when the dentist is drilling my tooth or the doctor says this is going to hurt. Or, when some boring person goes on and on, ad-nauseam. I don’t know if other people were film directors like me. Maybe you had to be a movie nut like me, who went to a neighborhood movie theater every Saturday, and for 25 cents, got to watch two or three cowboy movies and a slew of cartoons. That’s probably what amplified my career as a videographer. It at least explains why I was so good at staggering & fake dying from a smoking cap-gun in a neighborhood shoot out.     

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