June 25, 2014 Article

The Old Coot had a burger for breakfast.

By Merlin Lessler

I had a hamburger for breakfast today, a “John Dillinger” from the Calaboose Restaurant in Owego. I couldn’t finish it at dinner; it was too big, so I brought the remains home in a Styrofoam container, like old coots often do. I knew I wouldn’t be home for lunch, I’d be at a committee meeting of the Senior Citizen Foundation, to participate in the “granting” of tens of thousands of dollars to organizations in Tioga county that provide valuable assistance to well deserving senior citizens. It’s something they do every year. I never knew the foundation existed and now I’m lending a hand in the good work they do.

Since I’m a newcomer to the board, I knew it would make a bad impression if I brought half a hamburger to the meeting and ate it for lunch. So, I popped it in the oven and had it for breakfast. I finished it off with a piece of Nancy Ruiz’s birthday cake, that also was transported home from the Calaboose in a Styrofoam container. She turned 60, and like many newcomers to senior citizenland, she didn’t want a big to-do to mark the occasion. A small group of us gathered on the front porch of the restaurant for dinner to help her adjust to the milestone in a low-key way.

It was my first breakfast burger. It made me wonder why I’d waited so long to break the breakfast rules: Thou shall only consume eggs, cereal, toast, bagels, pancakes, waffles, ham, sausage, bacon and no other food products when thou break-thy-fast after a night of slumber! It was such a relief to be freed of the shackles that held me back for seven decades. It’s also the kind of thing I get into when I’m left unsupervised in the morning, which is often the case since I’m the only early riser in our household. The floodgates are open now; I see a breakfast future of burgers, pizza and hot dogs. Oh what a world awaits those who break free of the breakfast rules.

I guess I should have seen it coming; it was only last week when I sent three of my grandchildren off to school after a scrumptious breakfast of applesauce, pistachios and ramen noodle soup, but that was an act of desperation; there was no milk in the fridge. They seemed happy enough and I did my job; sent them to school on a full stomach. My subconscious must have kicked into gear, bringing me to my hamburger breakfast today.  We are such creatures of habit, seldom questioning the everyday stuff we do. No more! Have a burger for breakfast and enter a new world of freedom. It’s nice here!

June 18, 12014 Article

The Old Coot fights back.

By Merlin Lessler

It’s been going on for fifty years! It’s time for a new game plan. We’ve all suffered with it. You rush into a big-chain grocery store for milk & bread on your way home from work.  Where’s the milk? The farthest corner of the store! Where’s the bread? As far from the milk as you can get! Some “brilliant” marketing genius (I need to tread lightly here – I was one of these guys once, but I got treatment) came up with this bread-milk placement plan. It forces shoppers through the aisles when they’re on a milk & bread run, to entice them to pick up other items on impulse. A money based strategy, not a customer service strategy.

And, it works, a little, but it also irritates us. It’s been going on so long we just take it for granted and put on our running shoes when we go on a milk & bread run. Is it merchant bullying? Feels that way to me! Big-chain grocery stores aren’t the only ones that do it; how about running into a big-chain pharmacy to pick up a prescription? You have to go to the very back of the pharmacy, past the chips, the cereal boxes, the ice-cream cooler, the office supplies, the garden shop to get your medicine. (And, then get in line behind the “fence” to comply with the privacy regulations.) Where are the cigarettes? Right up front! Ten feet from the door!

But it should be no surprise that grocery stores and pharmacies employ the same tactics. They are basically one entity. Eventually, they both will sell everything, bringing American merchandising full circle, back to the old general store. Except, for the warm glow of a pot bellied stove with a cluster of old coots like me sitting around it in winter or out in front sitting on empty crates in summer, next to the fruit and vegetable rack. Milk wasn’t in the back of the store in those days; it was waiting for you on your front porch when you came down for breakfast. (Placed there by the milkman.)

How do we stop this? It’s possible, if we pull together. The next time you go on a milk & bread run, go to the bread rack first and pick up an extra loaf. Put it next to the milk cooler. A customer going to the milk corner first, can avoid a trip to the opposite side of the store. It’s a form of “paying it forward.” Every other customer will benefit. Eventually, the marketing people will get the message and set up the store to serve the customers, not the stockholders.  

June 11, 2014 Article

An Old Coot wishes his pop a Happy Father’s day!

by Merlin Lessler

I stumbled on an old picture of my father the other day. It lay hidden for decades in a box of memorabilia. It was taken in 1970, a few months before he died. He was sixty-eight. Something about the picture struck a chord in me. It looked familiar in a new way. Then it dawned on me. I’ve been seeing a semblance of his face in my mirror for several years, when I really looked. Usually, I’m not paying close attention; I see myself in a memory haze. We all do. None of us can believe how old we really are. Even a thirty-year-old sees a younger face in the mirror. Every once in a while the haze clears and we’re startled. “Who the heck is that?” That’s the way it was for me when I looked at my father’s picture. He’d been appearing in my mirror of late and I didn’t know it.

I was in my twenties when he died. His face showing up in my mirror has been a long time coming. So long that I didn’t expect it. It’s why the long-lost snapshot gave me such a start. I came face to face with my mortality. I can remember being irked with him when he died. The national life expectancy for a male at the time was sixty-nine. He died short of the mark. I thought he should have stayed around longer. We’d just started to develop a nice friendship. The salad days of suffering through the “old man’s” unsolicited advice had finally worn away; we both had come to realize that each had a unique perspective on life, to value, to treasure. Then he was gone.

Now it’s my turn. The face in my mirror is looking very much like his. I’ve got to hang on longer than he did. My son is a few years from discovering that his “old man” is okay. I can’t rush the process. I couldn’t with his sisters and I can’t with him. He won’t grow up right unless he goes through the transition, rejects the nurturing and flies from the nest. It’s nature’s way and you can’t mess with Mother Nature.

My father would be 111 if he were still alive. I know he would get a real kick out of the technology we take for granted today. He was a technocrat himself, an inventor. His name is on dozens of the patents for Ansco cameras. He loved to tinker, especially with cars. His favorite vacation was driving us to the Jersey shore. We almost always ran into car trouble. He’d somehow patch things together so we could limp to the motel. While we enjoyed the beach he took on the car problem. He’d spend all day leaning in, or lying under, the vehicle. If you stood within hearing range you’d hear him yell, “Sucker,” every once in a while, when his hand slipped off the wrench and he skinned his knuckles. He never swore; he just yelled sucker.  The whole thing is easier to understand when you realize that our car was a Ford Edsel. He bought it brand new, the first year they made it. He liked being on the cutting edge. It was the lemon of the century. The repair bills added up. He didn’t care. He loved it. I did too. It was the car I got to drive when I turned sixteen.

It was one of the few things we agreed on during my teen years. When I bought my first car, a well used, 1953 Ford convertible, for sixty dollars, it made two things we agreed on. It made me a Ford man too. Cars had magic in those days. They brought fathers and sons together, under the hood, taking on the beast. It was a time when a regular Joe could fix a car - change the spark plugs, replace the generator, adjust the brakes. You could even pull the engine and overhaul it if you were especially handy. The automobile had a social context. That’s gone now. The manufacturers have put the backyard mechanics out of business. The secrets of today’s automobiles can’t be passed on from father to son. The secrets are locked up in computer chips and buried in a web of pollution control components. Even the design engineers aren’t sure how it all works.  It’s too bad. Cars helped fathers and sons stay in touch through the difficult teen years. Now that bridge is gone. Happy father’s day Pop! I hope the Edsel is hitting all eight cylinders.

June 4, 2014 Article

The Old Coot’s favorite four words: “slept through the night.”

By Merlin Lessler

There was a new mom with her baby at the Rotary meeting the other day. Couldn’t have been more than a month or two old. Never made a peep! On the way out the door I heard the mother (Donna Townsend’s daughter) say in a jubilant voice, “She slept through the night twice this week. Those are special words, slept through the night, when you have a new baby in the house. If you’re a parent, you never forget the magic of that moment in your child’s development.

I remember when our first-born made it through the night like it was yesterday. And I remember it for each successive child. I was born too late to duck out on middle of the night baby duties. The dads in the generation that came before me weren’t required to play a big role in childcare. It was a woman’s thing for the most part. Not so with my generation. We were expected to share in the duties that came with having babies. We thought of it as a 50-50 deal, us men, but if you actually run the numbers it was more like 20-80. But still and all, I did my part, taking turns getting up in the night to feed and change the baby. And, after that stage, to respond to their screams when they had a bad dream on an inflamed eardrum.  

Today, I have a different appreciation for those four beautiful words, “slept through the night.”  This time it isn’t the baby that gets high praise for pulling it off. It’s me. Old coots have a lot in common with newborns. Prime among them is our inability to sleep through the night. It doesn’t take much to make an old coot’s slumber a restless one. Our minds work overtime the minute our heads hit the pillow: Did I leave the window down in the car? – Did I forget to let the cat in? – Will I oversleep and be late for my doctor’s appointment? We drive ourselves nuts with useless fretting. Thankfully, we don’t need as much sleep as normal people and especially as much as teenagers, who think getting up before noon on a non-school day is considered cruel and unusual punishment, as embodied in the 8^th amendment of the U.S. constitution.

I did it, slept through the night, twice this year. It’s one of those things you remember when it happens so seldom: January 31^st and April 17^th. I could really relate to the thrill the new mom at the Rotary meeting felt when she bragged about her daughter sleeping through the night. Just thinking about it will probably wake me up several times tonight. But, that’s OK; I’m used to it. 

May 28, 2014 Article

The Old Coot ponders the meaning of significant other.

By Merlin Lessler

She came up to our group at the party, and said, “This is Tom; my significant other!” We looked at each other in puzzlement. A look that said, “Significant other what?” It’s a term that was coined in 1953 by Harry Sullivan, a psychiatrist. He should be ashamed of himself, especially considering his profession, for unleashing a term on society that’s been driving us nuts ever since, well, some of us anyhow, well, me. “What?” I ask myself, “Does she mean?” Is he her boyfriend, her husband, the guy who fixes her car or takes care of her dog when she goes on vacation? Her lawyer? Her psychiatrist?”

Before significant other was imposed on our culture, we knew who we were being introduced to: friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbor, cousin, fiancée or fiancé. I don’t like fiancée or fiancé very much either. I can never remember which is which, or how it’s pronounced, or spelled. Still, it’s better than its predecessor, betrothed. Introduce your fiancée as your betrothed sometime. You’ll get to watch eyes roll on that one. Some of my old coot cronies introduce their wives as their better halves. Others, the dumb ones, say, “This is my old lady,” or, “This is the old ball and chain.” Those guys better check to make sure the white powder she sprinkles on their waffles in the morning is powdered sugar, not rat poison.

But even ball & chain is better than significant other. At least we know what the (dumb) guy means. Not so with the person using the significant other term. It stops us in our tracks: boyfriend? husband? exactly how significant? Or, is it some guy you’re ga-ga over but aren’t sure if he’s really divorced? Some guy you’re dating but not sure if he likes you? Some guy who thinks you’re going to marry him, but you’re dumping him as soon as he finishes fixing your car? Don’t leave us guessing. Inquiring minds want to know.

If you insist on using the significant other term, be warned. Many of us will interpret it as a negative, and conclude you mean the jerk who you’ve been dating for 10 years that won’t make a commitment; he’s not ready to get engaged, nonetheless get married. You introduced him as your boyfriend for several years, but it eventually became embarrassing, so you switched to calling him your significant other. If you’re smart, you’ll just introduce him as your cousin.

May 21, 2014 Article

The Old Coot rants at TV ads. Yet again!

By Merlin Lessler

I’m insulted! You should be too. At the pablum TV advertisers try to feed us. The pumped up, and screaming car dealer decked out in a $1,000 Armani suit, or the one taking the casual route in kakis and an Arnold Palmer golf shirt, promising to knock $7,000 off the price of a truck (down to $47,000) because he is over stocked and needs to cut down his overhead. It must be true! Look at all the balloons and waving flags blanketing the sales lot.

Then there’s the pest control, plumbing, or other “come to your home” repairmen, portrayed on TV in crisp, perfectly ironed, pristine, military styled outfits, shinned shoes and neatly trimmed hair, faces handsome enough to grace the silver screen, promising to arrive on time and quickly solve your problem. Good luck opening your door to anyone close to that image.

My favorite is the medical looking actor in a long white lab coat. Sometimes with a stethoscope hanging from his neck, promising a cure for a condition you didn’t even know existed:  neuro-lasitude, hippo-paino, or necka-achea. Just take his pill. Then, with a pristine mountain stream as a backdrop, a seductive comforting voice lists the potentially lethal side effects that he hopes will go in one of your ears and out the other. Most of these aliments go away on their own, but in our instant-gratification society, the pharmaceutical companies make a fortune because of our impatience. We buy the stuff. And, sometimes sue, at the urging of TV lawyers in three-piece suits, promising us millions.

How about the ads that beat back Mother Nature by using specially formulated creams and oils that remove wrinkles, tighten neck waddle and make age spots disappear? Or, the never-ending lineup of diet and fitness breakthroughs, that without any effort or willpower, will make us trim, fit and healthy in six short weeks.

Oh yes, they really shovel it on TV, these pablum pushers. The parade of con men and snake oil salesmen and women that stalk us from the other side of our TV screen is endless. And, we sit there in our adult high chairs while they feed us pablum and bang our spoons on the tray for more. 

May 14, 2014 Article

The Old Coot explains the modern version of musical chairs.

By Merlin Lessler

I call it musical checkout-counters. It’s like musical chairs, the game kids played at birthday parties back in my day, and sometimes these days, but musical checkout-counters is played in stores. It’s especially popular in pharmacies, the national chains anyhow. I don’t know why they still call themselves pharmacies. They do sell drugs, but that’s a back room operation. The real store is out front. I’m not sure what it is. A gift shop? A grocery store? A beverage center? A convenience store? All of the above? No matter, they install four or five check out stations and then don’t use them. The only clerk in sight is at the photo center wearing a white lab coat, looking professional, but busy. These employees are the store’s best workers, the ones out front dealing with customers, the ones who have to apologize for the empty check out stations.

The musical checkout-counter game begins when the clerk runs into the back to get something, leaving the check out area unmanned. You emerge from the aisles with your arms loaded with stuff, survey the line of empty check out stations, head for the one that is least cluttered with junk and hope for the best. You glance around for a clerk, but the store appears empty. You search the counter for a bell or a buzzer but find neither. You cough; you let out a loud yawn, you clear your throat. Nothing! That’s when you look around for a hidden camera, picturing a roomful of store employees watching your frustration and rolling on the floor laughing.

Finally, a clerk shows up. Slides behind a counter twenty feet to your left and announces, “I can help you over here.” They never pick the one where you’ve unloaded your items. You scramble as fast as you can to gather up your goods, but another customer comes out of the aisle and walks right up to the clerk. You lost this round of musical checkout-counters! Then, you lose again; two more customers make it to the line ahead of you. 

The game is a little different in grocery stores. They play two different games. The first one is played when you head for the express line. The clerk spots you coming, and when you almost make it, she yells to a customer passing by with a fully loaded cart, “I can take you here, maam.” The cart is maneuvered into the slot just as you arrive. It’s too late. You lost! The second game is what I call the “lights-out” game. It’s also played in K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target and other big box stores. It starts when you get stuck in line behind a customer having an argument with the clerk (and the manager) about an outdated discount coupon. You see an opening a few rows away, gather your goods, push past and apologize to the six people behind you in line and rush to the “Promised Land.” Just as you get there, the clerk reaches up, turns off her light and walks away. You go back to where you were, but now you’re at the end of the line.

I’ve played this game for years and never won. It’s getting more vicious. Especially the version played in airports. They make you stand in line in stocking feet holding your shoes. Your valuables, car keys and pocket change lie exposed in a plastic bin as a gloved masochist paws through your carry on bag, searching for weapons of mass destruction: nail clippers, tooth paste and hand cream. You are in the worst musical chairs game of all, “musical screening.” One by one, the passengers in front of you pass through the metal detector. Now, it’s your turn; you hold your breath and step into the torture chamber. The buzzer sounds! It makes you feel like you’re seven years old all over again, when the music stopped and a bully pushed you aside and plopped down in the last available chair.