The Old Coot watches the show. Tioga County Courier Old Coot Article - 9/16/2020

 

The Old Coot Has a Day at the Beach.

By Merlin Lessler 

“You’ve come a long way, baby!” So touted the ad for Virginia Slims, a new cigarette that was marketed to independent minded women in the late 1960’s. It was true. It is true. Women had, and have, come a long way, breaking free of the shackles that held them back. Now, they stand or fall on their own merits. It isn’t true though, as some social progressives would have you believe, that there is no difference between men and women. Old coots know better. The fundamental difference hasn’t changed since we lived in caves. Men hunt. Women gather, and nest (and do everything else, I might add, including hunting). 

I stumble on these differences all the time, pursuing my favorite pastime – people watching. I’ve reported back on many of them - men can’t fold - men don’t listen - men don’t understand the good-bye process - men tape over their wedding video with a Giant’s football game and wonder why their wives are upset. And, as I observed at the beach, men can’t pick out a spot to set up their gear on the sand.

 It was warm and sunny, a perfect day to sit by the water and relax. I watched a brother old coot come out of his car, plop down a combination beach bag/cooler and set up two folding lounge chairs & an umbrella at the first open spot he came to. He sat down, lit a cigar and opened the paper to the sports section. He was in heaven! Then the storm clouds blew in; his wife arrived. The battle was on! Mind you, I was too far away to hear a word they said, but, I’m a master at reading body language, especially when the sparks are flying. She barked a few sentences in his direction; he shrugged, got up and gathered their stuff and stood there like a dummy, something us old coots do when we’re being supervised. She patrolled the waterfront, measuring the wind, the angle of the sun and other factors.

 Finally, the selection process came to an end. She signaled to the “dummy” to bring their stuff. She told him where to set up the chairs and the umbrella and freed him from her apron strings. He plopped down on his chair but quickly got back up, an appropriate response to the quick jerk of her head and the sharp glare she hurled in his direction. She then brushed off some microscopic grains of sand from the chairs and stood back to assess the layout. The nest was ready! He sat with a sigh, took a puff on his cigar and reopened the paper. Her work was done, she headed up the beach to examine the goods on sale in a craft market a hundred yards or so off the beach. She went by herself, knowing full well that men don’t know how to shop and she didn’t want a two-year-old (equivalent) tugging at her skit and whining to go back to the beach. I didn’t notice if she was smoking a Virginia Slim or not. I was in enough trouble as it was for repeatedly saying, “Yes dear, Yes dear,” while not listening, as is usually the case when I’m distracted by drama such as this.

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Old Coot versus the grocery store - Tioga County Courier article 9/09/20

 

The Old Coot turns in his wool coat.

By Merlin Lessler

 

It’s time for a new game plan! A new “Grocery Store” game plan! They’ve been herding us through their aisles like sheep for decades. Milk in one corner of the store, bread, as far away as they can get it. They try to entice us with goods along the route when we come in for a quick bread & milk run, the most common, dash-in-and-out, customer shopping errand. At least for nuclear families with a couple of kids. The bread supply used to be critical; you had to have it so your kid’s lunch could be packed for school. Nowadays, most kids eat school cafeteria food; my generation abhorred it. Even so, people still go on milk and bread runs.  

 

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 bread? - As far from the milk as you can get! Some “brilliant” marketing genius (I need to tread lightly here – I was a marketing guy at one time, but I was cured of the affliction) came up with this bread-milk placement plan. It’s a profit-based strategy, not a customer service strategy.

 

And, it works, to a degree. But for the most part, it annoys us. It’s been going on so long we take it for granted and put on our running shoes. Is it merchant bullying? It 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 store, past the chips, the cereal boxes, the ice-cream cooler, the office supplies, the garden shop to get your prescription. Then we’re made to get in line behind a mark on the floor to comply with privacy regulations. But, we’re still within earshot and we make sure to listen when the customer talks to the pharmacist.

 

It should be no surprise that grocery stores and pharmacies employ the same tactics. They are basically the same entity, selling both food and drugs. As they continue to add products, merchandising will go full circle, back to the old general store. Except, there won’t be a warm glow from a potbellied stove with a cluster of old coots like me sitting around it in winter or out front in summer, perched on empty crates next to the fruit and vegetable racks. Milk wasn’t in the back of the store in those days; it was placed in the milk box on your front porch, waiting for you when you came down for breakfast.

 

How do we stop this debacle? I don’t know; it’s so ingrained in the store design philosophy it seems impossible to fix. I do the best I can; I get bread first, pick up a few extra loaves and leave them over by the milk cooler so someone who starts there can avoid a trip to the other side of the store. The geniuses in the corporate office haven’t figured out that the key to profitability is to focus on the customer, making the shopping experience hassle free, not some strategy that tries to trick us into an impulse buy. They think they can treat us like sheep? Will this ram ain’t saying, “Baa, Baa,” any more.  

 

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Old Coot encounters a battle-axe. August 2, 2020 Tioga County Courier Article

 

The Old Coot rediscovers the battle-axe.

by Merlin Lessler

I was hanging out with my friend Bishop in our backyard the other day. She’s married and has a different last name, but she’s still Bishop to me. That’s how old coots are; they don’t adjust to change. It was a hot, muggy afternoon and we were wading around in our tiny, shallow, garden pool like a couple of two-year old’s, shooting the breeze while my wife swept off the back porch, not quite ready to join us in the water. Then, I heard Bishop utter a word I hadn’t heard in decades, BATTLE-AXE! It’s funny how a word can transport you to another era, in this case, back to the 1950’s when battle-axe was a common term, at least in the Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, W.C. Fields and other old rerun movies that I and my 10 year old friends consumed at the movie theater every Saturday afternoon. It was also in everyday use as well.

I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you are not familiar with the term or exactly sure what it means. It was quite popular back in those dark ages of my youth. I’m not sure exactly who Bishop was talking about; I was half listening as usual, but when battle-axe hit my ears, I laughed out loud. She’s a lot younger than me and I was surprised to hear her say it. Battle-axe, according to the dictionary, is an aggressive, domineering, antagonistic, overbearing forceful woman. A female bully in other words.

This is where I step in it, continuing on with a sexist topic from an era when women who didn’t act “lady like” were labeled with a whole array of negative terms. Terms that men escaped, even though their behavior was identical. A double standard of the vocabulary variety. How about: fish wife, old bat, hag, nag, backseat driver? Quite an array. Men were spared the critique; they were labeled with more positive terms like, strong willed, forceful, titan, sharp businessmen and the like. 

By the time the 1980’s rolled around, battle-axe fell by the wayside, but women still didn’t get a break. If they were the least bit assertive, they were called aggressive, pushy. Pushy men weren’t labeled. My wife and I have five daughters and seven granddaughters (not counting the boys), but I don’t advise calling any of them a battle-axe. You just might get a surprise. Or, a big laugh, like the one I gave Bishop.

 

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Old Coot Article Tioga Co. Courier, Aug 26, 2020

 

The Old Coot isn’t cool.

By Merlin Lessler

 

I was waiting in the car while my wife was in the grocery store last week. I’d just had a medical “procedure.” You know, one of those things where they don’t knock you out or numb you up. They tell you, “It’s just a procedure.” I always want to ask, “Have you ever had this procedure?” I think if they did, they’d reconsider proceeding on you without knock out drops. Mine, was just an MRI, so no big deal. Except, trying to lie still for 30 minutes, hoping my nose didn’t start to itch or a cramp didn’t overtake my leg. That’s where the stress comes in for me.

 

Anyhow, I decided to wait in the car; I didn’t want to undergo a grocery store “procedure” on the same day. I was trusted with the keys so I could listen to the radio or roll down the window, not that many cars have a crank that you roll down. We “button-push” it down these days. It was a beautiful morning, in the mid 70’s; a gentle breeze was slipping across the parking lot and I was in a spot where I could watch the people going in and out of the store. Pure entertainment for an old coot.

 

I “rolled” down the window, to hang my arm out, but I couldn’t; the opening was too high. You can’t do the arm out the window thing in an SUV. You have to be in a regular car, which are slowly disappearing from the market place, now accounting for barely 30% of vehicles sold. It irked me a little. I had a 1950’s image in my head, back when any teenager or young adult male drove around in good weather with their arm hanging out the window. The window was our air-conditioner. Often with a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of an undershirt. Yes, undershirt. They weren’t called T-shirts back then. On hot days, guys went around, but not usually in public, in an undershirt (white, of course) to be cool and casual.

 

Then along came Marlon Brando’s movie, “On the Waterfront. He wore an undershirt in public and changed men’s fashions forever. He made wearing one acceptable for everyday use. It made the T-shirt revolution take off and you know how that went. T-shirts dominate the fashion scene. You even see people wearing them to church, at weddings and just about everywhere else.  

 

Anyhow, there I was, an old coot sitting in a car, trying to relive a teenage memory and couldn’t hang my arm out the window. I gave up; I just sat there like a dummy, wishing I at least had a Lucky Strike cigarette to place behind my ear. It’s tough trying to be cool when you’re an old coot.

 

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Old Coot has flashback. August 14, 2020 Tioga County Courier Article

 

The Old Coot is tripping out.

By Merlin Lessler

 

I had a flash-back moment the other day, as I came in the back door. I looked across the kitchen to the corner of the room into the telephone nook to see if the answering machine was blinking. But there is no answering machine in the nook. Or a phone, for that matter. What was I thinking? An old instinct kicked in. It was fun to re-experience the thrill of coming home in the pre-cell phone era, wondering if someone called and left a message. The red light on the answering machine was like a beacon in a lighthouse, flashing a signal, “YOU HAD A CALL!” Rapid blinks meant you had several calls. WHO? WHY? WHAT’S GOING ON?

 

Such a different world. We had more patience; we didn’t expect instant contact, instant feedback. A nicer world, I think. You had time to think before you replied, to mull over your answer. “What should we say to Joe? He’s upset, but has a right to be. How can we bring him down, gently?”  Lies could be invented if necessary; we call them fibs when we execute these social untruths. “I don’t want to go to their house Sunday night. How can we get out of it?” You had time to conjure up an excuse, or create a conflict.

 

We were nicer, on the surface anyhow. And freer to escape doing things or going places we rather not. We had time to come up with an alternative plan. And, more important, time to calm down before tossing out a knee-jerk reaction to a phone message. Time to re-listen to the message to be sure you got it right. And think.  

 

Don’t get me wrong, I like my smart phone and all the things it can do for me. But still, I miss that old world, where communication was more thoughtful and ran at a slower pace. And, I especially miss coming home to a blinking light. Signaling a mystery. Soon be solved.  

 

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Old Coot reads the blotter. Tioga County Courier Article - 8/12/2020

 

The Old Coot works in ink.

By Merlin Lessler

 

Blotters! Ink blotters to be specific, used with inkwell ink. I was working on an article for the Binghamton Press a few years ago; it was about writing with a dipping pen and liquid ink when I was a kid. We had holes in the upper right corner of our desks, designed to hold an ink well. In first and second grade our work was done in pencil; the hole remained empty. When we made it to 3rd grade, we switched to ink; the neatest writers went first (girls). The teacher placed an ink well in the hole and handed the student a pen holder, a pen point and a small bit of cloth to clean ink off the pen point. She then filled the inkwell from a quart bottle with a snorkel nozzle and finally gave the lucky ink “graduate” a blotter to dry the ink so it wouldn’t smear. I was among the last group (all boys) to get “inked.”

 

Anyhow, I bought some old fashion point holders, pen points and ink to experience using the primitive writing instrument I grew up with, only slightly more advanced than the quill pen John Hancock used to sign the Declaration of Independence. I made the same blots and smears on the paper as I did all those years ago. (I’d foolishly decided to write the article with pen and ink) Three blobs on a paper in third grade and you lost your ink “privilege.” No ink for a week. A worse punishment (to the ego) than being sent to the cloakroom for a pea shooter war behind the teachers back. An “ink” time-out felt bad; made you try harder when you your inkwell was filled again. Nothing like failure to help you succeed. Makes you wonder why today’s society works so hard to help kids avoid it, giving every player on every team, winners and losers, the same reward, a certificate, a trophy, or both. Earned or not. No signal there to try harder, to work on your shortcomings.

 

Back to the subject at hand. Ink Blotters!  I found a bunch of them for sale on E-Bay – you can’t buy them in a store, at least I couldn’t find any. The ones I received were long in the tooth, handed out by advertisers in the day. I now use mine for bookmarks and notice the ad copy every once in a while; it gives me a kick to see how things were promoted back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. An ad for the Scotch Woolen Mill got my attention the other day and started me on this writing path, an all wool full suit and or topcoat or overcoat for only $23.00! Coat and pants alone, $20.00. Just pants, $7.50. That got my chuckle reflex going.  Then comes the company promise - “A 30-year record of knowing how to build clothes that fit and satisfy” – “Ask to see our deluxe grade woolens on display with your local dealer.” A scowling Scotchman stares out from the ad; he’s wearing a wool tam cap; a bolt of plaid wool fabric is wrapped around his left shoulder. The ad sold me, but I was 70 years too late. I bought a dozen of those advertising blotters for less than seven bucks. Some with legible, but mirror image ink stains on the blotting side. All entertaining. Highly recommended for book marks. And, if you are fast, you can blot a coffee dribble on your shirt before it sets. If you do, someone might give you a certificate!  

 

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Tho Coot tosses the penny. August 5, 2020 Article - Tioga County Courier

 

The Old Coot throws in his two cents.

By Merlin Lessler

 

It’s claimed we have a coin shortage in this country. As a result of the Corona Virus. Everyone is jumping on the “corona virus excuse” these days. Maybe it’s true for the coin shortage. They say the flow of currency through the economy has slowed down, almost stopped. Nothing new for me; I’ve always experienced a shortage of currency, though more like the five, ten, twenty- and fifty-dollar bill variety. I never have enough of them. I do have a ton of pennies though. If the mint stopped penny production and shifted to nickels, dimes and quarters they might solve the problem. Forget the half-dollar: I think they stopped producing them in any quantity years ago. I miss them. A great coin to flip and use as a protractor to draw a circle. But the vending machine industry put them on death row years ago.

 

It costs 1.83 cents to make a penny. Not too smart. But’s it’s the government; what do you expect. The mint, or some other entity, should buy back the pennies from banks, stores and the public; it would cut the production cost nearly in half. Or, even better, just take the penny out of circulation. Stores, restaurants and other cash business places could round off the sales slip to the nearest nickel, using the math most of us learned in the 3^rd grade. If the bill is $18.32, it gets rounded to $18.30. If it’s $18.36, up it goes to $18.40. Nobody would complain. Most of us would say, “Thank you,” for not asking for the few cents, or giving me pennies back in change.

 

Many of us throw the pennies in a jar or drawer and hope they go away. I sometimes throw them on the parking lot in public places and let someone willing to bend over and pick them up have them. The worst transaction in a penny society is paying the tab that comes to $10.02. You don’t have the 2 cents so you hand over a twenty and end up with nine ones 98 cents in coin.

 

It would take an act of congress to get this passed, so it will never happen. We have to take it into our own hands, and not accept pennies in change, leave them with the merchant. And, take the pennies we have lying around and cash them in for usable money. Wala! You now live in a penny free society! There’s a penny that’s been laying in my driveway for over a month. It fell there when I got out of the car. Old Coots don’t bend over to pick up a penny. We’re afraid if we dip that low, we won’t be able to get back up. I’m not going to push my, “Help I’ve fallen and can’t get up alarm” for a penny. I’m saving it for a worthwhile situation. Like a bend down for a half-dollar. I couldn’t stop myself if I saw one lying on the ground. I guess it’s a paper route thing. When I delivered the Evening Press the cost was 45 cents a week. When I did my collections every Monday night, I received a pocketful of half dollars. My other pocket was loaded with nickels, so I could give the customers their change. Only three people on my route of 67 customers ever said, “Keep the change, kid.” And people think I’m a cheapskate.  

 

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