November 12, 2014 Article

The Old Coot multiplies his answer by two.

By Merlin Lessler

The Old Coot is on a sabbatical few a few weeks; this “vintage” article was originally published in February 2003.

I can remember how long it took for a week to go by when I was a kid, waiting for Christmas. It took a year. Today, a year goes by in what seems like a week. It’s one of the things that comes with being an old coot, a distorted sense of judgment affecting everything you try to measure or estimate, not just time. I’ve learned to compensate for it by multiplying my answer by two.

We needed a new roof for the house. I figured it would be about $5,000 dollars. My wife reminded me I always lowball my estimates. She was right, so I put a figure of $10,000 in my head and called a roofing contractor. He came in with a figure of $9,300 and got the job. Had I not multiplied my answer by two, I probably would have thought the estimate outrageous and put off getting it done for a year or two.

“How old is the dog?” my son asks. “Just a pup, is my first inclination. Can’t be more than two or three,” I say to myself and then remember to multiply by two. “Six,” I reply. My answers to questions of this sort are delayed, not unlike those of reporters on the other side of the world when the question asked by the evening news anchor is transmitted via satellite. They stand there with a dumb look on their face waiting to hear the question. I stand there with a dumb look on my face, waiting for my brain to multiply my initial answer by two. That’s why old coots always look like their mind is someplace else.

I’ve found the rule keeps me looking pretty sharp with my younger friends; they haven’t figured out that their sense of time and their ability to estimate is out of adjustment.

“Remember that trip we took to Myrtle Beach to play golf three years ago?” my friend Don asks.

“I sure do, but it was six years ago,” I respond with precise accuracy.

“Really?” He comes back. “I would have sworn it was just a couple of years ago.”

“No, (I close the noose). It was the year you turned forty. You’re forty six now aren’t you?”

“You’re right! You’re right!”

 His multiplier isn’t 2; it’s about 1.6. It will grow to 2 in a few more years, and then I’ll let him in on the secret. My multiplier will probably be 3 by then.

The formula works with just about everything, not just how much things cost or how long ago something happened. It works when I try to figure out how long it will take to do something: paint the ceiling, run to the store to get a carton of milk, mow the lawn. It will always be twice what I think. Unfortunately, it applies to unpleasant things as well, making them twice as bad as I figured. Going to the dentist hurts twice as much as I expect. Sore muscles hurt worse, and take twice as long to get better than I expect. Sitting in the car waiting for a red light takes three times as long as I think it should. Maybe it is time to increase the multiplier.

November 5, 2014 Article

The Old Coot says “fast food” isn’t fast.

By Merlin Lessler

 The Old Coot is on a sabbatical few a few weeks; the “vintage” article that follows was originally published in December, 2002.

A Few weeks ago I took three of my grandchildren, Jake –5, Hannah- 3 and Abby – 2, to MacDonald’s for lunch. It was the day Jake and Hannah’s sister Callie was born; my part in the process was to watch the kids while my daughter, Wendy, was at the hospital. I sat at the table trying to entertain the antsy threesome while Abby’s mother, Kelly, waited in line for our “fast food” order. It was the longest thirty minutes of my life. I like going to MacDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and all the other fast food restaurants, but I think it’s time that we admit the obvious and stop referring to them as “fast.” Fast applies to the service at Harris’s Diner; a small locally owned restaurant, housed in a Quonset hut like building next to the fire station in Owego, the village where I live. It doesn’t provide customer parking, special menu items for kids or an indoor playground, yet it beats the pants off the national fast food chains.

I’m not a regular at Sam Harris’s diner; I only stop by every once in a while for breakfast. Sometimes, I wander in at six am; it doesn’t open until seven. The lights are down low and Sam isn’t around, but customers are hanging out at the counter and at tables in the back, drinking coffee, shooting the breeze and reading the paper. They have keys to the place. The coffee urns are full. The “regulars” made it. At 6:45 Sam comes in, trades insults with a few of the rabble and goes in the back room to do some prep work. I sit at the counter with a choice seat near the grill, a cup of coffee before me, having been served by one of the gracious regulars. Sam flicks on the lights and fires up the grill. He starts things in motion by piling on a mountain of home fries and a dozen strips of bacon. He knows what the regulars want. Hazel, Sam’s faithful waitress, comes in at seven on the dot, ready to wait tables and bus the dirty dishes, a tough job for a gal well past retirement age, but one she does with class and a big smile.

I sit with my coffee and watch the show. I don’t think there is anything more entertaining than a good grill man, and Sam is one of the best. He’s cracking eggs with one hand, flipping pancakes with the other and discussing last night’s Yankee game with a customer across the room. Regulars stream in, trade insults back and forth, head for the rack of coffee pots behind the counter and help themselves, using their very own personalized cups stored on a shelf above the pots. Hazel glides around, exchanging pleasantries and taking orders, but Sam takes mine since I’m right behind him. The average time between giving your order and getting it is less than ten minutes. In my case, sitting at the counter, I get my two eggs over light, home fries, ham and toast in five. This, is fast food. Hazel drops off the check when the food is served. You never have to wait for her to get around to it, like in most restaurants. A pile of bills and change lie in a heap next to the cash register. Customers settle up themselves, making change and leaving the meal ticket as they pass the register on their way out. The “regulars” even go so far as to open Sam’s cash register when they can’t make correct change from the pile of cash on the counter. It sure beats watching fast food workers scan computerized cash registers for a picture of French fries so they can tally up your bill. 

October 29, 2014 Article

Old Coot is a TV preacher.

By Merlin Lessler

I read an editorial in a New York City paper the other day. It was a huge rant about the dwindling number of readers in this country. It was loaded with statistics to back up the premise, concluding that TV, radio, cell phones, video games and the like were the cause. If it was true, why did they bother running it in the paper? Nobody would read it; we’re all watching TV or playing video games. It’s the old “preaching to the choir” syndrome. It runs rampant across our society.

Go to just about any church and you will get a lecture telling you our society is awash in sin; that nobody goes to church anymore. You look around and wonder who the preacher is talking about, certainly not these good people who come here every single week. They should get a big thank-you, not a lecture about the people that are absent.  

The Mensa Club holds meetings where they debate current topics and otherwise run through a series of exercises to improve their mental agility. They chuckle at how dense the rest of us are and wonder why we don’t get things the way they do. But, they won’t let us come to their meetings.  At least they never let me attend.

Politicians rail to their followers about the number of people who don’t care enough to vote. Their rants never make it to the non-voting public. And, it’s a good thing. I don’t think politicians could handle the non-voter’s explanation for not voting (they don’t vote because they are against everything that both candidates stand for). 

Store owners park in front of their shops to avoid walking a few blocks and then complain to their customers (and the media) that business is bad because, “There is no place to park in this darn town!” Teachers lecture kids at after-school activities about how the participation in school clubs and other school endeavors has fallen off. Parents complain to the same kids, who come home on time, about the tardiness of their siblings.

Preaching to the choir is something we can’t control. We all do it. We get irritated and let it out on innocent bystanders. Old coots know how to handle the impulse, not because we have more wisdom or self-control, but because our potential audience has gotten wise and knows how to elude us when we start to preach. 

It doesn’t matter. We don’t preach to the choir. We preach to the TV, to the radio, to the dog. When we hear something we don’t like on TV, we just yell back at it. Tom Brokaw and Barbara Walters didn’t retire because they’d been at it for decades and needed a respite. They retired because they got a psychic flash of what was happening on the other side of the TV screen. They saw the legion of old coots out there wagging their fingers and yelling at their TV sets when they didn’t like the information that was being reported. It scared them and they quit. At least that’s my take. And, I should know; I’m an ordained TV preacher.

October 22, 2014 Article

The Old Coot takes a dive.

By Merlin Lessler

I took a swim in the river today (October 17). It was one of those old coot things. Something I hadn’t planned. I was shooting for a nice kayak ride to Hickories Park, paddling hard, against the current and then slowly drifting back to the village. So, off I went. It was a little tough in spots; the current held me to one foot of progress for each stroke, but for the most part, it was an easy chore to move upstream, in spite of the river being at its highest level this season.

The sky was a beautiful blue with puffy white clouds slipping by overhead. The wind was gusty, blowing leaves out of treetops and rattling the brush and tall grasses along the shore. The temperature was pushing seventy. A perfect environment for an old coot on an outdoor adventure in the final days of autumn.

I made it to Hickories in about an hour and pulled ashore for a respite, and an orange. The orange was an excuse; it was my sore arms that needed the break. Then I shoved off, to begin a long slow float back home. I let the current determine my course. It was a magnificent ride, better than anything in Disney World. And, in spite of dozing off a few times, it created a nice memory to think back on when winter weather moves into town.

Then my revere came to an end. I pulled to shore near the intersection of Front and Ross. The water was two feet deep on the left side of the kayak, five or six feet on the right. My landing point wasn’t the usual flat spot at the bottom of a steep bank. It had moved halfway up the bank, five feet from the top. I stuck my paddle into the mud to hold the kayak and proceeded to pull myself from a sitting position to a kneeling position. This is where the old coot affliction I’m saddled with kicked into high gear. My head thinks it still resides in a seventeen-year-old body, but the body knows my head has missed the mark by fifty plus years. This condition has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years and today it got me dunked into a cold and muddy river. The mishap sent the kayak downstream, the paddle upstream and me into the drink between them.

I snagged the rope attached to the kayak and grabbed the paddle as it floated back toward me and tried to gain a hold in the mud covered bank. All I got was a handful of slime. It sent me into a panic. Not because of any physical danger. No, my panic was mental. I was afraid I’d have to ride the current to a point closer to downtown Owego, where the landing area is old-coot-friendly and be forced to walk home along the busiest street in town. A drowned rat, dragging a kayak behind him. I did that gig, about ten years ago, when I’d flipped a canoe, trying to ram it onto shore with force rather than with skill. It was just another conflict between my mental age and my physical age. I was desperate not to repeat it. And, luck was with me.

 I managed to dig a solid handhold in the mud. And then a foothold. I slowly clawed my way to the top, pulling the kayak behind me. I’d already tossed the paddle above to safety. Then the rope broke and kayak slipped into the water with me following close behind to retrieve it. Then, I repeated the whole process. I shook off the water like a dog coming in from the rain, emptied the water out of my farmer boots and headed for home. Only a few drivers witnessed my condition as I waited for them to pass so I could shuffle across the street to the safety of my driveway. For a day or so, I’ll accept the fact that I’m an old coot in an old man’s body. But soon enough, I’ll relapse, and my affliction will take over and I’ll face the world thinking I’m a seventeen-year-old. I can’t imagine what adventure that will bring my way. 

October 15, 2014 Article

The Old Coot waits it out.

By Merlin Lessler

I witnessed an encounter between a mother and her teenage son in the grocery store the other day. It was a chance meeting; she came from home; he came from school. Her greeting brought me back to my own teenage days, “Why are you wearing that shirt? I just ironed it!” His face turned red and his buddy didn’t help the situation when he said, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” and chuckled out the side of his mouth. My mother said the exact same thing to me every time I tried to sneak out of the house wearing a freshly ironed shirt.

Ironed clothes had to go into a waiting period (limbo) before they could be worn. I never knew how long the resting period was. It depended on my mother’s memory. If she could remember ironing it, it had to go back on a hanger and into the closet. (If I got caught, that is.)

The same principle applied to new clothes. “You take off that shirt this minute young man. I just bought it!” Good pants and play pants were another issue, “Change your pants before you get them all grass stained. They’re your good pants.” We had good pants, play pants and best of all, Sunday Pants. It was an era when people dressed up to go to church or to someone’s house for a Sunday visit.

It went deeper than new clothes; all new things did time in limbo. When we got a new stove, the old one went into the basement. That’s where the heavy cooking took place. Better to lug stuff up and down stairs than to “wear out” the new stove. It also applied to baked goods. “Get your hand out of that cookie jar; I just baked those brownies!”

Ok, Ok; I get it. When I got old enough, my mother taught me to iron and turned the chore over to me. It’s a lot of work to iron things, but even when I did the ironing myself, she still made a stink if I slipped into something freshly ironed. I made a mistake a few years back, and told my wife about how I had to let freshly ironed clothes rest when I was a kid. Today’s dress code is pretty causal so we don’t do a lot of ironing; we fold things. If she sees me put on something that was freshly folded (folded by her because I’m folding challenged) she yells over to me, “Why are you wearing that shirt; I just folded it,” and then cracks up laughing at how I cringe. I can’t help it; it’s a guilt feeling that’s ingrained in my subconscious. But, I recently discovered she’s got the same defect. She bought a new car, and keeps asking me to drive my 15 year-old Miata everywhere we go, because her car is “too new” to drive. Apparently, the condition is contagious. 

October 8, 2014 Article

I Grew Up in a World Without Book bags!

By Merlin Lessler

School’s been back in session now for over a month. I still think, “Yippee,” even though my kids are well past school age. We lived in a small town north of New York City when they were little. On the first day of school, a small clutch of parents gathered at the bus stop. It was mostly mothers, but a few of us fathers went to work late so we could join in the celebration. We came equipped for the event, with pots, pans, metal soupspoons and noisemakers. Anything that would make a racket. The kids clustered together as far from us as they could, embarrassed that their parents were acting like crazy fools. We banged the pots with our spoons as soon as the bus pulled up. Whistles and party noisemakers rounded out the symphony. One by one the kids stepped onto the bus and slunk down the aisle to their seats. It was the best “first day of school” celebration I ever experienced. It was back in prehistoric times, when it was still politically correct to delight in the fact that the “little darlings” were out of your hair for a few hours a day. Freedom was at hand!

I’m sure my mother and father would have joined the parade had there been one when I went off to school, but they didn’t need a celebration in those days, parents ruled the roost, not the kids. Yet, in spite of being at the bottom of the pecking order, we had a better deal than the kids do today. We didn’t have homework! Not until Junior High (7^th grade). When the dismissal bell rang, we were free. Not today. Kids lug schoolwork home in their backpacks every day. Even toddlers in nursery school come and go with a book bag strapped to their back. We were spared the misery. We did our schoolwork in the classroom.

Book bags didn’t even exist back then. They hadn’t been invented. There was something similar, knapsacks. Brought home from the war, the big one, WWII, by our fathers, uncles and cousins, or purchased at one of the numerous Army and Navy surplus stores that dotted the countryside. We used them for hikes in the woods, to carry food, water and matches for a campfire. We weren’t smart enough to use them for hauling books back and forth to school when we reached the grade where homework was the order of the day. We didn’t give the knapsacks a thought. Instead, we stacked up our books and carried them under our arm, resting the bottom of the pile on our hip. Girls used a different technique. They used two hands to carry their books, clutching them to their chests as though holding a newborn baby. Every other day or so, somebody would come along and shove the stack of books out of your grasp, and then laugh and say, “Drop a few subjects, did you?”

A few brave souls totted their books and papers in a brief case. It was nerdish, but the term, “nerd” hadn’t been invented yet. We just called these guys, “The weird guys with briefcases.” Us “cool” guys wouldn’t’ think of toting a briefcase through the halls. We’d rather suffer with an eighteen-inch stack of books balanced awkwardly on our hip. It messed up our alignment, and is the reason old coots like me can’t walk in a straight line. We sidle down the sidewalk like drunken sailors. And, it explains why so many of us need hip replacement surgery as we get older. That’s what happens when you grow up in a world without book-bags!

October 1, 2014 Article

The Old Coot looks for a bargain.

By Merlin Lessler

“50% OFF!” That’s the sign that lures you in. If you’re like me, and don’t pay attention to the details, you don’t discover that it’s 50% off the 2^nd item, until the clerk at the register rings you up and you’ve scolded them for over charging you. “This leather jacket is on sale,” you say, with an indignant look on your face. “The sign says 50% off!” Then you learn the truth.

50% off the second item is a good deal if you’re buying bananas, Moose Tracks ice cream or Snicker’s bars. Something you can use more than one of. But those 50% off (the second item) sales are often things you don’t really want two of.

Then there’s the, “Huge Sale! Up to 70% Off!” sales. That “up to” gets me every time. I know the item I want, having learned the hard way, will never be 70% off. It’s not an item with the highly prized green sticker; it’s the one, the only one, with the yellow, 10% sticker.

How about, “50% Off the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price!” If those signs were honest, they would continue on, and admit that nobody (not them anyhow) ever charged the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. The whole thing is a long running joke between the manufacturer and the retailer, “We’ll put a ridiculous price on the article and you can be the hero and slash the price.

They do that with automobiles too. I hear the reason GM came out of bankruptcy so quick, following the recession of 2008, wasn’t because of the government bail out; it was because some guy in Utah bought a Buick and paid the sticker price!

Besides, everybody knows, cars are cheaper when the sales lot is blanketed with balloons and flags. Or, the cars are moved to an off-site location, like the mall or the fair grounds. At least that’s what the dealers would have us believe. And we do!

We love a bargain. Especially us old coots. So, we fall for the “sales” pitch, no matter how far fetched: Going out of Business! – Inventory Reduction! - Moving Sale! (Even though the place going out of business does so three times a year, the inventory reduction is immediately replenished with the exact same inventory, and the business that runs the moving sale never moves. My favorite is a sale sign that says, “Open Under New Management!” That’s what they do to get back the customers they’ve been rude to, bilked or never returned their phone calls.)