July 16, 2014 Article

The Old Coot drinks “old man” coffee.

By Merlin Lessler

“Old man” coffee! That’s what I order when I step to the counter at Dunkin Donuts and other places that offer a senior citizen discount. I don’t like the “senior citizen” term. It sounds contrived to me, something that social scientists came up with in a never-ending effort to classify us, to break us up into groups in order to explain our behavior. I resent the label. Call me anything, but don’t call me senior citizen. It’s a group I swore I’d never join, back when I was in my twenties and thirties and thought I’d never get old. Now that I’ve reached, heck, exceeded, the age at which the senior citizen label is assigned, I still don’t want that label. I’m an old man! Call me an old man. Or, if you want to be more accurate, call me an old coot.

I find I’m not alone in my opinion about the “senior citizen” term. A survey of Baby Boomers was aired on PBS the other day. Baby Boomers are the generation right behind mine. They don’t want to be referred to as senior citizens either. I don’t know what they would like to be called, the survey didn’t say. But, I bet they don’t want to be called anything. It’s bad enough that social scientists have labeled each generation with insulting and awkward terms: Silent (my crowd), Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millenial, and then add to the insult by labeling people “Senior Citizens” the day they turn 65. Sociologists and marketing specialists put us into groups and claim they can predict how we think, what we will buy and who we’ll vote for. It’s insulting. 

We think of ourselves as individuals. I’m comfortable with the old coot label. It fits, but it’s hard to assign a list of characteristics to it. We’re not a homogeneous group, except for the trait of being contrary. Otherwise, we’re a mixed bag. Some of us may seem almost youthful one minute, tottering and stodgy the next. We might be set in our ways on Monday and turn around and seem to be open minded and liberal on Tuesday. The key word is “seem”. Old coots are never exactly as they appear.  

So, I order old man coffee and get a discount. But, I’m ashamed of myself. For years I preached against the concept of a senior citizen discount. Why should someone get a break in price just because they are a certain age? It never made sense to me. It was one of those marketing ploys that big business came up with in the 1970’s; to make the public think they were compassionate and generous. Now, they are stuck with it. They can’t figure out how to end it without a big backlash. It didn’t cost them much when they started it. Seniors back then had more character than we do today. Those elders rarely accepted senior citizen discounts. They didn’t want charity or a handout.

But that changed over the years and now old coots like me, who go around thinking we have principles, look on it as an entitlement. I’ve been corrupted! If you see me step to the counter and order an old man coffee, wag your finger at me and say, “Shame on you.” Maybe I’ll wake up and realize what I’m doing. Maybe all of us old guys will. If we do, the price of coffee will go down for everyone else. 

July 9, 2014 Article

The Old Coot wonders when guns got so heavy.

By Merlin Lessler

I’ve got to get this out of my system. No, it’s not another rant about the Weather Service squawk blasting from my TV, usually at a critical juncture in a high drama, warning of a thunderstorm approaching Cortland County. No, this rant is much more lighthearted. It’s a poke at the gun toting federal agents on TV shows, CSI, NCIS, NCIS-LA and the like. What’s with their gun skills? You see the same thing on all those kind of shows; a team of agents kick open a door, leap into a room, jump left, jump right, sweep a nine millimeter Glock back and forth, held up in front of their face, with TWO hands, and yell, “Clear!” Then, they move to the next room, looking very much like an army of giant, leaping frogs. A bad guy emerges from the back, holds his gun in one hand, fires, misses and then goes down in a hail of bullets, fired from guns, firmly held in TWO hands. 

I grew up in the cowboy movie era. A rifle was the only gun anyone held with two hands. A bad guy would make a move, inch his hand closer and closer to the six-shooter sticking out of his holster that rode low on his hip and was tied to his leg with a strip of rawhide. The good guy’s gun would fly out his holster and blast the gun out of the bad guy’s hand. Then the movie hero, in my case, Hop-a-long Cassidy, would audition the bad guy for a part in “So you think you can dance” by firing random shots at his feet and yelling, “Dance cowboy, dance!” Then, he’d spin his gun backwards on his index finger, blow the smoke off the end of the barrel and slip it back into its holster. All this, using just ONE hand!

Gunslingers in the old west, at least in the movies, stood erect and shot from the hip. Their accuracy was on par with a modern day sniper using a rifle with a high-powered scope. Sometimes, a gunslinger would simply shoot the gun belt off a bad guy’s waist. But, not today’s two-handed gun graspers. They go into a crouch, hold their guns at eye level with two hands, squint and then pull the trigger. Today’s guns aren’t just heavier (requiring two hands to hold them up) they’re apparently harder to aim, too.

It’s comical to watch a modern day crime show with a memory bank loaded with old cowboy movies.  Every time I see a squad of federal agents doing the frog-hop-shuffle, an image of John Wayne flashes through my head. He’s standing behind the leapfrogging agents, chuckling, as he shoots the bad guys with a gun in each hand, shooting from the hip. It makes you wonder about modern day gunslingers. At least the ones on TV. 

July 2, 2014 Article

The Old Coot is book smart.

By Merlin Lessler

My neck is sore. Tilting to the right, too. It happens when you’ve been in the library, a bookstore or staring at used paperbacks and hard covers at a yard sale. Book publishers refuse to line up the letters on the spine in a vertical, top down alignment or in smaller horizontal letters. Instead, they make us crane our necks and lean to the right to read the book title and author’s name.

It’s not so bad for the top few rows on the book rack, but by the time you get to the bottom row you have to squat, then get down on your knees and finally, lay down on the floor and do a military crawl from one end of the rack to the other. When you walk in the door at home, listing to the right, your neck bent in the same direction, dust on your knees and the rest of your clothes soiled and rumpled, you get the look! The one that says, “Where have you been?” I always lie. I say I got in a tussle down at the senior center. I’ll never admit I got this way from a literary endeavor.

What is it about book publishers? Literate, educated to the point of being highbrow, with all the knowledge of the world passing over their desks, yet they haven’t figured out how to print titles on books so you can read them when they’re stacked on a bookshelf? It’s bad enough in a bookstore or a library; at least they line up the books in the same direction. But, when you rifle through stacks at a yard sale, where the books are usually scattered about in helter skelter fashion, you have to lean right, lean left, right again, left again. Ouch! 

And, what about the poor authors whose books end up on the bottom row. A modern day Shakespeare would go undiscovered. Readers just don’t have the physical fortitude to squat low and risk tipping over on the off chance a book title or an author’s name might catch their eye. The bottom shelves should be used to store stuff, not books. Cereal boxes for example. Food processors know the value of having the name of their products readable when stacked sideways on a shelf. It might improve the circulation at the library and sales figures at the bookstores if the publishers got their nose out of a manuscript, took a walk down the cereal aisle in a grocery store and looked at the top, bottom, sides, front and back of easily read cereal boxes!

The only good thing about this messed up book title thing, is that you can tell who in town is well read. It’s the people who list to the right, have a neck that’s off kilter and dusty knees on their pants. 

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.