Into the Weeds

I came into the house at 417 Washington one afternoon. I wanted to speak to my mother about something (I don’t remember what), but the house seemed empty. I wandered to the kitchen and no sign of her...


Up to this point I may be coming across as a fairly decent child. I performed a bit of petty theft one day, but instantly regretted it and to a degree immediately repented. I actually was an honest young boy, perhaps to a fault, always paying and always pointing out if clerks gave me too much change. I wasn't a troublemaker in school, despite not particularly liking to be there and often skimping on my homework. Teachers liked me, too much for my own good. I wasn't a problem child at home either. I didn’t give a lot of backtalk and I generally did my chores without too much fuss. It appears I was having a good time with my few friends as I went through my grade school years.


It is true there were some shadows over those early years. I was a child

born at the beginning of a war and the tension, especially the blackout sirens, terrorized me. Also like most children of my generation, my father was away at that war for my formative years and my mother went out like Rosie the Riveter and worked at a factory. There was some feeling of desertion and abandonment resulting from this, but unlike some I had the advantage of fallback parents.  My grandparents slipped easily into that roll and presented me with valued adult examples. They basically substituted for my mother and father for much of my youth.


In my earliest years I was fairly well adjusted. I was happy and outgoing, or so was told, not particularly intimidated by the world around me (except for those blasted siren blasts).  I was given birthday parties and I had friends on the street where I lived. I went to a private kindergarten for two years and flourished there. 


But then in first grade things began to turn. I was suddenly taken out of

the school I started first grade in and moved from the town I had known since being six months old. The home to which I went was bleak and lonely, situated in the country alongside a swamp, surrounded by little in the way of companions, except occasional cows, birds and small water creatures such as snakes and frogs. I also saw the finality of death an unusual number of times as a young boy. Did this add to my future morbid bent?


My father returned from the war, but he took a job that kept him away from home five days a week. This didn't upset me because in truth I was resentful and fearful of my dad. On weekends, when he did come home, I was bundled off to my grandparents so mom and dad could have time alone. My dad might as well have sailed off into the South Pacific again for all the difference it made his coming home.

Sure, during the week I had my mother around. She was trapped with

me out in the marsh. She didn't know how to drive so she had to give up her job and stay home. We were forced close for those two years, but I was already becoming a more independent lad, going out to explore my environs or holing up in my playroom. I was growing to feel comfortable with loneliness. Mom and I ate simple suppers together, but these were very informal, if not totally haphazard. I developed a habit of reading while I ate my meals; obviously mom and I weren't having long dinner conversations. Any elaborate, family dinners were held at my grandparents over those weekends, usually on Sunday.

Moving back to town after two years introduced new obstacles, mainly teasing and social anxiety. I was thrust into a society that didn't want me. 

Even so, the grade school years had their moments and I cultivated a few friends, mostly outsiders, too. Still I made my peace with East Ward and Washington Avenue and grew satisfied with how my life was progressing, at least through fifth grade.

 I came into the house at 417 Washington one afternoon. I wanted to speak to my mother about something (I don’t remember what), but the house seemed empty. I wandered to the kitchen and no sign of her. I went upstairs to look. She had closed the bedroom door, unusual during the day. She only closed it at night when she went to bed. This was a weekday. I expected dad to be on the road, but mom wasn’t working at this particular time so she should be home…

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Having a real tiny bit of knowledge can be worse and having almost no knowledge of certain things can be real trouble. There were a number of things I had nearly no knowledge of because such things were not talked about openly in the 1950s, not to children anyway. Yet, this was knowledge I would have been better off knowing as I began my journey through sixth grade, junior high school and puberty.

If you read through the Bible there are two warnings about what can lead men astray and into sin.  One is the love of money. Avarice leads many people down a dark path to corruption, theft, deception and even murder.

The second is sexual immorality, which can lead down a very dark path indeed.

I was not greedy. Pursuit of gold was not my lure into the weeds.

I came into the house at 417 Washington one afternoon. I wanted to speak to my mother about something (I don’t remember what), but the house seemed empty. I wandered to the kitchen and no sign of her. I went upstairs to look. She had closed the bedroom door, unusual during the day. She only closed it at night when she went to bed. This was a weekday. I expected dad to be on the road, but mom wasn’t working at this particular time so she should be home.

I walked down the hall and opened the bedroom door. I stepped inside and saw my mother and dad on the bed. They appeared to be naked. Dad was on top of my mother and I didn’t know what he was doing. I thought he was trying to kill her. Should I do something?

But my mother screamed when she saw me and yelled over and over for me to get out of there. So did dad. I got out of there, closing the door behind me and running to my own room. I didn’t know what to make of that. I still thought my dad was hurting her. Maybe she told me to get out so he wouldn’t harm me too.

I sat in my room shaking, not knowing what I should do. After a while my mother came out of the bedroom and came down the hall to me.

This would have been a great opportunity for my mother to explained the other half of what she told me about the “Fat Lady” when she said babies were inside the mother. She could have calmly explained:

“Your father got home from the road early this week and we were putting a baby inside me.”

But she did not complete the story. She sternly told me to never enter their bedroom again without knocking first. I was left with no explanation of what had occurred behind that closed door or why everyone got so freaked out when I walked through that entry. It was still not clear to me whether dad was hurting my mother and I certainly had no idea what part the father played in how the baby ended up inside the mother. My ignorance of these facts of life continued for several more years during the silent ‘fifties. But I was nearing a time I needed to know things no one would tell me about. My little ink sketch illustration was not drawn in my teens.  “Completeness”, as I called it, wasn’t done until I was in my twenties and married.

My childhood world was about to become more difficult and confusing. Not only would there to be a change of school from a one class, one teacher framework to one of multi-classrooms and changing teachers, clanging bells and crowded hallways, but also I would be cast amidst a brand new crowd of classmates. I had been for several years surrounded by kids (friends or enemies) who didn’t change from semester to semester. Now there would be an ever shifting body of strangers and an uptick of the bullying and prejudice.  

On top of the upheaval of social environment about to hit me, my body was changing in ways I did not understand and was unprepared for. My emotions were growing chaotic as well. By the time I was into Junior High I was what might be called a “child at risk”, certainly at risk for a not so good life outcome.

Therefore, here is my disclaimer for what is coming.

When I began this autobiography or memoir or life rant, whatever you wish to call it, I promised to be honest. I was and am a long way from perfect, but I hope I have developed in the right direction when my life turned to its second half. I think everyone has a kind of split personality. We have our public and private personas. No one on earth truly knows any one else completely. Even husbands and wives live parts of their lives completely separate from each other’s knowledge. We all have little closets in our minds where we keep our darkest secrets. It is just unusual for anyone to open those attic chambers to the world. I am going to open mine. Frankly, I don’t think my secrets are near as bad as those many other people store. I think anyone who reads my life probably has shelves full of things as bad as I do and no one should be judging what I was by what I am today.

It does give me pause when I think of my readership, small as that may be, because it contains friends, people I went to a variety of schools with or worked beside at some company. It includes family. It includes people I go to church with each week. Obviously if one writes their life it includes others that you rubbed shoulders with and thus you are also in danger of exposing some of their secrets besides your own. I am being very careful not to do that. You will find I sometimes do not give the name or description of someone engaged with me. I don’t want anyone embarrassed except me.

I do hope anyone reading my rambling opus will do so with an adult  and open mind. I warn you that in some of the episodes ahead there will be frank discussions about life, sex and bodily function, some minor nudity in the illustrations and certain things “which some might find disturbing, so the reader should continue with discretion”.

What you will not find is profanity, blasphemy, pornography, explicit violence or offensive or denigrating remarks about others because of their looks, religion, ethnicity, lifestyle or personal beliefs. (This does not mean my opinions will never clash with your own, especially on faith or politics.) If along the way you find something offensive then the problem lies with your closed mind or too sensitive nature, not with my intensions or me. If you don't like what I tell, then for Pete's sake stop reading me!

Now probably nothing that will follow will come close to being as horrible as what the last two paragraphs have probably put into your imagination. In fact, it may prove a big let down. That said, shall we move further into the weeds and on with my life, such as it is.

West Whiteland Black Hole

I did a search on Google for West Whiteland Elementary and turned up nothing, except one image, which was a photo I took of the building several years ago. How odd, for much of a mystery surrounds this particular school for me, I was certain it existed. I attended there for most of 1948 through 1949. For pete's sake, there on the left is the picture I took of the place, so it was real.

So I pulled up a Google Map and followed the roads until I found the place it was located and discovered it was now the Exton Elementary School and had been since 1962. On the school's website it gave a short and sketchy history. The school opened as the West Whiteland Consolidated School in 1941, coincidentally that was the year I was born, so I attended in the first decade of its existence as well as my own.

But what happened there? I began grade school at Downingtown East Ward on Washington Avenue, right across the street rom where we lived in 1946. I remember my First Grade teacher quite well, Mrs Mary Warren. She was a big woman, not overly heavy, but tall, at least from a six year old's perspective. She wore print dresses and these thick heeled shoes. She was sort of scary and she was strict. It was a different time and teacher's could lay hands on unruly or non-co-operating pupils. one of her favorite forms of getting your attention was to come up from behind and pull your hair if she felt you were not attentive.

I never had this experience. Mrs. Warren liked me. A lot of teachers liked me; it was a curse. Being Teacher's Pet did not make you popular with your peers. What got me in so good with Mrs. Warren was my ability to read. I could read long before ever going to school and when called upon to read "Fun with Dick and Jane" I put real emphasis on the command to "Run, Spot, Run". Yes, I did not drone out the text, I red with expression, which Mrs. Warren pointed out to the entire class, "was the way you all should be reading."

And here the strangeness begins. I didn't finish First Grade with Mrs. Warren. Halfway through the school year, during the Christmas break of 1947, my parents and I moved to the countryside near Glenloch. Just after New Year's Day 1948 I went into West Whiteland Consolidated School and finished First Grade there. I remained in West Whiteland for all of Second Grade and the first half of Third Grade, moving back to Downingtown and East Ward after New Year's Day 1950 and into the class of Miss Elizabeth Ezrah.

That is my Third Grade picture on the left, my first official school photo. I have an official yearly picture from that one throughout the rest of my public school life. I missed a First Grade photo at East Ward because we moved before one was taken.

There are no photographs of me at West Whiteland, official or otherwise. That is the thing, there are

no photographs, no report cards, no nothing, not even memories of my time in that institution.  I can't tell you who the principal was, can't name a single teacher and only one other student, but that is the one kid in that school whose home I visited. His name was Bobby Cuelers and he moved to Downingtown about the same time we moved back, thus was also in my class at East Ward. I can't remember anything about our relationship in West Whiteland.

The photo of Bobby to the right was taken in Sixth Grade at East Ward. By then whatever friendship we apparently had at West Whiteland had dissolved, just as any of my recall about it has. (Bobby always reminded me of James Cagney a little in looks.)

My First Grade report card only adds more puzzlement to this mystery.

This is my report card from East Ward, but I only attended class there from September through December of 1947. By January 1948 I was attending West Whiteland. You can see on the front that my teacher was Mary L, Warren and the Supervising Principal was Charles P. Emery.

On the back of the card it says I was promoted to Grade 2 and that this was approved by a M. Wallace.  I have no idea who M. Wallace was. Mrs. Rhonda Yost was principal of East Ward.

Was M. Wallace the principal at West Whiteland?

If so, why was she signing the report card issued by an entirely different and separate school district?

You can also see my mother's signature on all four marking periods. The inside of the card only complicates things. My marks are shown for all four marking period, plus the final exam and the final mark. Again, I remind you, I only attended East Ward for marking periods 1 and 2. My days of attendance are noted beneath the columns of grades, 29 in the first and 32 in the second. The other periods for attendance are blank.

The ink for the two periods at East Ward are both darker and in a different hand than those written in for the remainder of the year.  My performance also decreased in the second half, having had mostly A's at East Ward, I apparently had mostly B's at West Whiteland. My worst subject was Music, receiving a C and a B at East Ward, but no marks at all at West Whiteland. My overall grade point average at East Ward was 3.80, but fell to 3.375 at West Whiteland.  But who wrote my West Whiteland grades on this East Ward Card and are they true?

My Third Grade Report Card only includes the last two marking periods that I attended at East Ward, as it should.

This may all be silly after all this time. Why should I concern myself with what happened in early grade school? Well, that is the whole point. What did happen to me in early grade school? Why should two years over three school grades completely and utterly disappear from my memory? One would think I would remember something about that school, but I don't.

I have a vague, very vague wisp of something about soccer associated with West Whiteland, but I don't know why that. I do know it was the one team sport I knew how to play when I came back to East Ward.

It is a black hole in my life and why it nags at me is you hear about so many people who experienced a negative happening in their childhood that they blot out of their mind. Did something bad happen at West Whiteland?

I know I was different when I came back to Downingtown than when I left. I was outgoing before that period, but withdrawn and shy afterward. In my first years I was sociable and had many friends in the neighborhood, as shown in these photos of birthday parties, but when I returned in 1950 I was shunned or bullied by former friends and had to slowly develop new friendships, mostly with other outcasts.

I always attributed this change to the isolation of living behind the swamp in the nowhere that was Glenloch in those days, but did something happen at West Whiteland School that contributed to the struggles I had afterward?

I wish I knew.

Change of Season

"What a difference a day makes," sings the song, "twenty-four little hours."  Yesterday, the second day of October, saw the temperature drop after weeks of heat and mostly dryness. It was even at nine o'clock, when I was free to take a morning walk, only around 54.

You know, usually I walk much earlier and by 9:00 would be finishing up four or five miles, but the sudden drop in degrees was indirectly involved with Friday's late start. I had the furnace guy coming early.

Yeah, I looked at the weather predictions earlier in the week and they all said the warmth was going to drop off the cliff by weekend and into the next several days, along with rain and rain and, you guessed it, rain. We needed the rain and many felt we needed a break from the blaze of summer sun and those high-eighty and ninety thermometer readings. We need a period of cool down. But that also said to me I might need turn on the heater. 

The heater had been off since the end of spring and as a result my power bills had been down considerably. Sure, we aren't masochists suffering the sauna of summer. We do keep the A/C purring or roaring, but several years ago we turned away from that gobbler of kilowatts  called central air to window units. Why cool the whole house when you live only in a room here and there? It was surprising the savings during those air conditioned months once we made that switch. However, 'tis a whole other tune once you snap that setting from cool to heat and the furnace begins chugging down natural gas. 

I like to avoid that rising bill as long as possible, but I knew the Little Woman would not be as interested in our pocket book as her shivering through the days ahead, so turning on the furnace was a for certain. As I mentioned, it hadn't been on for months and dust would be gathering inside and who knows what, plus the filter hadn't been changed now for a year, which is how long it is supposed to last. At any rate, I called my furnace keeper-upper, William G. Day Co. I switched to them about three years ago and found them very accommodating. I had used Horizon Services for decades, but it was time for a switch, but that is a tale for another time.

Anyway, the Day Company lady told me they could have a guy there to clean and maintain my furnace on Friday as his first scheduled job of the day. This is what I like about them, they come quickly. He was there by 7:45 AM and done by a bit after 8:30. Great, over and done and the furnace is ready for another winter. 

I still didn't get out of the house until 9:00, which is where we began this whole shebang talking about the difference a day makes.

I went up to Rockwood that Friday. It was 54, as stated, dreary with a light drizzle. Nonetheless, I wore shorts. I did pull on a long-sleeve sweatshirt upon arrival in the parking lot and I was good to go and fine for the four mile hike. My legs take chill better than the rest of me so the shorts were no discomfort at all...on Friday.

Not so much this morning. 

Saturday began as dreary gray as yesterday, but it wasn't raining when I headed out about

7:30, a time still a bit later than I'd usually go. Temperature was a bit lower at 52, but somehow the day was a lot colder. I wore my long workout pants and my sweatshirt, and at the park I pulled on a light jacket and my wooly hat. That is what wind will do to you.

It is what makes weather so tricky. You can go out in summer with a bright, uncovered sun and mercury saying it's 90 plus degrees and walk without a sweat if the humidity is 50 and a breeze is blowing. Take away that wind and make the humidity around 70 and you are oozing perspiration within a few steps. 

This morning was very breezy and that made it more miserable than yesterday's rain. 

The wind had whipped all night and the paths were strewn with downed leaves and other debris. Just off the footbridge over the little creek was a downed branch and broken glass. The falling limb had taken out a streetlamp.  


I walked up and around the Carriage house and then through the Kitchen Garden.

Seemingly out of place now in this gloom and chill, roses still bloomed  defying the change of season.

But it started me thinking, to contemplating the change. These red blossoms would soon fade and wither and all this green surrounding me would be gone. In a mere couple months this place will be brown and bleak, bare naked trees and undressed bushes and the slate gray skies so common to November would greet me. I in turn would not be near naked in but t-shirts and shorts, but dressed in layers of heavy clothes that would add weight to my every step and bog me down and restrict my movement. 

The year was cycling through now. Most of the activities of this place were done. The sleep under the stars in the meadow and the Ice Cream Festival at the birth of summer seemed distant now. Packed away were the costumes and props and stage of the August Shakespeare festival, Just ended last Sunday was the annual Faerie Fest.   The remnants of this last fling of a sweeter season remained in disarray. Chalked hopscotch grids were washing away in all these rains and the winds of autumn had played havoc to the childhood dreams tied upon the wishing bridge, the letter washed away and the now blank cards littering the landscape.

There were hay bails near the carriage house, perhaps part of the haunted tours that are

beginning to mark the coming Hallowe'en Soon they will construct a spooky graveyard up before the mansion, complete with coffins and skeletons and dire warnings. But like the evil spirits let loose for that one night, this to would fade after All Saint's Day and then the brittle brown leaves would cover those spaces and the trails and the winds would come with hints of winter on their breath.

There will be a brief retrieve from the darkness as the clocks turn back to end Daylight savings time on the First of November. Once Rockwood has tucked away the faux tombstones and barrage of bats and plastic bones of the ghoulish dead,  they will begin the stringing of light garlands from tree bough to tree bough in preparation for the Holiday Open House on the beginning weekend of December. And soon enough about the country side as the curtain of autumn falls complete and frost forms across the pumpkin patches, more lights will flash awake. For a few weeks we will put off thoughts of anything but the gaiety and joy of the Christmas season, at least the majority of us will. We will have our streets ablaze not

only with the red and green and whatever other color may be mingled in among the white of candles, and perhaps many will turn toward the hope and salvation promised beneath all the merchandising and tinsel and jingling bells of sidewalk Santas. Perhaps a few will get the message of what Christ really brings to us as a gift. Perhaps for those few weeks much of the hate and chaos that seems to grow more virulent each day will subside somewhat and we may even have some good will among men. 

The bells of New Year will sound, the horns will be blown and the drunks will weave into another month and another Winter will fall upon us like a cold shroud. The bright lights will be snapped off. Days will be short and cold and the forest a dead zone, the months of bleakness.

And I guess I'm growing old. There is a weariness I feel too often now and I want to sleep too much. I remember how I pondered my father constantly nodding off when the family got together the last several years of his life. Just as the world goes through its cycle and nature seems to slumber off before a new birth of Spring, so do our bodies run down to extended nap times in our fading decades. Our seasons change and mine is sliding slowly into its winter. That is not a sad thing, it is nature and I never look back in regret, just always looking ahead to the future as I live in each moment of time, for the present hour actually is, no matter our chronological age, the only time we really have.

Changes in Attitudes; Changes in Platitudes: A Kind of Throwback Thursday Piece

That title is a little twist on a Jimmy Buffett song, "Changes in Latitudes; Changes in Attitudes". Latitude had nothing to do with my changes in attitude, but age did. There were things I said in younger years so often they did become platitudes; promises I made to myself and sometimes anyone else in earshot.

For instance, I oft declared I would never work in an office. By that, I meant some stereotypical business office. As it turned out I sat my body down in many an office over the decades of my life from rooms with long rows of desks, to private ones to cubicles.

The timeline of my life became a long litany of office locations.

 Of course, as a teen my desire was to be a writer of books, not a bookkeeper or some other mundane means of earning a living. I developed a platitude about this in my late teens. "I am going to write a novel someday that will shock the world."  What I meant by that was a story filled with all the things taboo to writing in those times, something filled with salacious activities and naughty words. This was far from the perspective I projected to those who knew me.


I never used any naughty words. An occasional "darn" or "heck" might escape my lips, but little else. As far as salaciousness…well, anything along those lines was purely in my imagination in those days.

You must realize I was a teen in the 1950s. Censorship was king when it came to the arts. The Catcher in the Rye was considered a scandalizing book. Books were not only censored, they were often banned from even coming into the country. Henry Miller was not a name you found on your local library shelf in Downingtown. You'd have to travel to France to find a copy, and then maybe it wouldn't be in English so you'd be out of luck anyway.

D. H. Lawrence was another author not so welcome on our shores. Even home-grown authors who were welcome in American bookstores faced difficulties of meeting high decency standards. Hemingway was forced to substitute for words he had in mind for some of his characters. Go read the uses he made of muck and milk in "For Whom the Bell Tolls".

I had never read Henry Miller or D. H. Lawrence then. How could I; they were verboten! In 1959, a book called Peyton Place appeared and rocked the literary world back on its heels. The sexual twists in its plot led to the term "Peyton Place" entering the language to describe any tawdry place with seamy secrets.

My plans to write the world's most shocking novel was actually exceeding my grasp as the sixties passed. It the years after I graduated high school a lot of "shocking" novels appeared and by today what could one possibly write that would shock anyone?

My own work contains little in word or deed that anyone would even blush at let alone be shocked by.

But when I grew up and actually began being published, I became more reserved in my ideas of what

to write; that is, I became tactful and reserved and less likely to offend anyone. I also soon developed a new platitude about the future. "When I get old I will write what I want and not care what people think."

After all, I reasoned, once you are old you can say the most outrageous things and everyone just passes it off to your age; i.e., he's a bit senile or eccentric or just plain nuts. Ignore him with a laugh, you know how these old curmudgeons get.

Now here is my problem and why I don't live up to my promises of what I will do. I can't figure out when old is.

I am working my way through my 74th year. When I was that callow teen someone of 74 was ancient. I mean, if you were over 70 you were fixin' to die! I somehow don't feel fixin' to die. I don't feel like much needs fixin', period. I don't feel all that broken down, so I don't know if I am old enough to be eccentric in anyone's eyes. When is old? I heard a survey was taken on that question and the highest percentage picked 75 as old. I am not that far from that milestone, but will I really look and feel so different in less than two years? Must I wait until I am 80 or 90 to be allowed crabbiness and politically incorrect criticism of society?

I guess in the meantime I'll just have to be my boring silly self.

Flipping Out

Everything has a life expiration and sad to say my faithful Flip has reached its. I'm saddened by this demise, it was such a good little camera. It and I had many adventures together.

I knew it was coming. The thing was becoming stubborn about turning on, and sometimes turning off.  Still I had hope. I had taken a short video a few days ago of me standing in the snow on my early morning walk. When I got home that day, Flip wouldn't flick on at all and I thought it was done.

A couple hours later I just happened to push the on button one more time and it sprang to life. I was able to upload that video to my computer and to pull some stills off the result.

Yesterday morning was a repeat as far as me snapping myself on my walk. I was told last weekend that some actually looked forward to my little morning selfless, so why not. The camera turned on after about three presses. I pushed the film button, set it upon a stone wall and struck a pose. It was a nice location in the back of the Rose Garden at Rockwood. There were no roses, of course, unless you count my blooming face, but it still seemed nicely framed with the old carriage house as a backdrop.

A bit later on that walk I thought one place made a beautiful snowing scene, but my Flip flopped and I got no picture.

I assumed in this bitter cold it had simply froze up again as on the previous day. I would let it sit in the warmth of the house for a couple hours and it would switch on its light and I could get my portrait. Alas, no such revival this time. I tried throughout the day to no avail. I even stuck it in the USB port to try and get the film inside. Nothing happened. The computer no longer recognized any life within it.

I tried again this morning. I tried again just a few minutes ago around 5:00 PM. It remains dark and dead. In between those tries I knew the truth and went out camera shopping. I hated the prospect, especially the cost, but I am a hopeless photo fanatic and I have use for my videos and snapshots even beyond myself.

Unfortunately, a couple years ago Cisco decided to no longer make or support the Flip. You can buy them on eBay and other Internet sites, but I don't trust buying a used or reconditioned camera. What guarantee do I have they will last beyond a shutter click or two?

I saw a piece comparing the Kodak Zi8 to the Flip, but apparently these are also in the great once was.

Why they ceased making Flips I do not know. It was such a handy-dandy device. It was a video camera, but its software allowed for easily converting frames to still photos. It was simply to use, light to carry and did not look like a camera. You slipped it in a pocket and when a good shot was available, slipped it out and filmed away, usually without people knowing it was a camera.

Such animals seem to be rare or extinct now. I guess Cisco felt the built-in cameras in Smartphones

took away the market.

Anyway, I bought a Canon Powershot SX280 HS. It is essentially a still camera, but has pretty good video from what I've seen so far. It is a bit heavier than the flip and unfortunately looks like a camera when used.

It doesn't have some features I like on the Flip, like converting frames to slides, but I'll figure something out. It also doesn't have a timer, so getting myself in the picture is more challenging. But that is life, change and relearn and so we will.

Yet, I will miss that Flip.

On to That Final 20%.

I see we are not calling them Senior Centers anymore. Some are retitled "Center for Balanced Living."I don't know what that means? What is it? A retirement community for Wallendas? Some state is renaming every one "Active Adult Center". That sounds too much like a gym to me. If I walk in the door will somebody yell, "Give me ten!"What if I don't feel like being all that active?

Why can't we ever call anything what it is? I guess people can't face the truth. I'd be happy with Senescent Center, where the Geezers and Biddies play to they drop...dead.

Frankly I'm fine with being a senior citizen. By gum (old geezer slang word), I earned it. I will not be robbed of my right to be old. And don't give me that mishmash of 70 is the new 60 or 50 or perhaps they're calling it the new 20 by now. Seventy might be on the cusp, but 72 old, man.

They have this thing called life expectancy and it says for us dudes it is 76-77 years. That puts me four or five years away, so if I ain't old now I never will be. This life expectancy thing is a bit suspect to me. Some agency puts out list by countries and the United States ranks 51 on those lists. I think its just political. Got to watch anything put out there may be some manipulation for political reasons. Like they are back on this Global Warming kick again at the United nations, even though there hasn't been any increased warming for 17 years. they dismiss this as a "pause". If it's been seventeen years, i call it a trend.

But never mind, we're talking about life expectancy and those world types say 76-77 for us fellows. Yet, if I go to the Social Security Agency I am told I can expect to live another 13 years, which would make me 85. Furthermore, the CDC (Center for Disease Control) says I got 19 more years to go, which gets me to 91.

No matter how you cut it or who you believe, 72 makes me an old man, maybe on the young side of old age, but old nonetheless.  One way I figure is this. That 91 sounds like a reasonable number to me. Most my family lived up close to that. My mother died at 92 and my father at 94, so I got pretty good genes in the aging game. So if we round off at 90 and divide by 5 we get a pretty good breakdown of a life's divisions: childhood, young adult, career years, middle age into retirement and old age.

I worked until I was 70 and then full retirement kind of happened. That was a couple years ago so I'm now in stage 5, - old age.  I have arrived in my 73rd year and essentially the last 20% of my life.

(By the way, remember, when you celebrate your 72nd birthday it means you have finished up 72 years. The day after you birthday you are working through your 73rd years.)

This is not a complaint about being old. If there is any complaint it is about those who deny it, won't accept it, lie about it, flee from it or fear it. Get over it. Everybody gets old unless they die young, so celebrate and embrace it, you have survived.

I will tell you I don't feel much different in my brain. My mind's image of myself is basically the same as ever, so I guess your subconscious does lie. In my head I look like I'm maybe 25. I don't see an old man when I look on the mirror either, so mirrors must practice deception, too. I see a man with a white beard and bald pate, but he doesn't look grizzled and worn to me. Ah, but when I see photographs of me, then I wonder who is that old man and why do I have a picture of him?

It's my body that really let's me know I'm old. It sneaks up on you and you don't always realize what

the body is saying, but gradually you get the message. For example, I'm a walker. I have walked places all my life, often for just the pleasure of the walk. My friend, Ronald Tipton, and I used to walk up and about the hills around Downingtown as children and that exploring by foot has remained a lifelong habit for both of us. When I worked, I would walk away my lunch hours and take a long walk in the evening after I got home. And these days I go every morning to one of our local parks and traipse away four or five miles of varied terrain, up hill and down.

But then I was passing everyone who appeared before me and if walking with companions would need slow or stop occasionally to allow them to keep up. Now I notice everyone is passing me. I feel I am stepping out at a good pace, my same old pace, but apparently not. I also know I am walking the same distance in more time.

Ignoring some recent health issues, such as my half-paralyzed right hand, the two main fingers stiffened

by arthritis, there is another obvious indicator that I have moved into old age. Strength. I was never an Arnold Scwartznegger, but I had some amount of strength. I us to lift weights to keep toned and I could press 120 pounds straight over my head and I did arm curls with 35 pound dumbbells. Now I struggle to carry a forty pound bag of kitty litter into the house.

Don't take this little missive as morbid. It isn't focusing on death. Death isn't just around the corner. Remember, the CDC says I have 19 more years...at least. No, I am just being realistic and admitting that in many ways I am pass it. I'm content with that. I'm happy with that. Much of the fuss and feathers of life are over. I look forward to a simpler, perhaps more placid remaining 20% of it.

Also my big hope is I will return to regular entries in what have been becoming my long neglected blogs.

With the Speed of Now Impossible to Play

I'm feeling my age this week. Angry Assassin Arthritis did a hit job on my right foot. The problem with Mr. Arthritis is he doesn't come by once to stick a knife in. He hangs about and keeps twisting the blade. I haven't had an attack for a while. This one was very vicious, I guess to make up for Arthritis long neglect. It began on Tuesday evening in my arch and it was scream-out-loud painful by bedtime.

At 11:30 I hobbled, with grimace and groan, out to the kitchen to pop some pills, in this case Ibuprofen, not the pill of my choice, but the ones available. The fix of my choice would have been Tylenol Arthritis, but you can't get it. It was the only stuff that really worked for me. The Ibuprofen eased the pain some, long enough for me to get to sleep, but it was back full-bore in the morning and I have been popping pills all week, alternating between the Ibuprofen and Aspirin with one hit of Motrin thrown in by the mercy of a co-worker. (Yeah, I have been working this week at my on-my-feet-all-day job.)(

The two days I was off I managed my walks, too, because you can't give in to the Assassin  or next thing you know you give up the walking; you find this excuse or that.

The pain almost went away on Friday and in fact, it left my arch entirely by Friday evening, only to sneak into my big toe and ramp up again. So I took my two Ibuprofens a half hour ago and the pain has lightened and I expect to take my morning amble, but man I am feeling all of my years physically right now.

But last week I was feeling age in a different way. Now I am going to start off sounding like an Old Foggy rambling on about the "Good ol' days of yesteryear," except my yesteryear is more like yesterday.

I've got about 200 CDs stacked up on racks next to my desk. I used to listen to my music all the time as I wrote. For some reason I got out of that habit earlier this year, but last week I decided I wanted to hear my music again. I plopped on my earphones, selected a CD and placed it in my CD player. Silence and the message on the player said, "No Disc".

No disc?  This silvery round thing with the hole in the center looked a lot like a disc to me. I understand sometimes a smudge upon the surface can wreak havoc. I pull the disc out and examine it. There does seem to be a something maybe perhaps there. I wipe it across my sweater and plop it back in the machine.

"No disc."

Okay, I'll try a different singer and a different song. I put this new choice in and close the lid. Whirl, whirl, and the number 01 shows in the window and then, "No disc".  Hmmm. I pull out this disc that apparently doesn't exist and look it over. Ah, yes, definitely something stuck along one edge.  I take it to the kitchen sink and wash it, dry it and return it to the player all pristine and clean, and assumable presentable.

"No disc."

I go to a higher authority, my wife. "Hon," I ask, "have you been having trouble with the CD player?"

She has her own cache of CDs, especially Bon Jovi and The Who, which she does exercising to. She uses the player much more lately than I have.

"Yes," she says.

Tat settles it. She wants her exercise beat and I really do wish to listen to my music. I grab my hat and head out to purchase a new CD Player. Yes, the current one has some years on it now and obviously it has worn itself to a frazzle and cannot perform its duties up to snuff anymore.

First stop, fully expecting it to be my only stop, is Target. I'm looking for cheap, truth be told. I go straight to the electronics department, you known that place one dominated by TV sets, but now a vast warehouse of cell phones. I go up and down aisles, over and over as if some stock clerk might have hurried out to restock, but no CD Players anywhere. There are iPod Docks and MP3 gizmos and for some reason a lot of alarm clocks, but no CD Players.

Now it is down the highway to a Best Buy.

I figure the most logical place to start is the section selling CDs. Wouldn't you put CD players near what they play? I wander about. They have a bunch of karaoke machines (why for heaven's sake!) but I do not see a CD player. Finally I do see a sales clerk, so I ask.

"Sure," she says and leads me off.

We wind our way across the store. "They keep moving things around," she says.  "I think they are over this way."

We have moved over to the far flung sections of the store, over to the desert where once computer software ranged. This is the land of the endangered species and sure enough at the end of an aisle are CD Players.

I thank the clerk and wander into the aisle expecting an array of various CD players to pick from. Ha, there are no CD players down the aisle. No, what there is is only on those shelves on the very end of the displays. I have my choice of ... of... one!

One, and there aren't many of that one left either. I buy the one, an Insignia. It's compact. It has a CD player. It has an AM/FM Radio receiver. It has...well, that is what it has. There is no tape player as my old player had.

Let that be a warning, I think. The tape cassette is gone, gone the way of the 8-Track or the record (vinyl) of the wax cylinder. Soon the CD will also be gone and so will the means to play them.

It is speeding up. Their use to be some manufactures slogan (they are probably gone now too) that said, "Tomorrows Technology Today!" I think the new slogan must be, "Today's Technology Yesterday!"

When I was a little boy my parents had these records. They where about ten inches in diameter with a little hole in the center. They were called 78 RPM records. When I got a little older I got my own record player for Christmas. It played these things about six inches in diameter with a large hole in the middle called 45 RPM Records. Next came the 33 1/3s, which were about twelve inches across and back to a small hole in the middle. I built a large collection of these various records over the years. When I got married we bought this nice Fisher Hi-Fi Stereo

That Fisher lasted a long time, but we had lightening strike one night and it blew out that stereo. I bought a new record player and noticed something. It no longer had a 78 RPM speed. Those old records could not be played.

Then we came to a time we could't find nettles. Then we couldn't even find record players.  I am not talking some long ago, I'm talking less than 20 years here. Cassettes were ruling. (8-tracks kind of come and went quickly.) Now the tape players have disappeared and the CD players are becoming rare.

I am not against progress and new technology, but I have a lot invested in my music collection. I have about 2,000 33 1/3 Album representing a broad spectrum of American music as well as hundreds of 45s and 78s. I had dozens of tape cassettes and as mentioned, 200 CDs. I don't ask time to stop, I simply ask they keep the old technologies around my lifetime so I can still enjoy the media I have.