OLD AGE RAGES FORTH

Old eldest has received an invitation from AARP, which inspired me to post this blog from the Brazil Times website on June 12, 2008 (which, for the record, was 10 years ago and I never joined AARP).

 

Old Age Rages Forth

One of the most poignant songs ever written, “Sunrise, Sunset”, comes from the musical Fiddler on the Roof.  The lines which always stood out are these [copied here without permission of anyone in particular]:

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

I don't remember growing older

When did they?

It seems like old age should kinda creep up on you.  You look back at some (future) point and wonder when it was you got old.  This, apparently, is not how it works.  Old age comes suddenly, abruptly and aggressively, in the afternoon mail.

It’s not like there are no warnings, AARP has been sending their junk mail the 15^th of every month for almost ten years.  And, yes there have been an increasing number of insurance companies who suddenly see you as a great risk.  But, like most warning signs of impending doom, they can be readily ignored.

Then, what you thought was just another harmless piece of junk mail turns out to be Old Age making a frontal attack roughly equivalent to a shock and awe battle cry:  “Welcome to Medicare.” 

Only OLD people are on Medicare!

Back when the first Medicare supplemental programs were coming into being (HMO’s, etc.) my mother asked me to go with her to a seminar being conducted to inform retirees about their options.  My mother was, indeed, old; so I went along to help her figure out what to do.  In retrospect I realize it was being put on by a group with something to sell.  But, I was young and she was old.  We signed her up for something neither of us really understood.  Far as I know it was a decent decision and worked out well.  What I do know is that she lived another thirty years.  She probably got more out of her old age than the supplemental insurance company did.

Now I’ve got to figure it out for myself, and it is a LOT more complicated than all this was thirty years ago when I was young (as I now vaguely remember young). Medicare sends out a booklet to explain it all.  Being the United States government what it mostly does is to explain there will be yet another booklet coming which will explain the first booklet’s explanation.  Did I even get that much figured out?  Which of our unsuspecting children can I volunteer to go with me to the next “informational seminar”?

I won’t actually be 65 for another 125 days, and will probably get a lot more junk mail before then.  Hope I can figure out which one of these is the explanation of the explanation.  I am quite old.

INTRODUCTION TO MY BLOGS

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

What follows in a complying of blogs posted to the Brazil Times website under the by-line MY VIEW FROM THE BACK PEW beginning May 17 2008 at a time when I was still finding my voice after a stroke.  The last one was published on May 10 2015 following the suicide of our son Nathan.  By that time I had written over 350 blogs with a minimum of 500 words each, and was both burned out on writing and going through what must be called not my better days.  Besides, after writing that long about things only interesting to me, even my wife had stopped reading them.  These blogs can no longer be found on the Times site and are reproduced here from original document files.

Not all blogs can or should be included -- that's well over 150,000 words which nobody much read the first time around.  And, some will be edited for timeliness, relevance, or just plain keeping short enough to be read.

Anyhow, this is where it began:

This Is Me Blogging[i]

So this is a blog.  If you are over, say, 30 years of age you probably have a child who can explain computers to you.  We have such a son.  Our #2 son, Nathan, is something of a computer guru. And, since I do some work at his business, people think I know something about computers.  I do not.  I can only “blog” as long the good people at the Brazil Times continue to humor me and turn this stuff into Internet wiz. 

“Long enough to cover the subject, short enough to be interesting.” This is the challenge laid down as I begin to write observations of the county and state that has come to be more “home” than any place I’d been before coming to Brazil.  I must begin with a certain amount of disclaimer:  I am well aware my need of the disciple of actually writing something on a regular basis is much greater than anyone else’s need to read it.

It seems the place to begin is at the beginning.  This is me, who I am and what I bring to the game.

Time flies when you're having fun, enjoying life and being whom and where you are.  The [now 20+] years since we moved to Indiana have gone too swiftly.  We were told a fellow has to live in Indiana ten years before he could claim to be a "Hoosier".  But I adopted Brazil, Indiana as my hometown the day we moved here and hope to never leave.  In fact I fully expect to be buried here (in the very distant future).

I sincerely hope to bring a unique viewpoint of life in Clay County.  Perspectives many miss. I had lived most of my life in St. Louis, Missouri. And, if you did not grow up in north St. Louis you cannot completely appreciate the differences between living there and here.  For a good part of my life the houses were thirty-six inches apart:  A walkway to our backyard on the east side, a walkway to their backyard to the west.  So close and somehow you never knew anyone.  Over the years schools became so dangerous guards must now patrol their halls.  Yes, you could still walk on the streets at night, but not around the block.

People ask how we happened to come to Brazil; to them I propose this question: Your youngest is about to enter a big city high school and you get the chance to come to a small town in Indiana with the unlikely name of Brazil, what would you do?

When this move was first proposed the worst was imagined.  Would there be only shacks in the land of "Hoosiers"? Will they have running water?  What we found was a very comfortable home at the crossroad of the best of all possible worlds: Over half an acre of yard bounded on the rear by a cornfield.  Have you ever watched corn grow?  Fascinating, particularly if you didn't know the stuff grew on stalks.  At our front door we could watch, and occasionally smell, the cows graze.  My wife and I are probably the only ones left in Indiana still excited about seeing deer in the road.  At [now 75+] plus years of age I can truthfully say I have never been happier or more content any place else.

Which leads, I hope, to the things about which I may choose to write.  My daddy said you can play the game by any rules you want, as long as those rules are known before the game begins. So, these are my rules as I begin writing of what I see:

First, I’ve never been a good reporter or researcher.  Most of what I write I think of as prose written in essay form.  Probably the reason very little of what I write is ever read by anyone.

Second, one of my great failures in life has been a failure to be politically correct.  Instead I tend to be too honest for anyone’s good.  Unfortunately this will continue.

Third, I am neither a leader nor a very good follower.  Most of what I do is observe and keep an incredibly lot of irrelevant facts in my head.  My observations and mistaken memories are what I write.

Them am the rules.  Let the game begin.  At least by now I’m officially a Hoosier.

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[i] The Brazil Times, May 17, 2008