I’m on the Last Train to Gummerville
By Bill Stieger
Optimists like to say that Age is just a number. They also say, You’re only as young as you feel.
Baloney.
The problem with those pillars of bogus wisdom is simply this: Age is not just a number—it’s a number that corresponds exactly with how you feel. And how do you feel? If you’re past 60, you feel lousy. And you feel lousy because you are old.
Sure, sure—you can cite Mick Jagger as an indicator of health in oldsters. Go ahead. My answer is at the ready. Jagger is a multi-millionaire with servants. Does Mick cook meals? Babysit his new baby? Doubt it. Mick has staff. And that staff takes care the shopping, the children, the cooking, the driving, and home maintenance. Mick’s real job is working with his trainers, physical therapists, and doctors, all of it designed to keep Jumpin’Jack Flash dancing through a two-hour Stones concert.
But what about Keith Richards? Well, Keith is a miracle. Everyday mortals have died, trying to hang out with Mr. Richards. Keith carries a “medical bag; and its contents are legendary. On-the-road maintenance. Furthermore, Keith doesn’t move much when performing. Sure, you might get a few windmills with his strumming arm during “Start Me Up,” but once started, old “Keef” stays planted.
No. Unless you’re lucky, your 60s will mark an avalanche of aches, pains, and embarrassing bodily functions that torment your formerly robust constitution. In your 60s you discover you are indeed riding the last train to Gummerville.
Check out this list of recent physical ordeals, spiritual epiphanies:
I recently read four chapters of Eric Larson’s “Thunderstruck,” the story of the on-ship capture of murderer, Hawley Crippen, who was captured in July of 1910 through the implementation of ship-to-shore communication using Marconi’s wireless telegraph. Yes, I read four chapters before it occurred to me that I’d read the book two years before. How did I feel when I realize my noggin is boggin’? Embarrassed, that’s what. And it was enervating enough that I considered crawling into one of the miserable MRI tubes to get my beany scanned.
If you’re in my age bracket, you remember the early days of television. Captain Kangaroo, Pinky Lee, Soupy Sales (If your mother wasn’t on guard, perhaps a clandestine viewing of The Untouchables). At that age, the aforementioned media stars looked ancient as dinosaurs. They were of an unfathomable age from which I was exempt. I would never grow as old as Captain Kangaroo. Not in my lifetime, anyway. However, last weekend, I happened to see the news on my local station, anchored by two twenty somethings. I asked myself, Who let the kids read the news? Walter Cronkite never looked that young; he was born an old guy. Well, it’s just another indication of the approaching boneyard. Time to check out some assisted living brochures.
I’ve worked as a musician since I was 16 years old. I was a rock musician who played in bands so loud they made your ears bleed. I later became a jazz musician, and came to dislike the teenage obsessions of pop music. So when I step into my neighborhood drugstore and its shop speakers blasts the latest off-key Aretha Franklin imitator, it physically hurts to hear it. Imagine a young woman screaming like Janet Leigh as her boyfriend whaps you repeatedly over the head with a cookie sheet–the sound of it. That’s what blasting pop tunes do to me. I sometimes react to some wretched musical passage with a muttered curse and witness nearby customers backing away from me as if they’d seen a man who’s lost his mental footing. He has.
I am continually embarrassed by gaps in my memory during conversations with friends, or, worse, when running into an acquaintance whose name is impossible to remember. “Good to see you again!” I say with an exaggerated enthusiasm that fails to mask my confusion. I’ve even on occasion spaced out my wife’s name. Failures of memory have become a source of daily misery. People tell me to write things I need to remember in a notebook, which I have tried; but then I’ll lose the notebook.
I can tolerate the weather-beaten mug of mine while shaving and brushing my teeth in the morning. It’s the chubby horse faced guy I see in home photographs that makes me consider crafting a Go Fund Me site to afford seeing some Frankenstein surgeon who can cinch up my face. That consideration, however, evaporates when I remember the monstrous visages of Kenny Rogers, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and the destroyed mug of Mickey Rourke. Ya gotta know when to fold up. I guess I’ll try looking good in photos by sitting next to a bloodhound. An old bloodhound.
There is no tasteful way to put this, yet it must be addressed. I now realize why they call old fellows that uncharming name. It’s those unintentional eruptions of methane that are the source of it. The only blessing in that department are those which make no noise; one can escape down the grocery aisle while some poor soul inadvertently wanders into the cloud, then runs screaming down the aisle like a mustard-gassed doughboy. Does God send this airborne curse to grumpy guys to deflate their egos? If so, it works; witness your self-esteem instantly destroyed in a fit of blushing agony, followed by an apology muttered through gritted teeth. Your colon, by the way, is also deflated, readying itself for the next reenactment of Krakatoa.
The delivered mail is another daily remainder that The Reaper is ready to pounce. Life insurance peddlers want to know how much you plan to spend for your corporal sendoff, offering a fast ten-grand to your family to avoid your being lowered into a pauper’s grave. I could fill a dumpster with all the junk mail I get from AARP, an outfit I endorse and belong to, yet find irritating with all its money hustling. Reverse mortgage offers arrive by the sack. Corporate America is out to squeeze every dime from you as you march over the generational horizon. Life insurance? Hey, I knew a guy who bought life insurance, and he still died.
I’ve had five surgeries in the last decade. Nothing life threatening, but serious enough to realize that I am, like Richard III, in the winter of my discontent: Bunyan surgery (Thanks for the limp, Doc), a prostate issue, hernia surgery, shoulder surgery, bone spur cut from the jaw, stones in the urinary track. Throw in a few root-canals and I can ask, “Are we not having fun yet?” I’ve gotten so used to these procedures that they no longer make me nervous--just irritated and bored. Yet, there it is; the physical reminder of approaching mortality, delivered on the installment plan.
And, oh Lord, the devices. The functions and apps on my cell phone might as well be a Rubik’s Cube for all I can parse of them. The phone rings and I can’t swipe in the right direction to open it. If a message is left, I can’t figure out how to retrieve it. I’ve tried reading the owner’s manual, but do not understand “techy-write,” with all of its acronyms. And who the hell can type with one finger on letters as small as a pencil point?
Madness.
Keeping sane in the later years can be a struggle. The sole respite from the daily insults of physical indignity is to avoid the tempting escape into nostalgia. Unlike many of my friends, I work not to idealize my past, nor fall into the ditch of resentment toward the so-called Millennials. Yeah, my gen had the Beatles, Woodstock, the Peace Movement, etc. But a lot of my friends died in the excess of those days. There were also a lot of frauds, cults, gurus and ding-a-lings, who dedicated their lives to the destruction of reason and common sense. My son, and my wife’s two sons from her first marriage are sharp, talented and responsible. And I try to look forward to new experiences, new endeavors, to replace those that my age won’t allow me to pursue. Aging also forces you to begin caring for your physical health, to pay attention to the food you eat, to ensure you get a certain amount of exercise, and most of all, remain engaged with the world at present. Like Bob Dylan once put it in a song, “He who’s not busy being born is busy dying.”
But I have yet to decide which of the two I have become.