There is no such thing as the golden years — gold does not rust

Tuesday was the first of August and, as we said before, the summer goes so fast, and winter takes forever — except, of course, for the ski enthusiasts. On Tuesday, we met at the Hilltown Café in Rensselaerville.

As this scribe looked around at the folks in the Hilltown Café, he noticed all the patrons had gray hair, and all were men, even those who were regular customers of the restaurant. The only people whose ages seemed to be around 30 were the help.

This scribe also noticed that one of the local customers who came in had a cane and he was bent over at about 30 degrees. This scribe mentioned to an OMOTM that he looked liked he fit right in with the group.

Then the discussion began. There is no such thing as the golden years — gold does not rust. Gold is the wrong adjective; it should be the rusting years, and rust is the proper adjective. After age 65 rust begins to settle in.

The joints begin to rust and squeak; the eyes start to cloud over; the ears start to hum and ring, and catch only every other word; the veins begin clog; the brain begins to atrophy; the skin begins to develop scales while funny spots appear; and the muscles start their trip south.

There is nothing golden about it. The adjective is rust! The gold goes to doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and nursing homes. We start to rust getting prepared to turn to ashes. So say the OFs.

Shipwrights

Before all this happens, the OMOTM are busy. We are busy with many projects; now we have a couple of OFs building boats.

One OF is building a “pirate ship” and this thing is no toy. It is more than 32 feet long and at least 14 feet high.

Another OMOTM traveled to a school in Maine where they teach people how to build a Maine dinghy, and the OF is in the process of building one now at home.

Maybe there could be a battle of boats with the dinghy attacking the pirate ship. Complete with costumes of course.

Strange death of an ant

An OF related a story of an observation he had never seen before and none of the other OFs have either. The OF said he was just resting on his back porch when he spotted a bug so tiny that he could not tell what it was.

This little dot of a spot was inching its way across the floor when a small ant came onto the porch. The OF said the little dot stopped and watched this ant as the ant kept crawling closer to the dot.

When the ant got so close to the dot it was about to hit the dot, the dot jumped up and landed on the back of the ant. The OF said in a few seconds the ant was gone.

The dot turned out to be a very, very, small spider.This whole scenario developed in a space of 3/16 to 1/4 of an inch, and in less than a minute. To see something happen in nature so rare and to be focused at that spot at that precise moment in time is amazing.

The OFs wonder how much else people miss by being wrapped up in so much useless junk like iPods, and cell phones, not watching what is really going on around them.

Gadabouts galore

One thing is obvious about the OMOTM — the OFs for the most part are seniors. This leads many of the OFs to be part of senior organizations. This is another way for seniors to get out and get active.

Some of the OFs go on these senior trips that take them places that they have never been, and are not too far from their home base. Some of the OFs are real gadabouts and have been all over the world and some not so much.

Relating seniors to seniors (and not the OMOTM), the senior groups are good for them as a means for travel and companionship. Some of the OFs do go on the senior trips, especially the ones to casinos, or the mystery runs, or trips to see plays, or partake in some celebration.

These trips are great for seniors that can no longer drive. The trips still gives them a chance to get out. At our table, some of the OFs are going to miss a breakfast because of a trip. It was noted that these OFs did request permission to miss a meeting to go on the trip and permission was granted.

Getting in touch

Generally, when the OFs talk about what they did during their working careers, we hear stories concerning things that happened. On Tuesday morning, the exchange was about people the OFs worked with and who were their good friends.

Now that the OFs have been retired for some time, they have lost all touch with these people and the discussion was wondering what they are doing now. During the discussion, some of the OFs made notes to try to track some of these people down.

Some may have passed on, some may have moved clear across the country, some may be in nursing homes, and the OFs have no clue about many of them. A couple of the OFs said they don’t want to locate some of them; they didn’t like them when they were working with them and have no desire to try and find them now.

The OFs get along with each other (even though some are tech savvy and some are quickly becoming more out of the loop), yet they all found their way to the Hilltown Café in Rensselaerville, tech savvy or not, and they were: Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Roger Chapman, Bill Lichliter and his guest, Josh Buck and Chrissy Buck, Pete Whitbeck, John Rossmann, Harold Guest, Art Frament, Ray Kennedy, Chuck Aelesio, Richard Frank, Bill Rice, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Bill Bartholomew, Dave Williams, and their guest Art Williams, Lou Schenck, Mace Porter, Gerry Irwin, Herb Bahrmann, Mike Willsey, Gerry Chartier, and me.