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The Old Men of the Mountain met Tuesday, March 10, at the Country Café in Schoharie. The OMOTM were a grumbling group Tuesday morning because of the time change.

Some of the OFs are still using 2019 half the time; now we have the time change to Daylight Savings Time which makes us drive in the dark again. Now there are two things to get used to.

Then, in the fall, the time will change again; then, in January, the date will change again. The year-change, the OFs say, we can do nothing about, but at least leave the time-change alone.

The main topic of conversation was about the coronavirus. Like most conversations in large groups, the talk was varied and this time 90 percent of it seemed to be conjecture, personal opinions, and rumors.

Many agreed the press was on the verge of causing panic. From the time the breakfast was held on Tuesday, and this column is in the paper, much more dialogue will have transpired.

Suffice it to say, the situation was discussed but no conclusion was reached. But at our ages, to err on the side of caution, as they say, is the best course of action.

Lilacs alive

To quote Monty Python: “Now for something completely different.” This scribe’s next note is about blossoms on the trees, especially in the valley. The shrubs that really show signs of life are the lilacs — some even have a green cast, and it is only mid-March.

A few of the OFs think winter is on its way out, while a few others think we are in for some surprises, maybe not bitter cold but snow. The waiting game for the other shoe to drop is not fun when it comes to the winter weather.

As the discussion on the weather continued, it drifted into a discussion on our locales versus that of moving or being a snowbird in warmer climates, or leaving and staying. This led to what creeps and crawls in the south and the west.

The OFs did not want to encounter alligators in their backyards, or some of the nasty snakes that creep hither and yon in either direction, south or west. One OF said he is not a fan of scorpions either; just the word makes him uneasy.

Another OF said he heard of snakes falling out of trees. Most of the OFs have heard stories like that but some are not too sure about the facts in these tales.

One OF said we have our share of snakes up here that are not so nice.

“Yeah,” another OF said, “but at least up here you can see them and hear them; down there, (meaning southern states) these snakes are small as well as nasty. And there are the spiders — those black widows.” 

The other OF said, “We have our nasty spiders here too!”

So the OFs started swapping stories about alligators, snakes, and spiders and this scribe could fill up the whole paper on spiders and snakes, and the virus. One OF said, if taxes get any higher in this state, he will put up with the spiders, snakes, scorpions, and alligators, just to get someplace where he can keep at least some of his money for himself.

One thing these few really warm days (in the waning days of winter) prompted was a few of the OFs who have motorcycles got them out, polished them up, and got ready for the season. A few even got the lawn tractors out and started them up, changed the oil, and they, too, got ready for the season.

Then going back to the earlier discussion on the weather, a few of the realists commented again that winter isn’t over, but one OF said at least we are ready when it is over.

Celebrity turtle

Then the OFs mixed conversations together, talking about critters again, only this time it was about a local snapping turtle that is huge and is old. The OFs said he hasn’t been around lately.

Those OFs who knew this reptile said they haven’t seen him or her around either. This turtle has been watched for at least 15 years or so about the same place and about the same time twice a year.

The turtle is not hard to spot because of its size and the OFs say it also has moss growing on the top of its shell. One OF said, “I hope no one has messed with him because the turtle is kind of a celebrity.”

Feeling of home

There is a phrase “ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny” and the OFs discuss this quite often, without even knowing it. Well, so thinks this scribe anyhow, by traveling back to when they were really young, and then fairly young, and then family guys, into what they are now.

The OFs, and this scribe included, discuss what they did when they were traveling through time to where they are now. They muse over how the past shaped their future and how what they did then will probably wind up on their tombstone instead of what they do now. (This does not always happen but most of the time it does.)

Tuesday morning, some of that was mixed in with the spiders and snakes, and old friends. These were good friends. However, once the OFs reached 80 years, many were gone.

One OF said all his good friends are gone and he did not really cultivate new ones while the old ones were still around. Now that they are all gone, he has friends, but not like those who have passed away. What keeps him here now is the feeling of home, because most of his family is spread not only all over the country, but the world, so spiders and snakes will not keep him here, but home does.

The Old Men of the Mountain who made it to the Country Café in Schoharie to be with friends and have a cup of coffee and a breakfast, shoot the breeze for a little while, and even make plans for the rest of the day, or in the future, were: Miner Stevens, Roger Chapman, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Bill Lichliter, Rich LaGrange, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, John Rossmann, Glenn Patterson, Joe Rack, Otis Lawyer, Mark Traver, Jake Herzog, Karl Remmers, Rev. Jay Francis, Herb Bahrmann, Gerry Irwin, Lou Schenck, Mace Porter, Jamey Dairah, Marty Herzog, Ted Feurer, Jake Lederman, Warren Willsey, Mike Willsey, Russ Pokorny, Elwood Vanderbilt, Fred Crounse, Bob Donnelly, Harold Grippen, and me.

Fearing he would soon die, the great American writer John Steinbeck packed his poodle Charley into a souped-up camper-truck — named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse — and started out to, as the Paul Simon song goes, “look for America.” It was 1960 and Steinbeck was 58.

Two years later, Viking came out with “Travels with Charley: In Search of America” in which Steinbeck shared with America the nation he and Charley saw. It became a best-seller; America was looking for a mirror to see herself in.

I like to believe Steinbeck’s trip was inspired by Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” which appeared three years before. Kerouac said he had been engaged in the same kind of activity; he too was looking for America.

In that truly American classic, Kerouac says he and traveling companion Dean Moriarity (Neal Cassady in real life), “embarked on a journey through post-Whitman America to FIND that America and FIND the inherent goodness in American man.”

They were looking for the America of dreams, the America in which neighbor offered succor to neighbor, mutual-aid-America, payment an insult.

In terms of genres, “On the Road” is part of the Beat literature generation, a movement that began two years earlier when Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” blew through America like a whirlwind.

His jeremiad begins: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,/ angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”

Ginsberg said his poem was “a lament for the Lamb in America,” the tender-hearted lambs America was feeding on like an angry Moloch. Like an Old Testament prophet, he said America needed to retrieve her tender heart, she needed to retrieve the tongue she was born with.

You can see why the Beats ruffled America’s feathers. They kept reminding America she was more or less than who she was but not who she was. As Paul Simon says, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

The great American poet William Carlos Williams became, shall I say, obsessed with America too. He wanted to find America’s tongue, her idiom, he wanted to hear how she spoke, he wanted to see how her tongue was connected to her heart.

A small-town doctor for 40 years, Williams listened intently to his patients as they told about their pains and joys and daily peccadillos. Were they speaking American?

In 1950, New Directions came out with “In the American Grain” a book of essays where Williams described the lives of Daniel Boone, George Washington, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, and others. wondering if each spoke American.

Williams wanted his work to serve as a mirror in which America could look at herself from time to time and assess whether she was being true to her dreams.

Some people have a hard time grasping the concept of an “American tongue”; they’re more familiar with Democrat-ese, Republican-ese, Socialist-ese, and all the other ese’s that are not American.

Some think the American tongue means the way New Englanders talk or families along the Bayou, not seeing that those are regional idiomatic linguistic patois derivatives, not the American tongue.

Some cynics say why worry about the American tongue, America is dead; you can’t hear someone who doesn’t exist.

The poets say there is something out there, something that looks like America but she — as Ginsberg would say — is howling because her tongue has been severed from her heart, a symptom of breakdown.

In 1831, the French government sent 26-year-old Alexis de Tocqueville to the United States to study American prisons with penologist Gustave de Beaumont; the pair took notes on the assigned institutions but de Tocqueville, like a socio-cardiologist, kept tapping into the American tongue.

He published his notes in a grand two-volume ethnography, “Democracy in America,” which he gifted to America as a mirror for her to look into.

At the very beginning of the work, de Tocqueville says, “Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions among the people.”

General equality of conditions. I assume that means equality was at the heart of the American tongue. He said it was having a “prodigious influence ... on the whole course of society.”

He added, “There is no class of persons who do not exercise the elective franchise, and who do not indirectly contribute to make the laws” except, he admitted, those called “slaves, servants, and paupers in the receipt of relief from the townships.”

A generation later, America sought to right those wrongs. Some still say the wrong wrongs were righted or not righted at all. Former United States attorney Joseph diGenova says we need a second civil war to finish the job.

“The suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future in this country” he said on a radio show, “is over. It’s not going to be. It’s going to be total war. And as I say to my friends, I do two things — I vote and I buy guns.”

In an essay on the ways people are connected in real life, the great British psychoanalyst Joan Riviere said we all have a tendency to view each other in “isolation.” It’s a “convenient fiction.”

She said, when one of her patients came to see her in “the analytic room; in two minutes we find that he has brought his world in with him.” She added, “There is no such thing as a single human being, pure and simple, unmixed with other human beings.”

Riviere said, from the day we’re born, we’re all “formed and built up ... out of countless never-ending influences and exchanges between ourselves and others.” Personality appears to be nothing more than an osmotic piece of skin because “other persons are in fact ... parts of ourselves … . We are members one of another.”

A few days ago, as reports of the spread of the coronavirus came in, the President of the United States took $37 million from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — a safety net to help those in need pay their heating bills — to help pay to contain the viral epidemic.

He stole the money because the budget he created had cut funds designed to deal with such medical crises. And the temperature in Sinclair, Maine last night was forecast to drop down to 11. A mockery of the “general equality of conditions.”

In July 1854, the 12th President of the United States reasoned to the nation, “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities.”

Abraham Lincoln was speaking the American tongue long before Riviere discovered that her patients spoke similarly. The president was saying that Americans are “formed and built up since the day of our birth out of countless never-ending influences and exchanges between ourselves and others ... We are members one of another.”

The American idiom says, “Crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea.”

At breakfast this past Wednesday morning, this scribe, just in conversation, said to his wife, “I guess I’d better go up and write the Old Men Column.”

The wife said, with an exclamatory voice, “Is it Wednesday already? Wasn’t it just Wednesday? Where did a whole week go?”

This scribe just shrugged his shoulders and said, “You are right because I haven’t a clue where it went — the week just seems to be gone.” Anyway —

On Tuesday, March 3, the Old Men of the Mountain met at Mrs. K’s Restaurant in Middleburgh. Mrs. K’s is in the middle of town and, at the time the OMOTM show up, parking is not a problem this time of year. 

When the OMOTM arrive, the sun is just coming up. But when the OMOTM leave, there are cars whizzing all over the place and it is a good idea to be careful when pulling out from the curb onto the street from their parking spots.

A couple of the OFs were talking about cats, not just cats, but cats and mice. According to these OFs, it seems most cats are like Garfield when it comes to mice. The cats and mice seem to get along.

As far as the cats are concerned, mice are tolerated. To the cat, it isn’t worth the effort to even catch them. One OF said his cat is named Nuisance, but it should have been named Useless.

The other OF said he is considering getting a few snakes to take care of his mice problem. He opined that, as far as his cat is concerned, snakes would be a lot better. The snake is quiet, clean, and effective.

Snakes would be much better if it weren’t for their reputation. The OF said he never heard of a litter box for a snake.

Another discussion was on snakes and this time an OF said that he and his wife took a little excursion on the “Old Erie Canal.” This trip was on a canal boat pulled by two mules.

The OF said that, as the boat was pulled along, oftentimes the rope would become slack and drag through the grass along the banks and snakes would “hop” to use his expression, over the rope as it pulled the boat. This scribe did not know snakes hopped, but this scribe could imagine them slithering over the rope.

This OF said they were not the black snake or garter snake that anyone would have around to catch mice but the nasty kind. The OF mentioned diamondbacks, and water moccasins and another nasty one common to the area.

The scribe does not know if the tour guide mentioned what type of snakes they were or if the OF was able to spot them. This scribe might be able to spot moccasins because they are not that long, and they are big around and ugly.

The others from a distance would be tough to identify. It would be an interesting scenario if one of those things latched onto the rope and crawled its way to the boat.The OF who was relating this incident told an interesting and riveting story of their trip to Rome, New York.

Sign of spring?

Each year, the OFs mention the red-winged blackbird and this year it is no different. At least three of the OGs said they have seen the bird. A couple of OFs said the flocks they saw were small while one OF said he saw a large flock.

In our area, the return of the red-winged blackbird is considered a good sign of spring. However, the bird does not go that far away from us in the winter. Some make a short trip only to Pennsylvania or Ohio but it is encouraging to see them in the spring. But this is early.

“Alligator Alley”

Tuesday seemed to be a morning to talk about nature. Many of the OFs have been to the state of Florida, and some have traveled the old “Alligator Alley” when it was only two lanes. The OFs talked about the speeds traveled on that perfectly straight highway.

There are signs posted on the road about alligators crossing and the big cats that roam the Everglades that also cross the road, especially at night. The OFs said hitting one of these animals at high speed can cause the driver to lose all control of the car.

The OFs talked about driving accidents and hitting animals in this area, especially deer and raccoons. One OF said he hit a large raccoon and it was like hitting a wall, and he did lose control of the car, then he somehow managed to regain control, but not until after serious damage was done.

One OF commented on how he is able to tell if a driver is from the Hilltowns or not. If a guy is going 50 or 60 miles an hour and it is dusk, in the spring, he has no clue about what can jump out in front of him in the Hilltowns.

The OF went on, “If the car is going 45 or so on the secondary roads up ‘here’ it is a good guess he is familiar with what can happen and he is ready for whatever decides to cross the road. At rut time, the deer are not thinking about looking out for traffic.”

The OFs had some advice for each other and this came from experience: If anyone is planning a trip they should do it when they are young because when age creeps up on you and walking becomes an effort, all that can be done is to think about it.

The Old Men of the Mountain who made it to Mrs. K’s in Middleburgh, and to some that is a trip, were: Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Roger Chapman, Roger Shafer, John Rossmann, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Bill Lichliter, Paul Whitbeck, Rick LaGrange, Chuck Aelesio, Richard Frank, Glenn Patterson, Joe Rack, Mark Traver, Jim Heiser, Mace Porter, Lou Schenck, Ken Parks, Elwood Vanderbilt, Fred Crounse, Ed Tiaeger, Bob Donnelly, Allen DeFazzo,  Russ Pokorny, Mike Willsey, John Dabrvalskes, Harold Grippen, and me.

Time travel has been a reliable staple of science-fiction books and movies for as long as I can remember. It’s easy to see why.

We can’t help but be intrigued at depictions of possible futures, be they utopian, dystopian, or somewhere in between. Similarly, depictions of the past, with period garb, language, and technology (or lack thereof) are also fascinating in many ways.

Alternate realities as depicted in time travel are just so much fun to contemplate. But is time travel even possible? Maybe it isn’t. But maybe it is.

According to the brilliant Albert Einstein, when you get close to the speed of light, weird things really do start happening. I’ve studied the theory of relativity quite a bit, and if you believe (and you should) that everything is indeed “relative,” there certainly can be periods when time speeds up or slows down, depending on your point of view.

Seek out any good physics course or teacher to expand on this. It truly is mind-blowing in many ways. Einstein really was a genius. While I’m not as smart as he was (not many of us are), I’ve actually discovered how to time travel, both to the past and to the future, and I do both on a fairly regular basis. I really do.

Let’s start with time travel to the past. Many years ago, when my oldest daughter was born, the home-video revolution was just beginning with the advent of VHS [Video Home System] tapes. Remember those?

Portable VHS video-cameras were very expensive at the time, yet I badly wanted to record my daughter’s one-year-old birthday party, so I rented one. Later, when prices came down, I bought my own. Though I’m not a very good videographer or even photographer, looking back at those old movies is indeed like going back in time.

Imagine popping in an optical disk and seeing yourself over 30 years ago. (I copied all the old VHS tapes to DVDs [Digital Versatile Discs] in the hope that they’ll last longer in that format.) In my case, that means I’m looking at a surprisingly handsome guy with thick, curly black hair and about 30 or more pounds less than I am now.

Seeing this lean, mean, carousing machine “back in the day” truly is mind-boggling. In all of human history, we baby boomers are the first ones who have this ability to go back in time and look at ourselves, our families, and the world like this. It really is amazing on so many levels.

When you are raising kids, you are so busy with the day-to-day business of just surviving with them it’s easy to forget what it was like. Thanks to these videos, my family and I can go back and watch many of our happiest moments, and some plain ordinary ones too.

I remember at the time many family members would give me grief when I pointed the camera at them, some more so than others. But now, when we have family get togethers, those same ones will beg me to put on the videos so we can all have a good laugh. They couldn’t stand it then but love it now. Isn’t that something.

The best part of watching the videos is just to see the changes in all of us over the years. My wife and I get a little older and a little grayer as the time flies by, while the kids grow up right before our eyes.

These videos, of often just normal events like going to the beach or opening Christmas presents, are so important now that, if the house were burning down, I think these are the first things I’d grab as I ran outside. To be able to time travel to the past by watching these videos — how could you ever replace that?

Now let’s talk about time travel to the future which, now that I’m aging, I do more and more of it seems.

As you get older, there are various tests, procedures, and even surgeries that you need from time to time. I consider myself to be in excellent health overall, yet I’ve had three surgeries in the past few years.

That’s when you find yourself in a hospital wearing one of those stupid gowns that opens in the back, constantly trying to not to give everyone a show. Soon you are lying on a gurney, talking to a pretty nurse, with an intravenous feed going into your veins.

As the anesthesiologist tells you what’s going to happen you nod and say yes — what else can you do — and then the nurse and the orderlies start wheeling you into the operating room. At these times, when you’re lying on your back captive like that, just staring at the ceiling, I often wonder how long it will be before they have ads up there like they do almost everywhere else, haha.

By the way, the nurses are always named Jessica, yet when I ask them if they’ve heard the classic rock anthem “Jessica” by the Allman Brothers Band they always look at me like I have two heads. How can you be named Jessica and not know that song? This is usually the last thought I have before it happens, “it” being time travel to the future.

Yes indeed, time travel to the future most certainly occurs in these moments: One minute you’re talking to Jessica the nurse, the next minute — which may be many hours later — you are in the recovery room, just like that.

When this happens, I can never believe it. I always tell myself I’m going to try to notice when I start to fade out, just to see if I can get some kind of control over the process. Good luck with that.

When you wake up in “the future,” you have no memory of anything they did to you. You could have been out for minutes, hours, or days and you would not know the difference. Now that really is time travel, if you ask me.

Imagine being able to buy the drugs that allow time travel like this. Say you know the weather is going to be bad for the next few days, or your relatives are coming to stay, or maybe you just can’t wait for a certain party or holiday. Pop a pill and, boom, you wake up in the future just like that.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way, and anesthesiologists go through plenty of schooling and certification to make sure each person gets just the right amount of the drug to keep you out for the right amount of time. What a fascinating thing, that they can do this as well as they can. I’ve had it done to me several times now and it never gets old.

There are a couple of other ways to time travel. Married men especially will know about this one. Most wives have the superpower of being able to recall, in excruciatingly vivid detail, every misstatement, faux pas, mistake, and stupid thing you’ve ever said or done, even when these things happened decades and decades ago.

These incidents are recalled in such detail and with such regularity that it may as well be considered time travel. They say an elephant never forgets. I wonder if it’s all elephants or just the lady ones?

Another way to time travel is by writing something that will be read by others later. When I read books, especially the classics, it’s like going back in time in many ways.

A good writer — Shakespeare, Hemmingway, Joyce, Tolstoy, et. al. — can so thoroughly immerse you in the past it’s like time travel. That’s how powerful good writing is. In fact, if it’s 100 years from now and you’re reading this in your flying car, please keep your eyes on the sky ahead of you. You never know what’s behind that next cloud.

Time travel is a wonderful concept to contemplate and enjoy. The fact that we can do it ourselves in many ways makes it all the better.