The moon is green and the sun is hidden
It is Tuesday again — funny how fast the days come around as the OFs get older and older.
This Tuesday, April 3, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg. April is going to be the month of the Green Moon; all the planets that are whirling around are going to line up and the moon will turn green.
Those who want to see this phenomenon will have to watch it now because it won’t happen again for another 420 years. The OFs won’t be around for the next Green Moon — they will be lucky if they make it to the next breakfast.
This scribe is getting a little tired of having to report the OMOTM’s main topic of conversation. Lately, it is the redundant yakking about the weather.
It is miserable at least in the OFs’ locale. The OFs know the sun is up there. How do they know this? It’s because, when the OFs fly anywhere, once they are above the clouds, there’s the sun.
The OFs feel it is about time those clouds find some place else to go, giving us at least a couple of days in a row of sun with no, or at least very little, wind. We don’t want the wind blowing the OMOTM’s hats off and down the road.
There! That is two-thirds of the conversation that took place.
Some conversations were, in a roundabout way, connected to the weather and that connection is the way the OFs were talking about how they have used more fuel this year than they normally do.
One OF said, “It isn’t over yet.”
The OFs also are already complaining about how muddy it is going to be especially on the Hill as one OF retorted. Another OF said, “What makes you guys think you are going to be so special? It is going to be muddy in the valley, too.”
Yet another OF commented that he has already purchased some cheap throw-away rugs to put on the floor of his mud room because, where he lives, the mud is clay and sticks to his shoes. The OF said his feet get so much clay stuck to them in just an hour that he adds 10 pounds; just lifting his feet tires him out, lugging all that mud around on his shoes.
A few OFs complained that snowplowing their driveways has turned their lawns into major spring projects. Now they’re putting the lawns back together where the plows dug in because the ground didn’t have much frost in it — if any.
Disappearing senses
A topic came up out of the blue, and this scribe is trying to remember how it started. One OF asked if the other OFs had lost any of their senses as they got older.
The answer was yes, the most common being eyesight, but the sense of smell seemed dulled, and the sense of when their feet were hitting the ground was a different one. The combination of the sense of smell and taste in concert was another one, and the OF who mentioned this said smell and taste were both about gone.
But this OF said it came after an event of some sort that this scribe wasn’t quick enough to write down. Catching that might indicate the reflex senses are not what they used to be.
One OF thought all our senses tire out as we age; that is why they make hearing aids, glasses, and canes. Another OF agreed with him.
This OF said his mind tells him he can hurry across the street and the OF thinks he is hurrying but all he can manage is the “Tim Conway” shuffle. One OF said that if he has to hurry all he can do is hope he passes gas and get an assisted boost from the pressure release of the gas.
Another OF said, “If wasn’t for that little pressure assist, I couldn’t get out of a chair. Is that natural phenomenon a sense that increases with age or is it a sense at all?”
One OF recited the old farmer saying: “A farting horse is the horse to hire, for a farting horse will never tire.” To which yet another OF said he has worked behind horses like that.
Calling veterans to parade
For Memorial Day, the Hilltowns of Berne, Knox, Westerlo, and Rensselaerville are having a parade on May 28. If you are a veteran and would like to participate and join some of the OFs, call Zenie Gladieux at 518-894-8589 or, if you are computer literate, you can email her at zeniegladieux@gmail.com and indicate if you want to ride, or prefer to walk, or are in a wheelchair.
Because the OFs are of an age many veterans are, you can indicate if you need assistance getting in or out of a vehicle. The OFs understand this because for many of them walking any distance is a chore, yet for some of them their exercise is taking a walk, while for others just lifting the fork up and down at breakfast is their exercise.
The Old Men of the Mountain who made it to the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg, and none of them who walked to the restaurant, were: Roger Chapman, Miner Stevens, Bill Lichliter, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Dave Williams, Roger Shafer, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Chuck Aelesio, Ray Frank, Karl Remmers, Mark Traver, Otis Lawyer, Glenn Patterson, Warren Willsey, Russ Pokorny, Lou Schenck, Mace Porter, Jack Norray, Herb Bahrmann, Mike Willsey, Gerry Chartier, Elwood Vanderbilt, Richard Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, and me.