Winter blahs, suspect machines, feeling extinct, and contemplating death on an ice floe

Tuesday, Jan. 23, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Your Way Café in Schoharie to break bread together. It is a darn site more than bread that becomes broken when the OMOTM get together.

Eating is one thing all the OFs do together on Tuesday morning at our round robin of restaurants. Some of the OFs eat more slowly than they used to because swallowing for them is not like it used to be. The old esophagus is getting tired and some foods become harder to choke down but, as one OF suggested, it is good to get the swallowing bit checked out and make sure that’s all it is — the OF has an aging esophagus.

One general question asked on Tuesday morning was, “What have you been doing this last two or three weeks?” This scribe was a little surprised at the answers because this usually active group (for the most part) said “nothing.”

Some have come to the breakfasts and just hung out when they returned home; they did not go to their shops, or barns, or “man caves.” The weather and clouds shut them down.

As this scribe listened, it became clear this phenomenon was definitely weather related. For some reason, at my end of the table, the blahs really took hold. I predict this circumstance won’t last long — these OFs have too much to do and are not a bunch to let projects pile up.

Mechanical spies

If we didn’t have new techno toys, the OFs would not have much to talk about. We would be back to cars, trucks, tractors, and boats. Trips, kids, and shop work would be thrown in for good measure.

However, this time the conversation centered on people talking to gadgets that talk back and give answers, or can be programmed to have some other gadgets work for you so the OF won’t have to get up from his favorite recliner. The OFs, for the most part, are dead set against these round, mechanical spies.

“What if the machine decides not to listen?” the OFs said.

If you ask it to unlock your garage door and the device decides not to unlock the door and every time you went to open the door mechanically the device re-locks the door. The device has programmed all doors to lock, and it has also programmed all electrical appliances to turn on and overheat.

The only way out is through a window and it is impossible for you to shut any of it down. You stand on your lawn and watch your house burn to the ground and a maniacal laugh comes from the coffee table in living room.

Remember “Hal” in the movie “2001 Space Odyssey” or the people in the Pixar movie “WALL-E” who did nothing for themselves?

This brought the OFs to mention the cameras in China that use face recognition, and how they can track anyone in a city of over one million people. The camera was demonstrated to a reporter from the BBC and and he was shown the operation center where all this tracking is done.

The demonstration was definitively scary. From knowing nothing about him but (for this demonstration) considering him a person of interest, they took a picture of him from a camera at an intersection and in seven minutes he was surrounded by police at a bus station.

The OFs covered many details of the demonstration that would take up too much space here. One OF said, “It wouldn’t work on me. My face is so ugly it would break the camera.”

Going the way of the dodo

This conversation continued, telling how the OFs who are mechanics and the OFs who are handymen are being pushed to extinction because the technology of today requires tools that are in the $1,000 to $10,000 range.

How can the OGs who drive newer models afford tool prices like this to tinker with their vehicles, like changing their own oil?

One OF mentioned that we are getting to be like our grandparents when vehicles were taking the place of horses. How about our grandmothers when the washing machine came out?

An OF said his mother told him that her mother was actually afraid of the first washing machine, which was run with a small gas engine. His grandmother told his mom it didn’t get clothes clean and she used a round tub, washboard, and wrung her clothes out by hand, and dried them on the line, until she was unable to do laundry.

One OF added, “That is just like many of us OFs with the self- driving cars, and the electric cars. We don’t trust them and the younger generations can’t wait to get their hands on one and these kids wish the technology would hurry up.”

Send me out to sea

Then we started checking up on the OFs who are ill and we were brought up to pace on their well-being. This led to a discussion on nursing homes.

The OFs, to a man, said from what they have seen of these places they do not want to have to go there. The Eskimos might have the right idea: Give me some food, put me on an ice floe, and send me out to sea.

One OF said, “Why, in so many cases, does life have to end like that?”

There was no answer.

Another OF said, “If we were smart, there are insurance policies that provide for 24/7 home care until you enter the tunnel of light. I don’t know what the premiums would be but I bet they would be substantial.”

The Old Men of the Mountain who met at the Your Way Café in Schoharie — with the early birds receiving a thorough art lesson on an original painting hanging on the wall in the restaurant — were: Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Harold Guest, John Rossmann, Chuck Aelesio, Richard Frank, Karl Remmers, John DeMis, Mark Traver, Glenn Paterson, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Gerry Irwin, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Henry Whipple, Bill Rice, Wayne Gaul, Jim Rissacher, Russ Pokorny, Warren Willsey, Mike Willsey, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, and me.