The world has gone crazy, and the whackos are winning
On Tuesday, June 23, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Country Café in Schoharie. The days are now getting shorter and many of the OFs have not really cleaned up from last winter, and supposedly summer is just getting is getting started.
The OFs think it is a lot more fun knowing each day is a day the sun is around a little longer than thinking each day the sun hides a little earlier.
Some of the OFs say it is because we are in the Northeast and right now we are the cool spot in the United States. A few OFs who have friends and relatives around the country are getting reports that it is hot: Florida, 103 degrees; Arizona, 110 degrees.
They can have it, a couple of OFs said, I will take my few days of 20 below, and the occasional blizzard rather than all that heat. So much for the weekly weather discussion.
The OFs gather around the table each Tuesday; on occasion the topic is food. Why not?
Tuesday morning, it was on veal and how some people enjoy that meat, while others consider the source of that meat and don’t understand how it is possible to eat meat of a calf. German Wiener Schnitzel is from the same meat, a calf.
Some thought that just knowing what it was those OFs are eating almost makes other OFs consider becoming a vegetarian. None went as far as a vegan.
Even those who thought eating veal was disgusting still enjoy a nice juicy steak. Then one OF brought up what is the big deal; in some countries, they eat cats and dogs.
Driving in the dark
The OFs brought up what they did when they were “teenagers” again. (This topic that its head out of the din on numerous occasions and it is these discussions that make most of the OFs wonder why they are still here.) This time, the tales were how the OFs drove on moonlit nights with their lights out.
The OFs like to couple no-headlight trips with how fast they could go in the dark and not hit anything. To the recollection of this scribe and the OFs, none of the OFs did hit anything.
The favorite places for these runs was the flats between Middleburgh and Schoharie; the other was the flats between Central Bridge and Sloansville. Just farm boys out having a little fun.
Farm boys of the 1940s and ’50s had lots of practice doing this on the farm, and it started at a real early age, like 10 or 11 years old, bringing in the last load of hay with an old Fordson tractor and that machine did not have lights. The YFs were only doing the same thing they did quite often just by working the farm only a little faster and, instead of the field road, the highway.
Actually, tractors had electric headlights before cars, and the tractors had radios before cars, too.
What if the power goes out?
The OFs regularly bring up the question: What will happen if there is a major power interruption and the power is off for many days? Those in the country could manage but what about all the people in the large cities?
The OFs say many city folks don’t know how to change a light bulb, and have no idea where water comes from; some think it miraculously flows from the tap. The question would be, if there were some kind of holocaust and this was not going to be just a short-time event, what do these people do?
Food, sanitation, water, medical services, transportation, the OFs wonder if there is any type of survival plan in effect to handle the situation if it ever came about. Like the OFs say: Just wondering.
Bumpkins rule
Even though, in the country, the OFs don’t make a ton of money, and quite often the work is hard and the people in the cities with their noses in the air have a tendency to look down on those who live above Route 84 as country bumpkins, the OFs say they don’t mind.
The OFs would rather be country bumpkins, than city slickers. As one OF said: It is the city slickers who want to take our guns away, and make all the rules that shut the farmers down.
One OF suggested that they are going the wrong way with guns. He thinks it should be a law everyone has to carry a gun, and it does not have to be concealed.
That way, if a robber or mugger tries anything, he should know the victim can shoot back. Another OF said, if they are able to eliminate all guns, and even the police could not carry a weapon, the wackos would still find a way to commit mayhem.
Many people do not realize how easy it is to make a gun and a projectile, or Molotov cocktails, or pipe bombs. A complete wacko could charge into a public place with a machete.
How are you going to stop the attacker if no one has a weapon of some sort? The world has gone crazy, one OF said, and the wackos are winning.
Those OFs who attended the breakfast at the Country Café in Schoharie and were eating regular food, like eggs and bacon, or pancakes, or French toast, and letting the strange stuff remain in the country of origin, were: Miner Stevens, Dave Williams, George Washburn, Bill Bartholomew, Chuck Aelesio, Glenn Patterson, Harold Guest, Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, Mark Traver, Otis Lawyer, Frank Pauli, Jim Heiser, Steve Kelly, Roger Shafer, Ken Parks, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Mace Porter, Gerry Irwin, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Herb Sawobota, Bob Benac, Art Frament, Bob Lassome, Ted Willsey, Duncan Bellinger, Mike Willsey (who turned 89 on June 24, making him the oldest OF at the breakfast), Gerry Chartier, Harold Grippen, Elwood Vanderbilt, and me.