I love old people. Been around them all my life. I especially enjoy listening to old men share memories of life’s experiences. They have a knack for telling the simple narrative, and embellishing it in a most entertaining way. Not long ago I had the pleasure of attending a gathering of five older gentlemen at a local restaurant for breakfast. Now these fellows may not be skilled in computer technology or a wiz with the newest cell phone, but they have been around the block, as one fellow indicated.
“Last week my lady friend, asked me to drive her to Newberry to go shopping,” said the fellow. “I agreed and told her I knew a short cut. We left, and an hour later we passed a road sign. She looked over at me and said, ‘does your short cut take us through Carlisle?’”
As I listened, I begin to wonder if I qualified as an old man. Is it age? Or shuffling along in small steps when we walk? Or simply developing poor eye sight? Maybe not, as this old gentleman called out:
“Hey fellows, would you look walking yonder!” All heads turned. “I wish my wife had a pair of jeans like that.”
Listening to these men reminisce, I have learned that old folks don’t get in a hurry, as the following recollection by one of them illustrates.
“One day in July I was driving on a back-country road and needed some gas. I pulled up to a small service station with this old man sitting in a straight back chair and leaning back against the front of the store. Can I get some gas, I said? (a time before self-service) The fellow just sat there. After a moment he leans forward, puts both hands on his knees and pushes himself up.”
“I reckon so, but it sure is hot.”
I have also observed that old men are very frugal with their life’s financial earnings. That is easily understood knowing the times in which they spent their younger days.
“You know people during the Great Depression had to work hard for everything they had,” said the gentleman sitting next to me. “Times were tough. I had a friend who owned a Feed and Seed store right here in town and he told me about a fellow that came in the other day. The fellow asked my friend, ‘How is business?’
My friend replied, “Things is looking up. Just yesterday a man came in and asked, how much is that wagon?”
“Did he buy it,” he said?
“Nope. But at least he was asking.”
All of the men at this breakfast table were married or had been, some were now widowed. One gentleman talked of a remembered conversation.
“My uncle Willard, was a farmer. He came home from working in the fields one evening to find his wife, Grace, in an angry uproar.”
“That hound dog of yours done broke into my chicken coop and killed every one of my laying hens,” she ranted!
Willard sat down to remove his boots, looked up and said, “You don’t reckon that will make that dog sick, do you?”
I love old people.
Walter Allen is a graduate of TCHS and Auburn University. He is retired from the paper industry and is a published author. A former president of the Laurens County Museum Assoc. in Laurens, SC. He lives in Tuscaloosa County, AL.
