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06/23/2003 Archived Entry: "Sprightly and 75."

SPRIGHTLY AND 75!

Speaking of being seventy-five reminds me of a couple we used to do business with in Lyons. I can’t remember their names now, but he was a gardener of geraniums with every variety known to man which he had in greenhouses next to his house. He was proud of his collection that he had acquired from all over the world and shared his enthusiasm over it easily with others. He was a very nice, gentle man in his eighties...tired and without any help to water and care for his plants.

His greenhouses were interesting. The main was was small but well-proportioned, as greenhouses go, but as his collection grew, he added a green house to the original, and another to that, and each was smaller than the previous one. Finally, when you got to the last one, about five houses down, you had to bend at the waist to walk through it as it was about five feet high. It was an experience. But stooping was worth it to explore his latest additions. I don't know how he managed, but age had made him a little stooped too so maybe he didn't notice. Brit never could get in the last and "shortest" of the greenhouses. Once you were bent over, you were committed as there was no room to turn around, you had to back out and hope for the best.

His wife was nice but a real “character”. I didn’t see her as often as him, but when I did, she’d stand there with a can of beer, lean against the door jamb, talk my legs off and always invite us to stay for lunch or dinner. Usually it was fried chicken and I bet it was wonderful, but we never took her up on her offer.

Now to the point of this story. "The Wife" looked as old as the hills, far older than seventy-five and much older than he did. Every one of our conversations started with her asking me to guess her age. Well, that kind of guessing is an embarrassing thing to do especially since she looked so incredibly old. The effects of the beer made her feel very sprightly…and inside, she probably was, but that didn’t help her outside appearance. Since she didn’t seem to remember these conversations, I learned to tell her she didn’t look a day over fifty-five. “That’s what they all say”, she said, “not a day over fifty-five”. And she’d continue, “I’m really seventy-five but I’ve never had anyone say I look a day over fifty-five. Won’t you stay and have fried chicken with us?”

That was a lesson to me. I never ask anyone to guess my age, sprightly or not…but I love it when someone volunteers and says “you don’t look a day over 74 ½!”. Actually, I think I'm holding my own pretty well...hardly look a day over fifty-five! Now where's that cold beer?