“Life is just a bowl of cherries.”---Judy Garland
“Flambeed”---Bill Killeen
The other day when I was poring over vacation materials, I ran across an annoying criteria for visiting The Wave, a famous sandstone rock formation near Big Water, Utah. It seems that noone over the age of 75 is allowed in. It’s like being eight years old at the amusement park and fighting the ageism baboon all over again. It brings me to a surly boil, which can be problematic. Once, when I was 40, I didn’t have my ID for an X-rated movie at the Center Theater in Gainesville and they wouldn’t let me in. Outraged at the folly of it all, I threw a fit and my date, Betsy Harper got me out of there just before the cops arrived. I understand why ten-year-olds can’t visit the Mustang Ranch and why 250-pound humans aren’t allowed on mules going down the Bright Angel Trail of the Grand Canyon, but who’s deciding age equals fitness level at the Bureau of Land Management?
It’s times like this which require unique options like reverting to my alternate age, which was calculated after careful measurements by certified natural health doctor Mariana Kamburov. Doctor K. guarantees that I am actually 73 in every respect but that pesky chronological feller, so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it any time common sense fails, premature rules arise and ageism rears its ugly head.
“Hey, hey, BLM---how many coots do your rules condemn?”
Against The Wind
You know you’re getting way too old when you have two celebration of life events showing up on consecutive weekends. David ‘Paco’ Fritz gets an encore at Heartwood June 2nd and this past Saturday it was the festivities honoring our neighbor Richard Helms, aka Captain Noonan of Flying Pie fame, who finally succumbed to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis after a five-year slugfest. Richard was, among many other things, a brilliant aviator, so we half expected a gleaming biplane to roar down the runway, take off, circle back and dispense what’s left of him in a slowly descending mist over the guests, but the Helms family is much too proper for such shenanigans. As celebration of life events go, this one was top of the mark in every respect, including the valet parking, a fine array of pastries and Gregg Jones’ stint as pastor.
Richard Helms was a steely fellow, an ex-CIA man of longstanding who followed up his spy days by building a multi-million dollar business from the ground up. He was a small-college quarterback who never lost his lust for fitness; if you visited his farm early in the morning seven years ago you could often find him jogging the property with a stopwatch around his neck. In his middle sixties, he appeared sound as a dollar, there was not an ounce of extra fat on the man. He got ALS anyway.
Take our word for it, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is not the bad dog you want to see tromping through your neighborhood. It’s a grim, sullen adversary which takes no prisoners and shows little mercy. Muscles twitch, legs fail, waves of weakness assault the body in the early stages. As the disease progresses, virtually all voluntary muscles become paralyzed and the victim finds it impossible to eat or drink. Finally, we get to the closing act, as respiratory failure struts across the stage, twirls its cane and tips its hat. Curtain. There will be no encore.
Richard Helms was well aware that noone had ever found a way through the ALS maze but there was a time when nobody ever flew airplanes either. Helms eschewed the usual procedures and bankrolled Siobhan Ellison and a group of researchers scattered around the county in search of a miracle. If this seems a little brazen, consider the alternative. Almost a year before Helms’ plight manifested, a man named Sean Healey, 57, executive chairman of Affiliated Managers Group, was diagnosed with ALS and took a more traditional path, donating $40 million to Massachusetts General Hospital and its chief of neurology Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, who immediately set about building a new ALS center and performing studies left and right. Mass. General immediately rose to the top of the ALS research world heap but Healy was dead in six months. Richard Helms struggled but lived on.
Siobhan Ellison’s group of researchers swelled to 14, losing one here, gaining one there as they puzzled over answers to their dilemma. Over the course of time, they discovered ways of slowing down the speeding train and eventually came up with a drug which might very soon have dramatic effects in the ALS wars. The drug is currently in human trials and all of us have fingers crossed. Despite all his outstanding accomplishments, Richard Helms’ final act might turn out to be his greatest.
Mr. Postman, Send Me A Dream
The only time it clearly manifests is when I’m in corpse pose at the end of our yoga sessions, but at age 83, the buzzards are circling. The Fairfield birds are just doing their job sizing up the potential evening meal and I bear them no malice, it’s the human buzzards rubbing their hands together in anticipation of better furnishing their yachts who irritate me. The morning mail is full of cheery offers of cemetery lots, bargain life insurance and the cake-topper, extensive information about your impending cremation…stuff that sets you to hitting the floor and doing forty more pushups. It seems like only yesterday I finally got over worrying about going to Hell and now I’ve got this cremation business to consider.
Most people like cremation. It’s easy-peasy, no sitting around in mournful funeral parlors welcoming each new guest with an outburst of tears and memories. Pull the ashes from the oven, slap them in a proper container and distribute them to friends and family for a mantelpiece or burial at sea, you choose. I’m not sure I don’t prefer the good old days when we waked the deceased in the living room with a steady procession of mourners arriving over a couple of days, gifts of lasagna and potato salad in hand. And then there was the glorious funeral, where the worst of barflies and muggers were eulogized as paragons of virtue, great men and women, pillars of the community. Only on your wedding day do you get such extravagant praise. And what is the crime in tossing around a few lies on a fellow’s way out---it makes the bereft and innocent family members smile in a time of utter grief. Yes, Henry was a no-good drunken bastard but we’ll never forget the time he veered into a telephone pole to avoid hitting a muskrat. Where have all the memory books gone, long time passing?
I Must Go Down To The Sea Again….
“Are we having fun yet?”---Zippy the Pinhead
Some old coots are. Danny Levine, 79, is contemplating a November visit to Amsterdam, despite being in the throes of Parkinson’s disease. Last year, he went marauding around Italy with two kindly younger ladies in tow. Chuck LeMasters, 78, is still fine-tuning agricultural products as good as any in all of Florida from his shady burrow in Jonestown. “I think there should be a joint for every mood” Cap’n Chuck states ambitiously. Michael Hatcherson, 75, is in serious danger of outliving all his Winter Park Mafia pals despite residing for decades in chilly Ketchum, Idaho, where he is somewhat a local Casanova. Willie Nelson, 91, is on the road again for a wide-ranging 31-stop tour of the U.S. which, alas, doesn’t include Ron Desantis-land. You can pull up a chair, put your feet up on the ottoman and scarf down a few brews or you can pull the cover off the woodie, wax your boards and head for Orange County. “Surf’s UP! “
Sano Selichi might not be the most accomplished surfer to ever come down the pipeline but he can be forgiven for that. After all, Sano just took up the sport ten years ago at age 80. Today, at 90, he’s still out there, merrily riding the waves. “I always thought of myself as a late bloomer,” he says. “I always believe that I can be somebody.”
Despite dubbing himself “a small-wave surfer,” Selichi can now perform several 180-degree jumps during a single ride. “I saw an instructor do it once. I thought I could do it so I did. Then I was able to increase the number of times I jump. I never see anyone who can do it like me, even on YouTube. I hope I can be an example that even low waves can be fun if you jump like me”
When he’s not jumping waves, Sano can be found taking 10 to 20 kilometer walks along the riverbank or in the countryside. “I am a happy man,” he smiles. “I like to sing while I walk. The French singer Charles Aznavour is my favorite. I sing like Charles, just not as good.”
Selichi barely mentions another significant fact; he still manages his small business, which recently celebrated its 50th year. “Business is only business,” he waves dismissively. “It is on the beach by the sea that I am at my best. I am one with the place. I often get greeted by people who only know me from my surfing, who are excited that I still surf at 90 years. I don’t feel old. I don’t feel scared. I don’t know what to think about people who give up living because a certain number of years have gone by. I feel bad for them. I tell them to live for today and they smile but I don’t think they always hear me.”
Some of them do, Sano. Some of them do.
That’s all, folks….
