I Seriously Love Old Men

[Cameraman Jenn]

I have a customer in my office right now. His name is Harold. He is ninety years old. He just turned 90 on Oct 11th. He just told me his dad lived to be 107 but didn't look a day over 50. His dad was a Placer Indian from up in Placerville. He has driven Fords all his life. His first one was a 1937 model that he got just a few years after he was out of high school. When he was my age he drove a streetcar for muni, back in those days the streetcar fare was 5 cents. Back then cigarettes were 12 cents a pack and he used to smoke like a chimney and buy them by the carton. Then after he was in the hospital for three weeks on a no smoking ward, he just quit. Never wanted another one again. Did I know his Dad was a Placer Indian from Placerville? He's lived here all his life. He quit drinking too. He only has an occasional glass of wine for a holiday or special occasion but he gave the whiskey up. Did I know he is 90 years old? It gets awfully had to remember things when you get to be 90. His Dad lived to be 107.

Seriously, this guy is great. I just want to call him Gramps and hug him.

[Chrysalis]

I love hearing tales from some of my older customers.
Part of my job works with elderly and house bound readers so we get to spend time with some really unique people.
Some have really lived lives you can't even imagine!

Our oldest is curently 107 and we had another that turned 100 a couple of months ago.

[Cameraman Jenn]

Turns out there were further problems with his car so I gave him a lift home. As we were driving he says, "Hey, that used to be the old juvenile hall, now the new one, that is on the other side of twin peaks now." I said, "How do you know about Juvenile Hall, you weren't IN there were you?" with my best dramatic scandalized air. He says, "Oh NO.... but my brother was. Turns out they made a mistake. My father was like to have blown the place up had he had a gun that fired he was so mad. He was Placer Indian you know, lived to be 107 but boy did he have a temper. I was born on Polk St. 1488 Polk St. I've lived here all my life. Seen alot of changes. I was in the Navy when I got out of high school. Stayed in for a bunch of years and then went to work driving street cars for Muni. After about fifteen years of that the Navy asked me to come back so I did. Muni turned my pension money into Social Security. It's alot but I keep hearing Social Security is going bankrupt. I'll have to move out of my nice place up on Twin Peaks if that happens."

[Loredoctor]

I love the elderly. It seems I get on better with them than with people my age or younger. They're great!

[lucimay]

in first semester nursing i did my clinicals at the VA Hospital out on Leestown Pike. the patient/nurse ratio was about 35/1. thats 35 patients to a nurse. so i helped the nurses out a lot, doin vitals and patient care.
i was so amazed that every one of those old geezers had all these war stories!! they'd all been to Korea or Europe or god knows where! they'd been on ships and planes and at Guam or Iwo Jima!!
and the stories were brilliant! and every one of them wanted to talk!
i could easily spend a 12 hour shift just making their beds and listenting to them talk. easily. it was like being in a wilfred owen poem.


then it dawned on me. oh. VA Hospital. heh.

[Loredoctor]

i could easily spend a 12 hour shift just making their beds and listenting to them talk. easily. it was like being in a wilfred owen poem.

Anyone who mentions Wilfred Owen in a post gets my vote.

Greatest. Poet. Ever.

[Worm of Despite]

Despite The Simpsons and Futurama constantly joking about how useless old people are (such as Abe Simpson or Professor Farnsworth), I've gotta say that the two most important people in my life are in fact my grandparents. I live with 'em and have learned the most from them.

I won't mind being old. Will give me a valid excuse for my current laziness. Plus, I'll finally be able to say, "When I was your age, we downloaded 100 kilobytes a second, and sometimes 300 if you were lucky."

[Menolly]

Despite The Simpsons and Futurama constantly joking about how useless old people are (such as Abe Simpson or Professor Farnsworth), I've gotta say that the two most important people in my life are in fact my grandparents. I live with 'em and have learned the most from them.

This is wonderful to hear, LF.

Having grandparents, or even my own parents, after their age of 57 is something I have been denied. Fortunately Hyperception still has both his parents, although neither is 70 yet.

I don't know if it is because of lack of exposure to the elderly in my own life, but I will admit at times I get frustrated and find it difficult to appreciate such experiences as Jenn and Luci are talking about. It is a fault I need to address I think.

[Stutty]

Jen,

This guy wasn't wearing an ochre robe was he?

stutt

[Cameraman Jenn]

Heehee! No ochre robe but he was pretty snappily dressed with some ochre tones in the outfit. Plaid pants with a light ochre shirt and steel blue v-neck cardigan sweater and matching blue fedora hat with subtle stripes of ochre woven into the hat. I seriously wanted to call Bloodguard Bob and say, "I found a new Grampa today, can I keep him?" I'm seriously thinking about asking him if I can film him and interview him about witnessing ninety years of history in San Francisco. He was so truly delightful to listen to even with the repetitive parts. I think I could have listened to him all day and then some more. Sigh.

"I'm not complaining mind you, but it's not so easy to be an old man without a car up on the peaks. It's too far for me to walk to the shopping center that is closer to my house but I can walk to the bus stop. Do you know I am ninety years old? I take that 37 bus down to market street and get my supper groceries at the Safeway on the corner of Market and Castro. Sometimes that bus takes forty minutes but it saves me the walk up that hill. That's too much for me these days. Muni though, it's not like it was when I was driving the streetcar. Muni did themselves a great disservice when they started that transfer system. I cheated them out of a fare myself today. I paid my fifty cents, went to the Safeway, did my shopping and got right back on that bus and went home without having to pay another fare. Cheated them out of fifty cents I did. That driver didn't even glance at my transfer. They are losing alot of money. Back in my day we checked every ticket closely."

What a pleasure.

[stonemaybe]

One of my fave customers came into work today, he turned 97 a few months ago.

He regularly buys our own brand aftershave, 'because the ladies like it'!

[Cheval]

One of the best "old person" story I have is back in 1983, I had to spend a few days in the hospital,
The patient that shared the room with me was about 20 years old and had a visitor everyday.
His visitor was an older man who was ready to celebrate his 80th birthday.
On his 80th birthday, he made his 80th skydiving jump.
This kind of blew my mind... an 80 year old man making his 80th SKYDIVING jump!
How cool is that?

[High Lord Tolkien]

I hope I haven't told this story here already but here goes:

My Father-in-law is a 85 (something like that) year old WWII vet.
He flew in bomber missions over France and Germany.

One day after watching a documentary on the History Channel about those Nazi jets that were flying at the end of the war, I asked him if he had ever seen them.
He said "Oh yeah, we didn't know what they were!"

So then I asked him "What did you do?".
Now I was thinking (like how I would think/act if I was there) that they would all be stunned, awed, and amazed and not even know what to do when faced with this overwhelming almost alien future technology of the Germans. That he would say something along the lines of "We shit our pants!"

But instead of saying that he looked at me with a facial expression like I had asked one of the most inane and stupidest questions possible and said "We shot at them."

[Worm of Despite]

I loved an old man today. He kept hitting me with his cane, but the love continued.

[emotional leper]

When I worked at the Humane Society in Alachua County, Florida, our CEO was a, at the time, 72 year old Retired Firefighter named Bob Grant. He was one of the greatest men I have ever known.

I worked there just after I got kicked out of home on my 18th Birthday, back when I was fat and stupid, and he was a man I greatly looked up to. He felt so strongly about the issues of humane treatment of animals he came out of his retirement to become involved in the local Humane Society, and rose to a leadership position, becoming instrumental in gaining national grant funding and uniting all the local animal rescue groups under one banner.

I fondly remember talking to him. While I always try to give due respect to those who have lived longer than me, he was one of those people whom I feel had actually earned that respect. He had spent most of his life dedicated in service to others, and felt so strongly about that that he had decided to spend his twilight years in dedication to the service of those who cannot speak for themselves -- animals.

I've known alot of 'elderly' people. Until I was about thirteen or fourteen all my friends where my mother's father's old army buddies. Robert Grant was and is one of the people I owe a great debt of friendship and respect to. I remember how I got my job at the Humane Society. I'd moved to Gainesville in August '03, and started volunteering there, as both of my roommates worked there in varying capacities. I had been volunteering there about three months, and then I went home for a two week vacation to visit my parents and friends, and when I got back, the first thing he asked me, right before I made the coffee just as he (and I) liked it, was if I wanted a job. Apparently, though I was young and stupid, honestly, rather an idiot, I helped the place run a little more smoothly. I took the job, at exactly minimum wage, which worked out to be less than minimum wage when it turned out I was actually working about 20 hours a week as volunteer time, on top of my actual paid work.

He taught me alot of things. One thing I have always loved, and still love, and wish I could get out to bars more, is to listen to people much older than me tell their stories. People who are in their 60's and 70's and older tell me anything they feel like telling. There's an old proverb that I want to attribute to somewhere in Africa that says, "No one dies as long as they are remembered." I liked listening to Bob's stories. When we'd go out for lunch, or I'd have to do overtime, or volunteer time at a board meeting or Maddie's Grant staff meeting, listening to him talk. He was a good man, and from me I feel that means a rather lot. I liked listening to him tell me stories. Stories about, when I mentioned I needed to get my wisdom teeth pulled because they were growing in wrong, what it was like for him to get his wisdom teeth pulled, or the time he drove a truck out of a gasoline tanker spill that turned into a fireball. He had done more than grown old -- he had actually lived. He had experienced so much, so much that I wanted to know, to learn. He is a part of what I feel is a by-gone age, that will never be recapture. That's probably just my youthful stupidity talking, like every generation before me has said, but I wanted to hear every story he told me. Whether it was the time he went on an antarctic expedition, or the day-to-day trivialities of working in animal rescue. He, and the other older people I knew and know, have taught me far more about living than I was ready to learn. I wish I had spent more time with him when I had the opportunity.

[Wyldewode]

I love old people too--they're usually so wise and willing to share and contribute to another person's life!

My grandfather passed away about a month ago. He was a WWII navy veteran, and would always tell stories about being in the Pacific theater. He would tell this one story about being on guard duty on the ship overnight (the enemy would swim out to the boat and try to come aboard), and how he would lean on his gun and kinda doze. Anyhow, he said his commanding officer saw him doing that, and yelled at him. My grandfather straightens up for a while, but then when the officer went away, he went back to leaning on his gun. When the officer checked again and saw what my grandfather was doing, he decided to go reprimand my grandfather by sneaking up on my grandfather--in the pitch dark mind you--and very nearly got shot 'cause my grandfather thought he was the enemy. He said that his commanding officer never gave him any grief about the dozing after that, since he was obviously alert enough!

My grandfather had some crazy stories. . . as you might guess, he was a colorful person.

Heh. . . I miss him some.

[Dreamscape]

That is great to hear. I think too many people nowadays discount the greatest generation and it's such a shame.