A good place for someone I know, I thought, as we went driving through. Lots of cheap housing, plenty of meth and cantaloupes, and when you get old, you can motor back and forth across the street in your electric wheelchair until you’re run down by a teenaged idiot in a big 4WD talking on a cell phone. (Not to detract one iota from the dignity and spirit of this fine gentleman, who’s lucky as goddamn hell not to be locked away in an old folk’s jail.) I get all goose-bumpy and snurfy just thinking about it. The stupid country music videos in the steakhouse in Nebraska that night, not so much.
Road Report: Rocky Ford, CO
I like this guy a lot. Ride on, dude.
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Nice looking old man. Late 70’s, I’d guess.
As people get older you’d think they’d become more expressive, having had so much experience and having survived to tell the story. You’d think the inhibitions would have fallen away – what’s the point of being defensive at this stage of the drama? What’s left to protect or regret or get angry about? Ripeness is all – or so one would think.
But that’s not my experience of the very old (a state I am rapidly approaching myself). The movement is generally in the other direction: obsessive and mechanical telling of the same old stories and holding forth on the same old subjects. Rigor mortis takes over, and the inner light starts to go out. Dignity is all that’s left. No small thing, admittedly.
Might be all wrong about this old codger. Hope so. And hope these observations don’t come back to haunt me in my own sure progress toward decrepitude.
Well, you’re not decrepit yet! And I hope you’re wrong about this fellow’s age, for reasons we shall leave unspoken.
Late 70s is young. Fortunately, I have a number of role models.
I agree. Onward!