“I’d give all I own if I could but atone
to that silver haired daddy of mine”
Gene Autry
1932
Chapter Two
Forced Ageing
“Dear Rockie,
Writing about this ageing process has me so wrapped up in personal reminiscences that I almost forgot what this exercise is. As we agreed, these letters will be about the problems a couple of old people face as life and time narrows down for them and takes away choices. Perhaps this last sentence will be the basic statement of my words to you, “Old age takes away choices.” We used to call that the thesis statement in English Composition classes. Slip that on your professor as I don’t think they use that phrase anymore. I am also aware that I am writing to you for your important Honours degree. Pardon the memoirs in the foregoing. I have been very self indulgent telling you about my dog Turner and the hay chasings at Uncle Emil’s farm but will leave what I have written for you to muse on the subject of childhood ageing; they may give a couple of laughs for you. Besides, they are family lore which can become your part in mystical stories for your children some years hence. I must be careful to not let any of my letters to you be a simple autobiography. That would be an indulgence but perhaps an interesting extravagance. Anyway, use what is helpful.
Now, let’s get back to the topic of the ageing process. It was the death of my father, who died miserably from a combination of lung cancer and asbestosis at the age of fifty-three that made me lurch into near-manhood. Oh, gosh, do I mean ‘lurch’ and do I mean ‘near’. The lurching included the first and only time I went 100 miles per hour in a car. Everything, including my ageing, could have stopped that day coming home from Pike Lake. Rubin would not slow down, no matter how I yelled at him. That would be about 150 kilometres per hour. There I go again, digressing. Family history can be profound. Grandma died at age ninety-three as I have told you and she knew her grandmother. Grandma was born in 1876 so we can guess that her grandmother was born around 1815. Grandma told me stories her grandma told her, including some naughty ones. I especially remember that the Blooms were “Primitive Methodists” which meant, Grandpa always intervened at this point and said they were “Howling-Primitive Methodists and Shakers to boot.” Of course, that meant nothing at the time. I know now it meant they had no clergy and were dominated by a group of conservative males. What is interesting is that the oral traditions I inherited from Grandma go back at least 200 plus years. She loved to tell me stories and I equally loved to sit and listen to her.
By the time father was eight years old he was working in an underground coal mine in Turkey Hill, Pennsylvania. He grew up tough and eventually moved to Minnesota, married my Swedish mother, had a raft of kids, suffered and survived the poverty of the 1930’s Great Depression, where success finally arrived. He became a locomotive fireman; and finally, a locomotive engineer. Even that was tough. He was surrounded by asbestos products, more coal dust like he had breathed in the coal mines, was wreathed with the smoke of the steam engines and from two or three packs of cheap cigarettes per day; Marvels they were called. Ten cents a pack I remember. Lost a dime once going to the store for a pack. Wow, I was in trouble. Looking back as carefully and objective as I can, poor dad did not have much of a chance. He never had much of a childhood and did not live long enough to know what old age brought. When he was offered a lift in his job status to management he turned it down because he would not be able to rat on his union mates. I think he may have worried about not being able to sing the “Internationale” at union meetings as he would have had to leave the union and they were his life along with the Odd Fellows Lodge. Scarcity, too many kids and associated problems pursued him. I shan’t go into the horrors of those two years as dad was dying. Our family, as I now understand it, had only recently climbed out of poverty and even had a nice car… a wonderful torpedo back, two-toned green, 1947 Oldsmobile. The car was the envy of the West Side. By this time, all brothers and sisters had left home and I finally had my own bedroom. With father gone I was the male of the household. The end of the war had dispersed our family into the surrounding area. Everyone worked on the railroad…just as everyone had worked in the mines in Pennsylvania. Might be a proof of the term “Dumb Swede”, a term over which I had more than one fight with the kids in the village. After father died, a kind and caring, and unfortunately unthinking, uncle did a great disservice to me. As in the death of my dog Turner, I still carry the scars of father’s last few months. He had been so big and boisterous, so much fun and excitement. Such a good fisherman. Such a good shot with shotgun or rifle. Such a good woodsman. Then he was reduced to a little old man who could not talk. His last words to me from his hospital bed were, “Go away…Go away!” Eventuall, but only years later, I realized he did not want me to see him suffer so; but the interim years of wondering what those words meant were an ongoing agony. At the viewing in the undertaker parlours I walked right past his body because I did not recognize him.
Good Uncle Art innocently said, “You are the man of the house now. You must take care of your mother and the family home. We all depend upon you now.” Good Uncle Art. He died two months after Dad from excessive drink and less one leg and one arm from a railroad accident. In our little macho railroad village what he meant was that I should leave school, get a job on the railroad, marry a local girl, have a raft of kids and take care of the home fires. “Home fires” was code for paying for house expenses and mother. Dad’s death totally dashed my hopes to become a football coach and teacher. There was no choice. That is how it was done in the 1940’s in a labouring family. Unlike Doc Peterson’s daughter who, when she became pregnant at age fifteen, was sent to Switzerland to a ‘finishing school’. She returned a few years later, elegant and “finished” and married to some sort of Italian Duke. Workers’ kids stayed and faced the music for their personal peccadilloes or family tragedies. We were just one step up from the mines of Pennsylvania.
I moved into what could be described as a personal slough of despond and became pretty damn wild for a few years. I wanted to live out my life and not merely stand on the shores of the slag cluttered little pond by which I lived. Dirty coal smoke was not my goal nor did I aspire to a railroad job for life. When I think of the railroad I think of spittoons filled with spittle and coffee grounds…men smoking and hacking out their lungs. I remember the smell. What did the railroad get Dad? Unprecious nothing and an unpaid mortgage. I did not want to stand shivering on the bank of life I wanted to plunge head first into a sea of experiences. Those experiences were all ‘someplace else’ and certainly not on the railroad. I remembered Miss Hautala’s words from English Studies. She said about Sam Foss’s poem, one of her many favourites, ‘Let me live in the house by the side of the road where the race of men go by…and be a friend to man…’ “You young people have to decide what you want…and then do it. The deciding is difficult, the doing is the good part.” Old Elephant Nose knew what she was talking about. She was correct, the doing of life was going to be pretty damn good I would eventually understand as I lurched and jolted into manhood.
Well, Rockie, what does all this have to do with ageing? I guess it depends on how old you are. I suppose when we examine this whole process we should at least try to understand where we come from and how the combinations of chance can develop into patterns. I think the Chaos Theory was invented for me as that is pretty well how I have lived my life. Not sure how you can use that in your paper though. I don’t think I terribly different from most people.
In my next letter to you, I will skip the university part and my first two marriages as well as the bringing up of the various children, most of them uncles, aunts and cousins of yours. That could be a book by itself but I would probably offend too many to every write THAT book…especially if I told the truth as I saw it; would probably be targeted for assassination. There has been enough stupid conflict in my life without calling up the Devil by writing about those times. Fortunately or unfortunately most of my mistakes now lie buried in a cemetery or scattered as ashes and dust in some back yard rose garden. That is definitely one positive thing about getting old.
So, take care and will see you Sunday arvo for a meal. I am killing a couple of turkeys. Are you bringing anyone? (That is code for M.A.L.E.)
P.S. How is that car of yours? Come early and we will change oil and tighten the rattling muffler. You might have to do the crawling under the car so bring your grubs. I cannot get under the car anymore. If I did get under I would have to live there.
Hugs,
Grandpa Buck and Grandma Joan
We still chuckle how you called Grandma “Grandma Jones” for many years and wrote that on birthday cards.”
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It is truly tempting to take my story into how and what and where we lived for the next few decades. They were the worst and best of times. Suffice it to say that life was perhaps a level above mediocrity in financial abilities, about average in being a good father and wildly successful in making life interesting and even frequently fun. The children seldom got into trouble or jail although Freddie gave us a few runs for our money. I was only fired from two jobs (both with the government) and every one in the family learned to love travel. The cackle-laugh of grandmother and the snorting of mother’s self deprecating humour were never far from my psyche. For that I both bless and cuss them. While I have many shortcomings, perhaps the worst is that I see the whole human condition as pretty humorous, even hilarious. It has given me many problems. My theses advisers all said things like, “Buck, this is not a humour essay, take those paragraphs out.” I would but they would pop up someplace else. Made some good money writing humour for various newspapers.
So…I skip about forty years to my sixtieth birthday. As Shakespeare correctly said, “The past is prologue…” We said, “Let’s get on with it…” By this time Joan and I had adopted our new motto: “Live out, not wobble through somehow…” Joan and I were beginning to have an inkling about what the ageing process had for us. We had better hurry up with life. Some years prior we foolishly decided to try for an early retirement. The children had all left home and now it was our turn or so we thought. Never mind that we did not have enough money. We could always get a job…or so we reasoned. Not true.
Joan and I were on our bikes and a hidden crocodile on the side of the road was smiling at us…crocodiles DO smile. We were riding down from the Daintree Forest in Far North Queensland on the York Peninsula with Sydney as our hoped-for goal; a distance of approximately 3500 kilometres. We had already extensively travelled by bike in Europe and Japan but were never up to cycling in China where we both taught at a small university of millions. Incredibly Joan taught Western Literature and I taught Wester Journalism. But no bikes in China!
We were seasoned bikers; but various things can lurk around corners from trucks to dogs; but never crocodiles. We were going to learn about crocodiles as well as Queensland pig dogs, Rhodesian Ridgebacks and hippie hating Queensland cops. The first serious niggle of arthritis was having an effect on my extremely well used knees. Many surgeons had already made a handsome living from those knees. Doctors loved them and I am sure they looked like dollar signs to some. Joan, only fifty-four, had just come out of a serious operation and was running at about eighty-five percent efficiency but she had a full tank of bravery. Her famous words, happily not last, were, “We will celebrate our retirement by riding across two continents, Australia and Canada.” Under my breath I remember muttering, “Oh boy… Retirement! Mother never warned me about this one.”
Our serious ageing process was about to rigorously start with an interested crocodile examining our commencement rite…just around the corner. Smiling.
Buck Thor Emberg
Buck is a traveller. He and his wife Joan began their travelling life together 37 years ago. They have lived in twelve countries and travelled in 126. Buck sees himself as a humourist with a philosophical bent. He recently completed his PhD in Tasmanian History and holds other degrees in Philosophy, History and Theology but still sees himself as a boy from a dirty little railroad village close to the border of Canada…on the USA side. He has been a cleaner of railroad spitoons, brick carrier, football player, teacher, city planner, clergyman and has been trying to retire for decades. For this he has always failed as the next book or work has already started and he has never been able to keep a job.
In this work, Old Age Ain’t for Sissies, Buck takes us travelling with him and Joan across Australia and North America as they attempt to retire. His humourous philosophy is scattered throughout the book as bits of home-spun truths and gleanings from other writers and thinkers. He refers to himself as a Kierkegaardian Existentialist…which essentially mean his mind and life come straight from the Chaos Theory. This is a work about how to or how not to retire.
Buck is deeply involved in the environmental problems of Tasmania and belongs to a number of conservation groups in which he is very active.
We would like you to take these trips with Buck and Joan and certainly respond with comments or additions if you wish. He may be reached by email at:
[email protected]
These installments of the serialized book continue fortnightly.
Get on your philosophical bicycle and join them.
