Author: genenewman

We senior citizens are members of a minority that is not protected by the nitpicking rules of political correctness. Brash young comedians do not tread lightly when they’re telling jokes about the foibles of the superannuated. And that’s the way it should be for oldness sake!

Actually, we’re a very big minority with about 50 million members in the USA. That’s almost one out of seven Americans who are older than 65 and the census experts predict by 2035 we’ll outnumber children under 18 for the first time in our history.

Maybe by 2035 the joke about the 80-year old movie-goer won’t work. He’d seen the ad about seniors being admitted to the theater free of charge on Wednesdays, but the cashier explained that, according to the fine print of the ad, he had to be accompanied by his parents. That might be possible by then, but of course his parents would have to pay the full price unless their parents were also on hand.

We oldtimers don’t complain to our Congressmen that we’re being mocked. We don’t mind it if we’re told our brain cells are getting down to a manageable quantity and we’re subject to less peer pressure every day because our peers are passing away by the thousands.

And there’s some truth in the claim that seniors read the Bible more than any other group because we’re cramming for the finals. I enjoy these knee-slapper jokes up to a point. My knees are getting very tender and they can’t take a lot of slapping.

Most of us are still young at heart with all the instincts and urges of youth, simmered down of course, but still there. There’s the report of the old fellow sitting on his front porch watching a pretty young thing run buy in a nifty jogging outfit and suddenly his pacemaker goes wild and opens his garage door.

Talking about urges, there’s the doddering playboy sitting at the cocktail bar who winks at a pretty young blond sitting nearby. “Tell me, Honey,” he says, “do I come here often?”

There must be hundreds of jokes about our forgetfulness. Our memory banks are so crammed after decades of collecting, it takes a while sometimes to come up with even everyday words . Lunching at the senior center recently I sat near enough to hear a husband using endearing terms while talking to his wife. She was “Sweetheart”, “Darling” , “Dearest” and “Honey” throughout the meal.

I met the old guy later and asked, “I happened to overhear your lunch conversation with all the loving terms. Are you two on your honeymoon? “

“No, we’ve been married over 50 years,” he said. “It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I haven’t been able to remember her name today.”

T

A sleazy contractor is pressing you for full payment for his inferior work. He’s showing you the document you signed and reading the six lines of very fine print that you didn’t pay much attention to before, especially since he’d said, “Oh, that’s just routine legalese.” Now he says, trying to make his sneer look like a sincere smile, that you’re legally bound by those lines to cough up the cash.

It looks hopeless, but then you remember you have an influential cousin who might be of some help. He’s imaginary, but he can still be very influential. “Okay, you’ve got me,” you say. “I’ll pay up by the end of the week. I have to borrow the money from my Cousin Rocco and he’s out of town right now on some kind of contract . ” At this point you’ll notice an arched eyebrow and a jittery look. “He’s out on a contract?” he’ll say.

“I’ve got your office address and Rocco might want to call you at home. But he knows how to get anybody’s number. He’s very resourceful.” The sneer is gone now. It’s not possible to sneer when your jaw has dropped open.

You give him a look of concern. “Don’t worry, you’re going to get what’s coming to you. Rocco is pretty well fixed. He’s a sought after police consultant, you know, like Sherlock Holmes and Monk. They’re always calling him down to the station to help out on a case. “Questions, questions, questions!’ Rocco complains. He’s at the top of his profession and he’s revered. The police have more than once given him the title of ‘a person of interest’.

“Rocco is a perfectionist, though and he’ll want to look over your work before he parts with the money. That’s just his routine. It’s not like Angie’s List, it’s Rocco’s list, ha ha! So rest assured, Rocco is a big softee, he’s a good fellow and he’s very fair, a straight shooter.

At this point Mr. Sleazy will be nervously trying to open the front door to escape. “There’s no rush on the payment,” he’ll say. “I’ll be around in a few days to inspect and correct any imperfections I find and I’ll probably throw in a few upgrades here and there.”

In my case it wouldn’t be a complete fabrication. I actually do have an Italian cousin. Her name is Dolores.

I’m home alone tonight as I write this. I’d dozed off after watching yet another Christmas fantasy movie which probably brought on my weird dream. My pepperoni pizza supper might have had something to do with it also.

I dreamt I heard the doorbell ring, but it sounded different, more like a jingle. I opened the door but didn’t see anyone out there in the snowfall. Then a high-pitched voice from below said, “Genie Newman?”

Looking down I saw a short white-bearded fellow in a green suit, furry tassled hat and pointy red shoes. “Genie Newman?” He repeated the question.

“Gene Newman,” I said. “Nobody’s called me ‘Genie’ since my last schoolyard fist fight about that in the third grade.”

“Did you write this letter?” he asked and handed me a wrinkled sheet of yellowed notebook paper filled with writing and ink blots. The handwriting looked familiar and then I noticed the P.S.. “Santa, I live on the top floor of the red house on 9th Street. You kant misit.”

“Hey, this is my letter! Where’d you get it?” I asked. “I wrote that back in….back in….let me see.”

“1937”, the little man said. “That year a bundle of letters got tossed behind a workshop cabinet and wasn’t discovered till a month ago when we were renovating. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “Thanks for returning it. It’ll be fun to read to my grandkids. Did you notice the nice handwriting? I got the Palmer Penmanship medal that year.”

“And you probaqbly also got a C minus in spelling,” the little guy quipped. “But I’m here because you asked for a lot of things. Your Mom and Dad must have read the letter and bought you what they could afford, but not everything.” I couldn’t recall everything that was on my list, but I did remember Christmas that year was typically joyful. I’d had no complaints.

I started to explain that, but he waved me off. “We had a meeting about the lost letters and decided to do what we could to make up for the foul-up. So now I’ve taken care of you and have dozens of other calls to make tonight, so please initial this letter and I’ll be on my way. Merry Christmas!”

“Wait a minute,” I called as he climbed onto a sled that had pulled up at the bottom of my front stoop. “What do you mean you’ve taken care of me?”

“Your pony is tied up in the back yard,” he said and disappeared like the down on a thistle.

I think it was a dream I hope it was a dream. That was an hour ago and I still haven’t looked in the back yard, but I’ll have to investigate. I can’t leave a pony out on a night like this. I guess he could sleep in the guest room.

My dream has always been to live beside a big beautiful lake. I missed my chance by not being around in 13,000 B.C. when global warming caused the towering Wisconsin Glacier to melt and retreat northward from Morris County leaving an enormous puddle stretching from Parsippany to Paterson. Geologists call this now large underground body of water “Lake Passaic”. The Lenni Lenape Indians weren’t going to arrive for thousands of years so I would have had my pick of lakeside lots back then. Just my luck.

I got a second chance in 1933 when the New York Daily Mirror, a tabloid newspaper, created a smaller lake called Parsippany by digging out and flooding 160 acres of pasture land and offering lakeside lots at $98.50. Of course there was a catch. You had to buy two 20 x 100-foot lots and a one-year subscription to the Daily Mirror which then sold for about two cents an issue. I was only three years old then so where was I going to get that kind of money? And I’d have had to pedal 35 miles from Fairview on my tricycle. Just my luck.

I finally moved to Lake Parsippany about 30 years later and eventually, as a reporter, interviewed two of the original real estate agents. By then, Dean Gallo Sr. and Alex Epstein owned separate agencies. I also spoke with George West, a 1933 lot buyer and former Lake Parsippany Property Owners Association (LPPOA) official.

The lots weren’t selling like hotcakes Eckstein said at the 1966 interview. With the Great Depression still going strong in 1936, the price dropped to $69.50 and by 1940, with 3,000 of the 7,916 (20-foot wide) lots still available, the price was reduced to $49.25. Eckstein said he bought a parcel in 1966 for $4,500 which he’d sold in 1933 or $245.50. Gallo remembered that lot owners could buy a shell of a new house in 1933 for $750 or a finished one for about $2,000 “with plumbing and all”.

The Daily Mirror’s promise of “the good things in life” was a bit of an exaggeration according to West who recalled there was no electricity and no telephones until 1937. And if you didn’t dig a well, he said, you had to lug water from the LPPOA’s clubhouse on Halsey Road. Everyone joined the Association back then, he said, because it was the only provider of garbage collection.

Conditions are a great deal better now. The LPPOA is one of the state’s best family recreational bargains. So don’t count on Lake Passaic coming back. We’ve got global warming again, but there are no nearby melting glaciers. It’s not going to happen.

Once upon a Christmas a long time ago in 1944, the bright joy of the holiday was diminished, just as it is today, by thoughts of our military serving in harm’s way across the seas.

I was reminded of this the other day going through a box of letters my brother Jim wrote during his World War II service as a combat infantryman with Patton’s Third Army.

Jim’s December 1944 letters were written in an Army hospital “somewhere in the British Isles” after he was evacuated from the front lines in France with a case of trench foot so severe this 19-year old private was a potential candidate for amputation.

This was his second army hospital stay. Six months before in Normandy, shortly after D-Day, shrapnel from a German 88mm shell had pierced his back. He was patched up in England and returned to France. This time, thank God, he avoided amputation and managed to survive the war. He died of natural causes in 1988.

“I do hope that God ends this war,” he wrote that December. “I will be seeing you when the lights go on again.” His hospital letters were mostly about the good treatment, the great food and his disappointment that his mail hadn’t caught up with him for weeks. There were only hints of the horrors he’d experienced and would soon return to.

“I don’t drink as much water here as I did up on the front lines where it was hard to get,” he wrote. “And I didn’t eat much up there. I’d save a couple (of K-Rations) just in case we got pinned down so I’d have something to eat. It came in handy at times.”

He wrote about a wonderful Christmas spent in the hospital with a midnight Mass, a sumptuous feast and an orphans’ choir that “sang just like angels.” After Christmas he was transferred to another hospital where the therapy was combined with close order drill and 4-mile hikes. “I left heaven yesterday,” Jim wrote. “This place is not as nice, but it’s still better than sleeping in a foxhole, especially in this weather.”

Newspaper archives reveal a home front that December that was focused on the war, but didn’t entirely abandon peacetime pursuits. Washington reported American casualties had reached 540,000 killed, wounded and missing. There were dispatches from Europe where the Battle of the Bulge was raging and from the Pacific Theater where our forces were liberating the Philippines.

The papers reported on War Bond drives and scrap collections. There was an article about the indictment of 51 New Jersey people in a black market crackdown. They were allegedly stealing and also counterfeiting gas rationing coupons that had to be presented at the pumps.

Meat, sugar and leather shoes were among the other rationed items. If you ran out of food coupons you could dine out. A French restaurant in Manhattan advertised luncheons starting at $1.50 and some Broadway stage show tickets cost less than $2.00. However, want ads listed clerical jobs at $23 per week and holiday mail carrier temps were making $7 a day.

As he wrote, Brother Jim must have been thinking about the brutal life awaiting him in France and his chances of survival, but he didn’t burden us with that. “I’m asking one thing of God,” he wrote, “and that is to keep you all well and happy.”

The war in Europe ended the following May and Jim then awaited transfer to the Pacific Theater for the invasion of Japan where a million casualties were predicted, but Japan surrendered in August and World War II finally ended.

When they began providing our gadgets and machines with artificial intelligence I thought life would become easier. Let our appliances do most of the thinking and worrying, I thought, but there have been problems and scarey indications of a digital power grab.

In dealing with this modern generation of contraptions, I get along better with the ones that listen to reason or at least respond to threats. There’s my digital bathroom scale for instance. I’ve found when I step on it, look down at the dial and shout, “OH, NO!” followed by a brisk foot stomp, there’s an immediate reduction of five pounds. Now that’s what I call technical progress. There’s nothing about this in the instruction book. It’s just something the scale and I have worked out together.

Then there’s my German-made talking camera that gradually took on a rather superior attitude. It was helpful and polite at first. “The lens cap you have forgotten to remove, bitte,” it would say, or “Achtung! Die batterie ist kaput!” But as time passed a disrectful tone crept in. I was sometimes addressed as “dummkopf” or “noodlehead” instead of “Mein Herr”. The camera and I have had some hot arguments and I’m thinking of deporting the ill-mannered schweinhundt back to Dusseldorf.”

Perhaps we’ve given up too much sovereignty to these intimidating machines. My car, for instance, nags me with dashboard beeps and flashes about maintaining sensible speeds, mandatory tire pressures and scheduled oil changes. I’m punished sometimes for some breach of driver conduct by the sudden popping of the trunk lid while I’m cruising in heavy traffic. I then hear what might be just a rattle, but it sounds like a metallic chuckle to me. Who’s in charge here? Are we back to the old days when reaching a destination depended on one’s horse’s attitude?

The most overbearing gizmos are our computers. This very essay may not get typed and posted if my computer decides against it. At any moment it might accuse me of an unacceptable operation or fatal error and send my copy to some remote region of Cyberland.

Something happened last week that gave me a chill. My daughter Carolyn called to say she’d received a strange Email. “It’s about you, Dad and it’s very uncomplimentary,” she said. “It was sent under your screen name and probably went to everyone on your contact list, about 30 addressees.”

I told her I hadn’t sent any Emails for days and asked about the message. “Well, it says you’re boorish, intellectually challenged, a poor speller and typist and addicted to playing solitaire and it’s signed, ‘ The Treacherous Beast’.”

“Oh, oh! That’s what I called my computer this morning when it lost two pages of my copy. It must be sending vindictive Emails on its own.”

“One other thing, Dad, it called you a noodlehead.”

“That sounds bad. It looks like it’s been talking to my German camera. I’m going to switch back to my friendly old Underwood typewriter. I hope Woody hasn’t joined the rebellion.”

Time and motion studies have improved manufacturing efficiency, lowered production costs and even selling prices, but have aggravated workers to distraction.

In a plant where I once worked, master machinists who’d been turning out perfect widgets with tolerances of a few thousandths of an inch for over 30 years did not appreciate getting instructions from a fuzzy-cheeked time and motion study guy on how to do it faster. For one thing, it takes time to insure accuracy. For another, why do it faster when you’re getting paid by the hour?

It sometimes helped if the recently graduated ergonomics expert with the stop watch and clipboard was taller and huskier than the machinist.

When a husband retires and starts spending more time at home, he usually feels he should be helpful and if possible, make life easier for his wife. So he becomes an unofficial time and motion study expert and gives her advice on more efficient ways to cook meals, scrub floors and do the laundry.

In rare cases this has led to increased housekeeping efficiency and more leisure time for the wife, but more typically the result is marriage counseling and minor injuries until the husband finds another job or joins the Peace Corps or the Foreign Legion.

One afternoon at the plant I noticed a hopeful sign of unity when I went out into the shop. The machinists and time study guys stood side by side chatting in front of the silent drilling and milling machines while peering toward the entrance.

Then I caught sight of Miss Zowie strolling in to fetch the day’s production report, on time as usual, bless her. Workers and experts agreed, Miss Zowie was quite pleasant to look at. Forget time. For a few moments they would just study motion.

The art workshop prospectus said it accepted all skill levels so I signed up hoping my “zero” level was included. On the first day of class we had to draw something to indicate our natural ability. While the instructor examined my drawing I confessed to being quite unskilled, but said, after much practice, I’d learned to draw a recognizable tree and a passable cow. “Hmm,” he said. “And which one is this?” I’d thought the birdhouse would have been a real tip-off.

I’d been inspired by a video about Jackson Pollock’s abstract impressionism technique of randomly dripping paint on canvas and making several thousand dollars per square foot of haphazard blots. “I can do that, ” I said.

” You always do that,” my wife replied. “That’s why we hired a professional to paint the living room.”

Anyway I chose watercolor as my medium. I liked the description as “naturally adaptable to the rendering of romantic themes,” but mostly because it’s washable and won’t permanently stain clothing, rugs, furniture and active pets.

For several weeks I worked on challenging assignments and rose to a level of competence where one could distinguish my hemlocks from my Holsteins. I was also making strides in watercolor and was convinced it had been a good choice. Ever since kindergarten I’ve had difficulty keeping the colors within the lines. My grandchildren have begged me not to mess with their coloring books.

But as a watercolor artist I’m allowed, if I should stray over the line, to move the line. Come to think of it that’s what Picasso must have done on most of his paintings. This has added an element of dynamism to my works which undergo transmutation as I paint. For instance, my painting which started out as a copy of “Whistler’s Mother” was eventually titled “A View of Mount McKinley”. One of my better efforts which began as an attempt to match the precision of a Norman Rockwell portrait, ended as a convincing imitation of a Cro-Magnon cave painting.

Admittedly, after leaving the workshop, I’m going through what art critics in future years will call my “clumsy period”, but my confidence increases. I feel I can now share my work with others. Recently I presented my daughter Carolyn with my rendition of “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. Since the painting involves a blend of the cubism and impressionist styles it is more concerned with the abstract elements of the event than a lifelike representation. It’s been misinterpreted by some as depicting a chimpanzee migration and even a Black Friday sales crowd.

I explained all this to Carolyn as I presented the large framed painting and suggested a good location on her living room wall. ” Oh Dad, you shouldn’t have,” she said. “You really, really shouldn’t have!” I could see tears in her eyes. It was quite touching.

No one has ever proved luck actually exists. Webster calls it a “force” that brings good fortune or bad. That could mean it’s related to the weather, the stock market, the Communist Party or even the office Christmas party. But maybe it’s just a word we made up to explain life’s up and downs.

Purists insist events are subject to the laws of probability and any other explanation is just wishful thinking. But can’t we fudge those laws by increasing our efforts to reach our goals? Movie magnate Samuel Goldwyn once claimed, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Others believe in a mysterious source of unearned good fortune like “dumb luck” and “Beginner’s luck”. Shakespeare wrote “Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.” An Arab proverb puts it another way: “Throw a lucky man into the sea and he will come up with a fish in his mouth.” Some only half believe in luck like the man who blames his failures on bad luck, but takes complete responsibility for his hole in one.

We should be active participants in our pursuit of good fortune. There’s the story of the woman who prayed for help to win a lottery prize. After weeks of praying with no results, she shook her fist at the sky and cried, “You haven’t been listening to my desperate prayers to be a lottery winner!” Just then there was a clap of thunder and a voice roared from the clouds, “For heaven’s sake, buy a ticket!”

Religion and luck have been partners for centuries as the devout have asked heaven to deliver good fortune, some paying the shipping and handling charges in advance. The Aztecs, Mayans and Incas paid with human sacrifices, voluntary and otherwise. Most of us, these days, politely ask heaven to tilt the odds in our favor from time to time. There probably are as many prayers said during church bingo games as at the Sunday services. ( Please, Lord, have him call B-14 and I’ll split the pot with you.”)

What is your best guess about luck? Is it the main force behind someone’s successful career? Someone said, “You can always tell luck from ability by the duration.” My favorite luck comment was by the author Jean Cocteau: “We must believe in luck, for how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like.”

Pictures of the first Thanksgiving observance of the Pilgrims 398 years ago have always raised a question in my mind. Governor William Bradford and the 50 survivors of the original 102 Mayflower passengers, along with members of the friendly Wampanoag Tribe, are shown about to give thanks after a harrowing year when more than half the Pilgrim party perished from disease and hardship as the Plymouth settlement was hacked out of the wilderness.

I assume the artists strove for authenticity and consulted surviving contemporary accounts of the historic event. If so, how come the feast is shone as taking place out of doors? Late autumn in Massachusetts can be frigid and yet the celebrants are seen sitting at tables beneath the trees while cozy log cabins are shone in the background. I think I may have figured out one possible reason for this incongruity.

Bill Bradford probably came home one day and announced to his wife, “Dear, I’ve proclaimed a thanksgiving feast here for a week from today. I just sent a runner over to invite Chief Massasoit and some of his people. They’ve been so helpful. The harvest has been good, Miles Standish and John Alden will hunt for venison and turkeys, we’ll get lobsters and clams from the beaches and we’ll brew some beer. Maybe we’ll even have some foot races. It should be a lot of fun.”

“A week from today? Oh no!” exclaimed Mrs. Bradford. “I’ll never get this place ready in just one week. The floors have to be scraped and refinished, the windows washed and I’ll want you to paint the cabinets and fix our rickety chairs. And, oh dear, the dishes are all chipped and we don’t have enough pewter mugs or utensils. Oh dear!”

“I had no idea we were living in such squalor,” the governor said, trying to add a little levity.

“The hearth’s to be scrubbed and I’ll have to weave a new tablecloth and do something about our ragged curtains, ” Mrs. Bradford moaned. “I don’t want us disgraced in front of our guests, the Wampanoags.” she said.

“But, dear, they live in huts made out of bark and deerskins,” the governor pleaded, but to no avail.

And that’s why he amended his proclamation to call for an outdoor event and why most husbands today would agree to make Thanksgiving feasts simpler as long as there’s a roast turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie, foot races by the younger attendees and a nearby TV to watch the gridiron games.