This is a re-post from October 2016
The country comedy team of Homer & Jethro recorded a novelty ditty back in the 1960s entitled "I'm My Own Grandpa" that has lately been rattling around in my aging melon. I'm fairly certain it's because I have recently found myself slipping into codger speak a little more every day. You know, stuff like: "I remember when Halloween pumpkins were 10, 25, and 50 cents apiece; not EIGHT BUCKS!" "Damn kids are playing that rap crap again!" And, of course, my wife's favorite: "How come they're hiring high school kids as television news anchors?"
Going grocery shopping is excruciating for me. Working as a carryout boy for Oscar "The Watermelon King" Swanson at Swanson's Super Store during my Iowa high school days in the early 1960's left that era's prices etched forever in my mind. The other carryout guys and I used to be able to come within a few cents of each customer's final bill at the check stand simply by eyeing their baskets. A $50 order would fill a standard grocery cart to overflowing and someone spending $100 invariably had at least two carts and required two of us to help lug the bounty to their car. These days, when forced to hit the supermarket, I glance at what I have to purchase and give it a multiple of at least ten to estimate how bad the hit will be. Today a $50 order can often be contained in a single bag. The same formula works for cars too. A ride that sold for $5000 in the '60s is easily starting at $50k today. Houses also need at least a ten multiple to make the price leap from the '60s to today. It ain't pretty.
What speared my pondering of all this was a recent study by an expert on aging, Dr. Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who says that 115 years of age is just about the maximum limit for human longevity. Of course, some folks have exceeded that number but Dr. Vijg seems to think that after 115 we're all pretty much competing with cabbages when it comes to being useful. I tend to agree, although it could be a real challenge to see if my heart could absorb the amount of change and inflation necessary to make it that far. And, isn't that perhaps why we are supposedly allowed the biblical promise of three score and ten years to figure it all out? How much change is good for you? Shouldn't there be some benchmarks that are immune to change?
Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why." Possibly it takes some of us as many as 115 years to come up with the why.
Now, what was I saying?? Oh yeah, "Eight bucks for a pumpkin??! Now, when I was a lad that pumpkin would have cost 50 cents and the farmer would have given you a ride home!"
The country comedy team of Homer & Jethro recorded a novelty ditty back in the 1960s entitled "I'm My Own Grandpa" that has lately been rattling around in my aging melon. I'm fairly certain it's because I have recently found myself slipping into codger speak a little more every day. You know, stuff like: "I remember when Halloween pumpkins were 10, 25, and 50 cents apiece; not EIGHT BUCKS!" "Damn kids are playing that rap crap again!" And, of course, my wife's favorite: "How come they're hiring high school kids as television news anchors?"
Going grocery shopping is excruciating for me. Working as a carryout boy for Oscar "The Watermelon King" Swanson at Swanson's Super Store during my Iowa high school days in the early 1960's left that era's prices etched forever in my mind. The other carryout guys and I used to be able to come within a few cents of each customer's final bill at the check stand simply by eyeing their baskets. A $50 order would fill a standard grocery cart to overflowing and someone spending $100 invariably had at least two carts and required two of us to help lug the bounty to their car. These days, when forced to hit the supermarket, I glance at what I have to purchase and give it a multiple of at least ten to estimate how bad the hit will be. Today a $50 order can often be contained in a single bag. The same formula works for cars too. A ride that sold for $5000 in the '60s is easily starting at $50k today. Houses also need at least a ten multiple to make the price leap from the '60s to today. It ain't pretty.
What speared my pondering of all this was a recent study by an expert on aging, Dr. Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who says that 115 years of age is just about the maximum limit for human longevity. Of course, some folks have exceeded that number but Dr. Vijg seems to think that after 115 we're all pretty much competing with cabbages when it comes to being useful. I tend to agree, although it could be a real challenge to see if my heart could absorb the amount of change and inflation necessary to make it that far. And, isn't that perhaps why we are supposedly allowed the biblical promise of three score and ten years to figure it all out? How much change is good for you? Shouldn't there be some benchmarks that are immune to change?
Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why." Possibly it takes some of us as many as 115 years to come up with the why.
Now, what was I saying?? Oh yeah, "Eight bucks for a pumpkin??! Now, when I was a lad that pumpkin would have cost 50 cents and the farmer would have given you a ride home!"
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| You want the pumpkin? You'll have to speak to our loan officer first. |
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