Country Humor

Who’s really counting?

by Jack S. Bray

When, exactly, is old age officially supposed to begin? It’s different for different people, probably. We all know folks in their 50s who seem old; getting around as if the world were uphill in all directions. And, we all know a few people in their 80s who appear at least a decade younger; still jaunty and chipper with bright outlooks on life.

A person’s perception of age changes with time. When you’re very young, a year is half of eternity and you can barely wait for your next birthday. “I’m six and a half,” a first grader will say. A young person has a lot of high-water marks to look forward to. In two years, you’ll be in junior high. At 16, you can be licensed to legally drive a car. At 18, you get to vote for the first time. At 21, it’s legal to imbibe adult beverages. At 25 (if your driving record is clean), auto insurance premiums get slightly cheaper.

Along about here, though, the mileposts begin to get farther apart. You begin counting years differently. “I’m going on 35.” Or, “I’m just past 40.” To be frank about it, there aren’t many glowing age goals between 25 and when Social Security sets in. After that, many people go back to the way they counted age when they were more youthful. “I’m 68 and a half.” If you are beginning to do that, old age is creaking up on you, my friend.

But is old age really here yet at 68 or 70? I still don’t know when a person breaks the tape into geezerdom, but I do know this: old age is not for sissies.

For one thing, nearly everyone I hang out with (those who are still hanging around) keeps getting older; even my baby sister is now in her 60s. Younger people want to know what that noise is when I play my Glenn Miller albums. Getting older is often associated with loss of virility, tired blood and poor fashion choices and I can testify that it’s true. My arthritic hips and knees now are more accurate forecasters of rain than the Channel 3 weatherman. I have begun to lose things I thought I was permanently attached to: hair, teeth, shards of memory.

Still, age is good for cheese, wine and Prime beef, right? Why not for people?

Well, one of the grimmer facts of old age is, you know you’re never going to out-grow it. But when I consider the alternative, getting older is not so bad.

Say it large

by Mitch Jayne

As you might have noticed over the years, I’m not half as taken with what people have to say as the way they say it. I think most Missourians are like that. We quote each other a lot, telling folks, “Well as Dad said, ‘a short horse is soon curried’” or an aunt who always quoted “Least said, soonest mended,” or “The dropped stitch will never be seen from a galloping horse,” or the teacher who reminded whispering school kids, “Every time a sheep baas, he loses two bites.”

The ones I like best are word pictures that stay with you, as in, “Best avoid irritating Mom today, this heat already has her stinger about half out.” This includes wonderful exaggerations that Ozarkers are known for, such as, “It’s the rise of two miles to our yard mailbox, up hill both ways,” and “Our fireplace draws air so good, we can’t keep a cat.” And, “That boy always drags in looking like he’s been sorting bobcats.”

It’s not just a Missouri habit, this need to exaggerate to make a memorable point. It’s a human habit. I know this from years ago, reading a Jewish proverb that said, “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.” So, I knew we weren’t the first to reach for stretches of the imagination to say things cleverly.

In fact, you don’t even have to live in Missouri to stretch the truth creatively—although Mark Twain sort of set the bar for us with his colorful jumps into exaggeration. He’s the one who pointed out that if the Mississippi kept shortening its length every year by cutting across its own bends, 200 miles of it would stick out into the gulf like a fishing pole.

I think it was Justin Wilson, a southern humorist, who proved to me that no state owns the funny stuff, but the southern parts know how to tell it better.

Wilson told about being part of a singing group that was to perform at a church in the mountains. There were boxes in the vestry where the group waited, and when someone asked about the boxes, they were informed that they were full of snakes for the snake handling service to follow them.

Justin, who was a big man, and terrified of snakes, asked where the back door to the place was, and when told there wasn’t one, asked, “Well, where do you reckon they would LIKE to have one?”

Exaggeration is just our way of coloring up pictures for others. I happen to think small towns are better at it than cities, because those are already larger than life.

In the little town where I lived years ago, a local boy moved to a city and did well. Every year he would come home with a bigger car, from a modest Ford to a Buick, and on through a long Cadillac to a huge Lincoln town car. We were proud of him, but a townsman summed it up for us all.

“I guess,” he told us, “next time Joe comes home, he’ll be driving a train.

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