"Betty says that I'm on my second childhood," I heard him say at least twenty times, "but that's not true. I'm at least on my fourth or fifth." I've been thinking about Randy for the last day or so, because of Walter Cronkite's death; Randy looked a lot like him, toothbrush moustache and all.

Randy ran the maintenance department at the brake lining factory, but he didn't stop with that. In the town of 150 in which he lived, most of the teenaged boys got jobs working for him in his sporting goods business. My brother-in-law had spent years fletching arrows for Randy, which is how I ended up meeting Randy. Every four or five years, he'd develop a new and fun hobby, and before you knew it, he had a business that addressed that hobby.

Businesses Sprouted Around Him

He was into model rockets; pretty soon, he was manufacturing balsa nose cones and then he started assembling model rocket kits. He got himself an 8-track player, and pretty soon, he was producing 8-track carts of local bands, and selling them in gas stations all over a quarter of the state. When slot cars were popular, he opened a track, and then he started manufacturing tires for slot cars, and vacuum-forming car bodies.

But it didn't have to be a business to get him to go gung-ho. He loved Corvairs, and he cursed Ralph Nader for spreading the libel that they were "unsafe at any speed." When he heard of a Corvair being offered for sale, he'd go buy it, so that he'd have a ready supply of parts. "I'm going to be driving Corvairs well into the 21st century," he boasted to me about 1975.

There were still plenty of cars around to scrounge parts from when he died. He should have chosen doctors better; a lawsuit against the hospital left Betty financially wealthy, but nothing could have replaced Randy. His joi de vivre didn't just keep him young; everyone around him was enriched. He was about 75 when the doctors killed him, but he looked no older than 50 a year earlier.

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

Playing Benjamin Button

I haven't read Benjamin Button, nor have I seen the movie, and I have no intention of doing so. In many ways, I feel like I've lived a Benjamin Button life. I was very serious as a kid, and I never had much fun. I worked a lot on the farm, although my older siblings disputed that at the time, and I was working in town even before I got in high school, so there wasn't any opportunity to participate in after-school activities, or the class trip.

And I was 21 before I had my first date, and 23 before I had my second; from that, I suppose you can guess how well that first date went.

Rushing Towards The Finish Line

When I was 4, I wanted to be six so I could start school and learn to read. When I was 8, I wanted to be 10 so I could drive the tractor. When I was 14, I couldn't wait to be 16 so I could drive a car. When I was 17, I couldn't wait to be 18 so I could get a job, but the good jobs, you had to be 21 to get, so I cheated and started my own business; I had five employees before I was legally able to sign a binding contract.

Boy, was that stupid. You get there soon enough, or else you don't get there at all, and if that happens, it doesn't really matter, does it? You don't need to stop to smell the roses, but you ought to at least stick one in your lapel.

A Spendthrift Wife

In many ways, Em and I were not well suited for each other. More couples get divorced over money than over sex, and it's pretty easy to see why. Nerve endings are nerve endings, tab A goes into slot B, and if you talk to each other, it's pretty simple to figure out how to excite each other. Money, on the other hand, is another matter. You can spend it, you can invest it, or you can save it, and there are benefits to each action.

Em was a spender; I was an investor. When we married, Em had a station wagon, a ski boat, and a snowmobile, with substantial loans on each. She didn't want to burden her folks with the costs of a wedding, so she went to the bank and borrowed enough cash to buy a nice car to pay for the reception.

I was pained by that lavish reception, but I bit my tongue. You, after all, only get married once, I thought. (I know better, now.) She wanted to live far out in the country, which meant a lot of time and money went into commuting. She smoked 2.5 packs of cigarettes a day, and what's more, she would run out of cigarettes in the middle of the night, and have me drive into town - 17 miles each way - to buy more cigarettes for her.

Planning Ahead

If you smoke more than 7 cartons of cigarettes per month, isn't it reasonable to keep a plentiful supply of cigarettes around the house, so you don't have to waste 45 minutes making a special trip to get more?

Growing up with a farmer for a father, there was "one paycheck a year." Well, not literally, because we'd store some of the harvest on the farm, and only haul to the elevator what we didn't have room to store. Dad rarely sold his grain at harvest time, because that's when prices are lowest. Instead, he'd wait until prices were higher to sell. You aren't likely to get the absolutely best price, but it's highly profitable to hold your corn until March or April to sell it, instead of selling in October when most everyone is harvesting it.

And Mom used similar planning with food. Our pantry had shelves 30" deep, and about 10 feet high, packed solid with food. When peaches were in season, we'd buy a bushel and put them up. We'd buy flour and sugar in the 50-pound bags, which are cheaper, and when soup was on sale, Mom might buy a dozen cans or more.

If You Got 'Em, Smoke 'Em

I'd tried to do the same when I was single. Peanut butter doesn't go bad very quickly, so I'd buy 2 or 3 jars when it was on sale, and I'd buy the cheaper "family pack" of pork chops and repackage it in baggies, freezing most of it. Most people spend more on food than anything else, except possibly their house, so if you can save on your food bill by buying ahead, it makes sense to make that investment.

Of course, when we went shopping for an engagement ring for Em, the salesman tried to convince me to drop a bundle. Diamonds go up in value, regularly, he said. That's because they're controlled by a cartel. A big engagement ring is one of the best investments I could possibly make.

I laughed. How many wives, I asked him, would allow their husbands to pry an engagement ring off their finger, and sell it, simply because the price of diamonds went up? An investment, I told him is when you lay out money today in order to get a return in the future. Stocks are an investment because you plan to sell them when they grow in value. Storm windows are an investment because you get a payback in lower heating costs. A diamond engagement ring? Hah! That's purely an expense.

Em gave me a cold shoulder for three days.

Shrooms. The Edible Kind

When we were shopping for groceries together, Em would say, "Oh, look, mushrooms are 45c a can. They're regularly 54c!" and she'd buy a dozen cans. And then she'd proceed to use up those mushrooms in no time flat.

Her theory was that it was OK to buy luxury foods when they were marked down - but then once they were on the house, those foods instantly became free, because they were paid for. One of the reasons why luxury foods are luxuries, I said, was that you didn't have them very often, and thus they were a special treat. But we ended up eating them twice a day until they were gone, with mushrooms in salads, mushrooms in gravy, mushrooms on hamburgers, breaded french-fried mushrooms. I expected to have mushroom ice cream for dessert.

The Big Guy Whines To Mama

Money was tight, because Em was off work, sick with SLE, and the bills for her treatment were eating us alive. In theory, our insurance was supposed to pay 80% of the bills, but that didn't include gas for driving 200 miles to a specialist, nor the motel room or the restaurant meals coming and going, and when there was a $1000 bill, they'd say $600 was usual, reasonable and customary, and pay $480.

As many nasty things as are said about used car dealers, siding salesmen, cell phone companies, and lawyers, ain't none of them half so bad as health insurance companies. You heard the story about the little kid, at show and tell, that told the other kids that his mother was an exotic dancer, and she often brought home strange men, disappearing into the bedroom with them, and then emerging 20 minutes later with a fist full of cash. The teacher was shocked, and scolded the mother for her behavior, when it came time for parent-teacher conferences. Oh, she said, I'm not a stripper or a whore. He only said that because he's too embarrassed to admit that I work for a health insurance company.

And so, after years of tolerating Em's promiscuity with a checkbook, I sat down with my mother, and asked her what to do. She told me that I needed to ease up, that you can't live strictly on the promise of a better future. All in all, though, it reminded me of the story of the guy who has terminal cancer. He's only going to last another day or two, the doctors said, and you might want to take him home so that he doesn't have to die in a strange bed. His wife spends the next day cleaning the house from top to bottom in preparation for the wake, and the next day cooking. Finally, the guy pleads with his wife, asking if she couldn't just lie with him and hold him for a while. Sure, she says, that's easy enough for you, but I have to get up in the morning!

Cedar Point

I didn't get to go to Cedar Point when I was little; I went once as a teenager. When I was little, though, I went with a cousin to LeSourdsville. All of the good rides, it seemed, had signs saying you have to be this tall to ride - and the line was about an inch above my head. It was cruel, all that fun, and I wasn't allowed to have any of it.

But you know, lovers of each sex call each other "babe", and little kids get picked up and held. If you're little enough, you get to suck teat. There's a break from that, and then it starts again when you're married, but once you get older, that stops again, when the breasts become very tender due to perimenopause, or fibromyalgia. All my life, I've wanted to be older, and when I get there, it doesn't get any better. In theory, being a grandparent is wonderful, as you get to spoil the kids rotten, and feed them full of sugar so they bounce off the walls, and then send them home with their parents. But my son is in Indiana, and his daughter and her kids are in Iowa. I have long arms, but they don't reach that far.

You must be 54" tall to ride this ride - but as Mark Twain said of being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, if it weren't fer the honor of the derned thing, I'd have druther walked.

Peppermint Patty said to Charlie Brown that when you're young, you fall asleep in the back seat on the way home, and when you wake up, you find that you're in your own bed. Getting older, she said, means never getting to ride in the back seat any more. I'm ready for a second childhood, or a third or a fourth; I'm not sure I ever had my first childhood. If only Randy were alive, I'd ask him how to do it. Damn incompetent doctors!

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
8-track - amusement park - Benjamin Button - brake lining - Cedar Point - Charlie Brown - cigarettes - engagement ring - farmer economy - fletcher - grandkids - health insurance - investments - LaSourdsville - luxury foods - Mark Twain - model rocketry - pantry - Peppermint Patty - Ralph Nader - sex - spendthrift - systemic lupus erythematosis - tarred and feathered - toothbrush moustache - tractor - Walter Cronkite