How things have changed

Older people used to be held in much higher esteem than they are today. We used to look up to them because of the things they had experienced in their lives. We knew they knew so much more about life than we did and we were anxious to learn.

I learned so much from my family when I was young and growing up in Arkansas, especially my Uncle Bill. He taught me just about everything I knew. He would play pitch and catch with me in our back yard for hours on end. He would take me to ball games being played around our area. We usually drove, but sometimes we would hitch-hike because it had been his experience that you meet the most interesting people that way.

People don't do much hitch-hiking any more.

 

We would go fishing at the lake just south of town. Every Sunday afternoon, he would spread a blanket out in the front yard, grab a bunch of leaves from our weeping willow tree and we would count the number of cars that went by on U.S. Highway 64 that ran right in front of our house. I would count the ones going in one direction, he the other direction. This was before the Interstates so everyone going east or west in that part of the state drove by our house. It wasn't unusual at all for people to see us lying on the blanket and stop just to talk.

We had a big house, with three bedrooms downstairs and three more bedrooms upstairs. Sometimes my folks would rent out one or two of the bedrooms upstairs to people who were temporarily stranded because of car trouble or to folks that were just tired.

We didn't have any motels or hotels in my small home town so our upstairs bedrooms were their only choice if they wanted to spend the night in Atkins. At four dollars a night, it was a pretty good deal. The women of the house would cook a huge breakfast every morning and our "roomers," as they were called, were always invited to eat with the family, at no extra charge of course.

Most of them would also spend a couple of hours in our living room the night they stayed, just having conversations with my family, instead of boarding themselves up in their rooms as people tend to do now.

 

I learned a lot from our roomers. We had people from all walks of life that would spend a night or two in our house and, more often than not, they had wonderful stories to tell. We had a few regular roomers, like the traveling salesman who did business with the wholesale company just a half block away or a railroader who would sometimes "lay over" in Atkins just so he could eat my folks' home-cooking.

I didn't know it at the time but I was being given a window to the world that none of the other kids in my home town were getting, because we were the only family who allowed strangers to share our house, our food and our company. To my knowledge, no one ever stole a single thing from our house even though they certainly could have because my folks also sold antiques and they were scattered all over the house. Some of the antique buyers and lookers were fascinating people as well.

 

After Uncle Bill and I would count cars for awhile, we would always walk a mile or two up the train tracks and back, just talking about things. He would tell me story after story and his yarns always enthralled me. He was always there for me and he always supported me. He never missed a baseball game, basketball game, football game, track meet, or band concert that I participated in, no matter where it was. If he couldn't drive, he would get a ride with someone else.

If he couldn't find a ride, he would hitch-hike but he was always there. Every single time. I idolized my Uncle Bill because of his unconditional love for me. He was the kindest, most gentle man I've ever known. He was my hero.

 

In addition to learning from him, I learned from the women in my house as well. We had a huge open air front porch with porch swings at both ends and when the womenfolk would have company, if the weather was nice, everyone would go sit on the front porch.

If I didn't have anything to do, I would go lie on the front porch with my old dog Prince, in front of the two swings that were facing each other. I learned a lot of things about life from my mom, grandmother, aunt and their friends, just lying on the porch listening.

Sometimes they would sit on the porch for hours, talking to Dorothy Wiley and her mother, Miss Ora, from next door, or Ruth Ashmore from down the street, or Aunt Cora from across the tracks. Aunt Cora wasn't really an aunt to any of us, we just called her that.

If we were inside the house and it was on the weekend, I would often be lying on the floor watching ballgames and whenever they played the national anthem, if Aunt Cora was there visiting, she would stop her conversation in mid-sentence, stand up, put her hand over her heart, and sing every word; loud, proud, and strong. Most of what I know about women is a result of all those hours I spent lying on the front porch, listening and learning. In the last few years it has become painfully obvious to me that I didn't learn enough.

 

My folks didn't believe in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, so when my great-grandmother had a stroke when she was 78, we kept her at home with her family instead of shipping her off to strangers. The stroke affected her ability to connect her thoughts to her words so she was unable most of the time to tell us what she was thinking. The process got short-circuited somehow on the trip from her brain to her mouth but we all acted like we knew exactly what she was saying. She was the most beautiful lady, inside and out, I've ever known. I would often sit next to her on the couch and watch her count her fingers; first the fingers on one hand, then the fingers on the other hand, over and over and over.

Occasionally I would say, "Are they all there grandma?" She would always laugh and tell me that she loved me. The other family members never were sure that's what she was saying to me but I was. I knew that's what she was saying by the sparkle in her eyes. She stayed in our home for the next 10 years, being loved, respected, and taken care of by everyone there and giving the same in return until death finally claimed her.

 

My mom and dad moved to Tulsa when I was in elementary school so my mom could take a professional modeling job. After a lot of thought and discussion, the decision was made that I should stay in Atkins with the rest of the family because they didn't want me growing up in a large city. (I heard them talking a lot about this decision to be made in muffled whispers after I would go to bed every night.

You know, the kind of talk adults have when they don't think the kids are listening, even though the kids almost always are. There's nothing that will get a kid's attention faster than low voices and whispers. We automatically know they're talking about things they don't want us to hear.)

Things worked out OK though. They came home about every weekend and my dad never missed a football game I played in four years, regardless of where it was being played. Sometimes, because of his job, he would make the three or four hour drive, get there right around kick-off, spend a few minutes with me after the game, and then turn around and drive back to Oklahoma that night. But he always came.

 

I tell this personal story because it doesn't seem that things are like that anymore, at least for a lot of families. It doesn't seem that young people have the same respect and the desire to learn from their elders the way I did mine.

Maybe technology is the reason for that. Young people today know so much more than I did when I was their age that maybe they don't think the older generation has anything to teach them that they don't already know. I think they would be surprised and rewarded if they gave the older people in their lives a chance but maybe those days are gone forever.

Maybe the days of keeping the old and the infirmed at home with us and taking care of them is a thing of the past as well. I remember my aunt and grandmother telling me that the reason they kept my great-grandmother at home instead of institutionalizing her was because she had taken care of them when they were young and couldn't take care of themselves and now that she was old and couldn't take care of herself, it was their turn. That made such sense to me then and it still does.

 

But I guess life is just too fast in today's modern world. People always have places they need to go and things they need to do and they just don't have the time anymore to learn from their elders and to take care of them and love them when they get to the point that they can no longer take care of themselves.

We hear so much from the mass media these days about the need to eat healthy and act healthy. We're constantly bombarded by the media and the drug companies about all the different medications that can make us feel better and all the declarations from people who say they don't want to die from cervical cancer or breast cancer or diabetes or a thousand other illnesses and maladies.

But, in spite of the health kick we're on, older people will continue to have debilitating illnesses or just get old. When they do, far too often, they're shipped off to be warehoused by strangers and given the opportunity to play the cymbal in the rhythm band again, just like they did when they were in third grade. And, in spite of everything being done to keep us alive, where the focus is almost always on quantity of life rather than quality of life, we will still all die.

 

But it's not the dying that's important, you know. It's the living.