By Ken Hamilton
I am not old yet, but I am getting there I am old enough know though, that much of what I know comes from talking with old people. Notice that I said ‘with,’ and not ‘to.’
While the walls of their wells of knowledge may not be as well constructed as mine, and the depths of my knowledge indeed reaches that cool trickle of truth that runs through the core of most things, old folks’ well walls, though shabby, they reach all the way down to where the cool, clear, unchanging waters of life run — water far more mineral rich and sweeter than mine. I enjoy drinking from their wooden buckets and tin cups.
But lately I have noticed that as I get older, I am beginning to understand some things about old folks that I either did not know or believe before. While experience is always best second hand, sometimes we have to painfully find things out for ourselves.
I am going to show my age now and ask how many of you remember the old Slipko’s Food King on Main Street. I do. I was a stock boy there when I was in high school, and it was a fine store. It was in that store that I decided to go ahead and join the Navy, but that’s another story. What made Slipko’s a wonderful place, in my opinion was Jerry Slipko, one of the finest humans that ever walked the earth. Given a choice, though, between shopping at the old Slipko’s or the Tops Market down the street, I always chose Tops. But, when talking to old folks, they always said that they preferred Slipko’s. Over time, I asked several old people why they preferred Slipko’s. Most of them said, “Tops is too big.”
I would argue that it is impossible for a store to be too big. Tops had a breath and depth of product selection that put Slipko’s to shame. How could anyone complain about having too many choices? And then one day I slipped on the ice at work and pulled the tendon in my ankle. My nephews Billy and Isaac did a great job at taking care of their disabled uncle, but the conservative in my told me that I would have to resume taking care of my as soon as I could. And I did. So, while on a cane, I went off to Tops to do my own shopping. I usually buy the same things — a few bananas, seeded Italian bread, Jif peanut butter, Tops’ strawberry jam, Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and 2 percent milk. I took a little break after I got the bananas and bread, and rested again after I got the peanut butter and jam. I was slowing up pretty good by the time I selected the cereal and by the time that I got to the milk, I was in pain. As I paid for my products at the cash register, I muttered to the young cashier, “This store is too big,” and hobbled out with my purchases.
Since then, I have torn cartilage in one knee, and then in the other; and then in the first knee again, and found it easier, though more expensive, to just shop at a Wilson Farms, or something. Quite often at the Wilson Farms that sits between Tops and the old Slipko’s — which was just about the right size.
I write this column today, instead of the one about my 30 years if sobriety, or the new black motorcycle club, or the city’s lack of including additional funds for the library system, or the unfunded new basketball courts because once again I find myself injured and understanding old folks.
As a young man, I wondered why old folks drove so slowly. “Somebody ought to take their licenses away from them,” I often muttered, as I sped past them and into the waiting radar beam of some unseen police car. From time to time I thought that I came to my senses and accepted that old folks got that old by driving that slow. But, maybe that’s not so.
I needed one of those neck massaging pillows and to talk to Scott, the pharmacist, about my condition. With the roadwork that is being done between the Rite-Aid drug store and my home, and with my back, neck and shoulders feeling like all of my enemies have finally made peace with me and had buried their hatchets in those body parts, I found myself driving very slowly and carefully down the streets. Old folks complain about their aches and pains, and I now know what they are talking about. Coming out of the driveway, I had to turn my wheels in one direction to see if it was clear to leave, and then in the other direction to go. And every bump, crack, rise and fall in the road made my neck feel as if there was a construction crew in it. After about the ninth painful cringe, I think that I came to realize that old folks drive that way because it hurts not to drive that way.
It hurts us, and our society, when we don’t do a lot of things that old folks do.
Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at kenhamilton930@aol.com.
