Seventy Eight

      More Letters From Paradise
           Seventy-Eight
I realize that seventy-eight isn't old,if you are a tree. But that is the life expectancy age for the U.S. So here I am, and happy to be. But inside there is a forty year old screaming to get out.
This past Sunday I was feted by a number of my friends at the Honolulu Polo Club. The club furnished two bottles of champagne and a cake. I was given the honor to throw out the ball for the first chukker (seven minute playing period.) And as it is so often written,"a good time was had by all."

Old age is not for sissies. Everything sometimes hurts, and what does not hurt, does not work so well either. You find that you have more doctors than you have friends.

I was born in 1936, during the "Great Depression." FDR's "New Deal" was slowly chasing away the problems of the time, but the attack on Pearl Harbor was just around the corner. There was no television, refrigerators, or micro-waves.
In the Summer we all feared catching Polio. Our President Roosevelt was crippled by it.  People never locked their doors at night. Armies of boys played "kick the can" under the street light, until they were called home to bed.

The arrival of the ice delivery truck was always welcome. Often there were ice chips he couldn't use. Most people in our neighborhood heated their homes with coal. The coal truck backed up to each house and sent its discharge roaring into the basement. This explained why there were small black dots decorating area snow.And I will forever remember the deep quiet of any night, the silence broken only by a passing car.

        Aloha
        Grant