Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
After we’d had our coffee and pie and introduced ourselves, I read a story about the “good old days,” and, perhaps, how they weren’t all that great. Our discussion soon involved cars and the weather, even presidents, and my longtime friend, Wendell Adams, who happens to live there, mentioned that Woodrow Wilson was in office when he was born. Wendell is more than a few days past 90, but even he had to take a back seat to fellow resident Elmo Bradley, who was about to turn 100; he was around when William Howard Taft was still in the White House.
Although Wendell and Elmo and the others in that room could have supplied me with more than enough information for a story, it wasn’t their remarkable lives that interested me as much as the labels so many of us — the “middle-aged” included — put on such folks. After meeting and talking with those “experienced” gentlemen, I’ll tell you this: We need to redefine what “assisted” living means.
This being a mean political season and all, I know I take a great chance in alienating readership if I lean one way or the other on the issues, but I want to make a point. President Obama recently stepped into hot water when he told a group in Roanoke, Va., that they alone had not started their own businesses. I have read the president’s comments in full context, and he said in virtually the same breath, “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
I couldn’t agree more, and to take the point a step further, I’d point out that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney told Winter Olympic athletes in Salt Lake City 10 years ago something along the same line. He said, “You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters, or brothers encouraged your hopes. Coaches guided; communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities.”
We all are products of “assisted living,” and to think that we will never need it — nor ever had any help in what we will accomplish or have already done in life — is unrealistic. I have mentioned comments before from historian David McCullough, who once said there are “no self-made men,” but in these chest-thumping, “everybody-listen-to-me” times, many of us seem to be forgetting that.
My brother, John, hasn’t forgotten. As I work at a snail’s pace on a new book this summer, I have asked both John and my sister, Lora, to help me remember things from our childhoods. When I asked John about his first car — a rather sleek, two-tone 1958 Mercury Montego — he remembered that despite his best efforts to keep it running, the car finally gave up the ghost and he was left sorely in need of transportation. He was working, as I discovered years later, not only to buy a few of the things a teenager wanted, but also to help my parents out in tough economic times.
My dad found another very used car for my brother in Clinton, and my mom took John to see it. Like the Merc, the poor thing was pretty well worn out, too, and John knew he would probably be trading one bucket of troubles for another. But when my Mom told a salesman named Louie Rendaci at Mike’s Motors about how hard John was working, Louie told my brother that he shouldn’t buy that old car, but rather get a new one, a tan Plymouth Duster he had sitting on his lot.
“He asked how much money I had,” John told me, “then he left for a little while. When he came back, he told me that I was to go up the block to the Clinton State Bank and sign the papers for the car. I don’t know what he did, but the bank loaned me the money without any adult’s signature. It cost $297 down and $63 a month for three years.”
John told me that now, more than 40 years later, he still recalls what Louie did. “I still get a little emotional every time I think about what he did for me. He said that I worked hard and needed good transportation, and I deserved it. I never wanted to break the trust he put in me.”
Jeff Huxford hasn’t forgotten what assisted living is, either. A doctor of family medicine who now lives in northern Indiana, Jeff once sat in my classroom, his family dear friends of ours. In early April, Jeff’s pick-up truck was broadsided at a busy intersection only a few blocks from his home. He was airlifted to a Chicago hospital and, when stabilized, began a grueling and frustrating series of rehabilitations that now, four months later, have him back home with his wife and two children. He hopes to return to his medical practice soon.
Although Jeff has been gone from our little community for years now, many of his friends haven’t forgotten him. Knowing he would need to continue to pay bills and meet expenses, they organized a benefit dinner and silent auction at our local firehouse. Over 500 people came on a sweltering Saturday night to eat spaghetti, raising more than $10,000 for Jeff in those few short hours. Over the course of the toughest weeks of Jeff’s recovery, there were prayer vigils, T-shirt sales, and hundreds and hundreds of get-well cards and phone calls and visits. Jeff is a stubborn, hard-working young man, and I know much of what he has done he has done on his own, but he knows he’s had a lot of help, too.
“You don’t realize how many lives you’ve impacted, how many people you’ve helped in some small way, until something like this brings it back to you,” Jeff said. “So many people wanted to do something for me. It was humbling.”
We need to forget the notion that assisted living is just for “old folks.” We all have had it, and we all are in need of it.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by email at hickory913@aol.com, or c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. He is currently working on his fourth book.
Mike Lunsford
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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