Year 66

I entered into age 66, if I remember right, about 5am today while sound (sort-of) asleep.  My mother, 66 years ago, probably wasn’t asleep then, and neither were Dr. K.A. Bush or his nurse wife Jenny.  They tell me, and I have the x ray to show it, that I was born with an enlarged thymus gland in my neck that was compromising my ability to breathe.  In that era, the accepted treatment was radiation therapy, which I had.  It was a not-uncommon thing to have done then, although that treatment was discontinued in the 1960’s.  Luckily, I have no known bad effects from that treatment, and I have lived to see age 66.  I’ve also, because I was born in 1949, seen at least portions of 8 decades.

So, today is a day of celebration.  A celebration of life and living, and of the gracious provision of God in giving me moment-by-moment life for these years.  I don’t feel older or slower.  But I know that, compared with 20 years ago, there are things I can’t do as well and there are things I’ll not do anymore.  And that’s entirely OK, because there are things I can and am doing now that I couldn’t do 20 years ago due to not having the maturity to do them, or at least do them well.

We celebrated the day, my wife and I, low-key.  Starting out at about 7:30am, we got up and around, got rid of some of the aches and kinks from the night, and went to breakfast at the Town & Country Restaurant.

Town & Country is really a kind of a throwback to an earlier time when the intersection of Kellogg and I 235 was pretty much out in the country…or at least on the edge of the city.  Before Towne West went in, the restaurant was attached to and part of a motel that stretched for a block or more back toward where the mall now is.  The lanes were tree-lined, and if you got a room toward the back, it was quiet there.  I stayed there and ate there in the early 1970’s when I worked for the 3M Company, which had an office to the west of the motel (where Verizon is now).

Side note.  I was in the Verizon place not long ago.  I told the sales person there that I worked out of that building over 40 years ago before the age of cell phones and Internet…the person looked at me like I was rather ancient, which I was compared to her.

Back to the present.  Breakfast, after being seated by Larry Conover, the owner, was two large pancakes and three eggs over medium.  I should have listened to the waitress more carefully when she asked me if I was sure I wanted two cakes…I ate only about ½ of those two.  I should have ordered just one.  But they were good…didn’t have a lot of salt in the batter, and were hot.  The plate was also warm, and so was the syrup.  And they served real butter with them.  The wife had a half-order of biscuits and gravy, which also were pretty good.  Coffee for her; decaf for me.  She brought pots for both.

I noticed while there that there were no young waitresses there.  All the ones I saw had some, um, maturity about them.  The youngest looked to be about 35.  The oldest probably was a Social Security recipient.  That’s normal, though for the T & C.  The wait staff does a good job, seems to work well together, and has things under control.

As we were leaving, I noticed some old men sitting at the end of the counter.  They were probably regulars because they were on a first-name basis with each other and with the waitress…who also knew them and bantered with them for a bit.  One of the men asked the waitress how much she would charge for an order of bacon and an order of toast.  She replied right away with the prices, an estimate of the tax, and an estimated total that was pretty close…something most (by far) wait people in other places could no more do than they could fly.

More next time.