Old men
There is a hole in my heart in the shape of an old man
No. 144: Old men
Based on a brief attempt at self-psychoanalysis, I’ve come to believe I have an unusual fondness for old men.
The source is rather easy to see. I never, in practice, had a grandfather.
On mother’s side, my grandad passed away in a hunting accident before I could know him. On father’s side, my abuelito lives Mexico, so I only see him here and there, and while I love him and his striking resemblance to Walt Disney, there is a language barrier and an emotional distance that I’m sure my father experienced, too.
Growing up, this potentially missing aspect of my family life was occasionally filled by encounters with distant relatives and the grandfathers of other kids. I remember grandpa Garrity, who everyone called Grandpa—even my parents—a World War II veteran and Redwings fan who always wore the hat of the Navy ship on which he served. I remember an older uncle of mine, whose name I can’t remember, who’d show me the bench in his garage where he hand-loaded shotgun shells for duck hunts. I remember Baba, the after-school caretaker of the Garrity’s who lived nextdoor to us and who was originally from somewhere in eastern Europe. His accent was strong, his house smelled like sauerkraut, and whenever we would roll down the windows in the backseat of his car in stick our body parts out, he told us about a boy he knew in his home country that was beheaded in the same way. It was a fictional story—I hope.
Those who grew up with grandfathers can verify or disprove, but I suspect it’s not necessarily love and affection we look for in the old man, but the stories they have to tell, the skills they’ve mastered, and the experiences they’ve lived. It’s their general and sturdy old manness. They are relics from times past. Their ways are not our ways—which by the way, are ridiculous and backwards malarky. They reminisce about how things used to be done, and in many cases, their logic is bulletproof. They have magical skills like operating a lathe, building a radio that can communicate with France, or modifying a V8 that will drop the panties of your date and any nearby environmentalists.
This is cool. These man have stories. These men are stories. Very often, they have a sense of decorum and respect and honor and tradition. They are not islands of themselves but are connected to their parents, and their own grandparents, which brings my contemplating mind even further back in time and makes me look at my bespectacled elders with yet another layer of fascination. A dramatic or action-filled life story is not required. It is enough to know these men were once not-old. They were boys, teenagers, young adults. When I watch old documentaries, I like to look into the background to see the people, cars, birds, trees, houses that are being unsuspectingly caught on film. It’s these innocents, not the heroic or extraordinary subject being filmed, that make up the sacred, everyday life of a place and time foreign to me. In these old men, I come close to those worlds.
So it makes sense that I don’t shy away from old men or carry an feelings of superiority over them, which seems to be happening more and more in today’s deracinated, “progress”-is-everything age. As I pursue different skills and join various communities, that 90% of the participants are old men is a feature not a bug to me. In the past, I liked to buy and wrench on cars from the 1960s. Everyone knows the old guy in cargo shorts, New Balance tennis shoes, and mid-calf white socks that can turn a shitbox into a rocketship with his occult knowledge of internal combustion engines. As a cyclist, I rolled with retired dentists and the likes, and was taught the ins-and-outs of the hobby and eventually how to fly past them up and down hills. As a new recruit on the St. Mary Catholic Church safety and security team, I was welcomed as the youngest member (I’m 30), and gladly. Most recently, I became licensed as a HAM radio operator. I’m not sure if it’s coincidental that most radio operators are older men or indicative of my earlier point that they are often few still-living craftsmen. In any case, many of my fellow operators are older, and I’m glad to join their ranks, learn from them, and do what I can to introduce younger people to the world of the hands-on, practical activities that have been replaced by Fortnite, Minecraft, and Call of Duty®: Warzone™. Indeed, it is possible to build things in the physical world, too.
Yesterday I posted a pair of skis for free on an online marketplace, and the guy that came to pick them up was a fellow HAM operator and ex-police officer. (My wife makes fun of me for often making friends with people I deal with on Facebook Marketplace. In the absence of the real and social marketplaces of the past, why shouldn’t we befriend our local buyers and sellers?) We talked in my driveway for 30 minutes about radio stuff, and he invited me to join a local radio club I’d heard of a few times before. They meet for breakfast, and he softly warned me:
“Most of the guys are 65 plus. You’ll definitely be one of the youngest guys, if you’re okay with that.”
I told him I assumed as much and there was no problem.
And it’s true. Why would there be a problem?
Knowing I’m out of my depth in terms of relating on an age-basis to the group, I will happily take my seat at a roundtable of old men to see what sort of conversations might take place between a fumbling dingdong (me) and men that have more than double years-spent-on-Earth points. Besides, when a young man sits at a table like that, I’ve seen old men become fascinated in a similar way. They have made, perhaps correctly, the assumption that they are no longer part of the world in a meaningful way, and by popular decree, they shall live out the remainder of their years amongst their own. They look at each other and ask, “Did the kid get lost? Is he confused? Is he looking for a different group?”
No. I have intentionally come. And somehow, despite my little experience and a highly-questionable intellect, they find something valuable and enriching in me. ♦
I'm lucky on both fronts. I am a grandfather to 2 girls and a boy, aged 5-17, all of them are wonderful, and I enjoy spending quality time with each of them.
I was lucky to get to know my grandfathers (and grandmothers) because when I was 9 my parents in NZ separated and when I was 11, I was sent to Holland to live with one set of grandparents, and I went to see the other set for a weekend each fortnight for a couple of years.
It's a shame you missed having a close relationship with your grandfathers, Matt. It's not just what they have experienced, but its also the quality time with people who spend time with you because they want to, and in most cases have no real responsibility for you. One grandfather taught me to fish, collect stamps, the rules of football, and the meaning of being head of the family. The other was much older and had been a lecturer on music, composers and history. I didn't understand half of what he was telling me, as I was too young, but the fact that he wanted to tell me, and spend time with me, was the gift. Neither of them told me that much of their history, because it was coloured by the stresses of staying alive and keeping the family safe during 5 years of WWII and the memories of living in an occupied country were very painful. The real gift was simply being loved unconditionally by people who cared. I only had them in my life for the couple of years when I lived with them, they had passed away by the time I returned as an adult. But the quality time was a treasure.