The Old Prof

Why are there so many more horses asses than there are horses?

Sitting in Hometown buffet today, eating and listening to a bunch of really old guys and their wives talking. They eat there every day and every day talk about the most boring stuff I have every heard. If it’s not boring it’s gross. Who wants to listen to a bunch of old duffers talk about their medication or latest operation in disgusting full color and rich detail. I’m not interested in prostate problems over my salad. I’ve thought quite often that when people get really old they lose all sense of proportion and they think because that stuff doesn’t bother them any more it doesn’t bother anyone or if it does, get a life cause old people don’t give a damn. I think they also have lost a lot of hearing acuity because they talk really loud and laugh like jackasses at the most stupid inane jokes I have ever heard and hope to never hear again. How can people live or call it living if that’s the depth of their conversation?

I have been trying to estimate their age for ages now. I looked for the depth of wrinkles, for hair color, their choice of clothes, what they talked about, etc and had them pegged for about 85.

Today one of them in the middle of another story about his uncle Elmer who was an alcoholic and his dad who never finished the third grade, “and dad made him a partner but I dont think he would have ever let him make a decision” and his aunt who apparently took care of him when his mother had his sister and “would you believe it” he had never known that, mentioned that … “and that was the year I graduated from High School” and named the year.

It was the year I graduated from High School. We are the same age. Just shoot me.

Posted by Old Prof at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Prisoner of history

It was probably 1951. Our High School history class was on the third floor of a three story building that my father had also attended. The building was a kind of dirty almost blond brick, one of three that surrounded a dirt, sand and crushed granite, rectangle big enough to play baseball in. We did play baseball there when not playing touch pass on one of the streets that ran around the School. Once in a while a car would come by to slow up our football game but not often. Once in a while in baseball Dean Raynaud or one of his boys would manage to cooperate with a carefully thrown ball and standing almost sideways to the plate pull it enough to hit a window in our History, Biology, Art, Library and District Administration building. Only top athletes could ever pull off that hit though. And only the lucky ever actually broke a window in Mr. Slacks (?) second floor class room Our History teacher, I think it was Bert Asay, a casual, cool sort of guy once told us a story of how during The War (World War II), he was a guard in a camp for German war prisoners in Texas. Ok, it’s been a long time, it could have been our Biology teacher, Frank Whitney, an excellent fellow himself. Bert, I think, talked about how physically fit those Germans were. They could stand flatfooted and jump onto the bed of a flat-bed truck. So… nothing eh? This semester I have in my American History class two married students. The husband is 88 and his wife is 86. This is the second time they have taken a class from me. Excellent students, they consistently are among the top two or three in class. They are a pleasure to talk to and to teach. This week the student newspaper ran an interview with them. It turns out that he is a veteran of World War II. He was a guard at a prison for German veterans of the North Africa campaign. This prisoner of war camp was in Texas. I talked to him about this today. He didn’t recognize either of the pictures I showed him. But he said those Germans, veterans of North Africa, were in far better physical shape than the American soldiers. This whole thing astonishes me but leaves him, you and everyone I mention it to totally unimpressed. How is it possible that this sort of closing of the circle bowls me over and touches no else at all? I must be wired up backwards or something. But I mean, hey! I sat as a student in American History with a man who had served as a guard in the same camp (probably) with another guard who is now sitting in my American History class! Seven hundred miles away and fifty five years from my experience. History doesn’t repeat itself, history teachers repeat themselves, and in a strange way it feels like history has also reversed itself. Well, ok, that doesn’t make sense but it’s impressive to me.

Posted by Old Prof at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)