
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, December 27, 1993                   TAG: 9312280246
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GROWING OLD SURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE

I always thought growing old would be like it was when I was young, when everybody - whether they believed it or not - said that Grandpa's age made him wiser.

I now believe that most younger people think Grandpa's age has made him dumber. This is almost certainly true, but it's hard to take.

The symptoms are all there. This country stands on the verge of an old-codger-bashing era that will make the glass ceiling for female persons seem like fair play.

We may return in the customs of some Native Americans who used to leave old people behind to die, I think, in the snow. There was no chance for a retirement-home industry to flourish in that culture.

(Incidentally, I have always thought of myself as a Native American - having been born in Staunton, which has been in America for a long time. The same goes for Woodrow Wilson, who was born under much better circumstances some blocks away. But let that go. We've got enough trouble.)

People my age listen to the wind too much at night, but there is subtle evidence that we are being held in less esteem.

The other day, for example, I asked my only begotten son to check the air pressure in the tires of the revered Cherokee.

I have seen a lot of scornful glances in my time, but his look took me back to 1945 and 1st Sgt. Ernest B. Schnook.

I know it's stupid for an old man to ask someone else to check the air in his tires, but I have psychological problems with air pressure - which goes back to my childhood, when old people weren't mistreated.

I once over-inflated a bicycle tire, and it blew off the rim. All of this powder blew into my face, and I couldn't hear.

I rolled in panic and agony on the concrete at the filling station and - although the explosion blew my glasses off - I could see all of the filling station's good ole boys in residence laughing and slapping their thighs.

I couldn't survive something like that in public again - although you don't see many filling stations or good ole boys anymore.

I will continue to monitor this movement and may report here periodically.

You shouldn't be surprised, however, to hear that I have been abandoned in the snow.

by CNB