Segment of Old Folks
“This is an old folks home?” I said.
Harriet shook her head and clucked. She has been shaking her head and clucking at me for the fifty-eight years of our marriage. “Retirement home, Henry.”
She gazed up at the 20-story high rise while I drove the car through a circular drive to the porteco-chere where a young man in a blue-shirted uniform hurried from the podium where he’d been standing, and opened the passenger side door. The pin on his shirt read “Phillip, Valet.”
I’m always wary of parking valets. They gun your car, the tires screeching as they careen off to the place where they back it in at 75 miles-an-hour, missing a back wall by a millimeter.
Another valet emerged, opened the door on my side and handed me a ticket. Big smile. “Welcome to Restful Bowers. When you’re ready to leave, call down and we’ll have your car ready.”
We were here to look over the place Harriet had found in a full page newspaper ad. The enticing spread showed a group of handsome, grinning silver-haired men and women, obviously models, sitting on deck chairs sipping drinks. “A place to spend your golden years in luxury and dignity!” Translation: Buy in and we’ll house you, feed you, and change your Depend® diapers until they box you.
Golden years. Ha!
I was eighty-one and Harriet was seventy-seven. Our “golden years” were a tarnished green. In the past ten years, several of my organs been surgically removed for a variety of reasons, and it now took me fifteen minutes to get out of bed each morning with some guy driving a harpoon into my lower back. I could read War and Peace while I stood at the toilet bowl each morning waiting for my diuretic to kick in.
Harriet was healthy but had gotten to the point where she was losing her glasses every other day, and twice that I can recall, had put her car keys in the refrigerator.
Golden years my ass.
A seventy-ish man in plaid shorts, a bag of golf clubs slung over his shoulder, came through the ornate front door handing the golf bag to a valet who stashed it in the trunk of a Cadillac parked partway through the circular drive. The man waved at the valet saying “Thank you, Sam.” He then drove off.
The guy was obviously a shill the management trotted out when the marketing department was expecting a prospective inmate/resident.
I stood staring at the building. This was an old folks—pardon me— retirement home? Where was the wrap-around porch with a gaggle of toothless crocks, rocking in creaky chairs, humming tunelessly to themselves? Where were the hovering nurses holding drinking straws to the mouths of the wrinkled fossils? Where were the canes and walkers and wheelchairs parked against the wall? The old men playing checkers?
Harriet and I entered the lobby where a concierge behind a marbled counter asked us to sign in as Visitors. We told her we had an appointment with Betty, a marketing person.
“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a pair of easy chairs on the other side of the lobby. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
Ten minutes later, a smiling young woman, probably in her thirties, bounced over to us, hand outstretched.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Callins. I’m Betty and I’ll be your marketing representative.”
She was an attractive brunette wearing slacks and a flowered blouse.
“I’ll give you a tour of our wonderful facilities. I’ve arranged for you to have a delicious lunch when we’re through with our business.”
She kept up an endless chatter en route to the elevators. Most of her sentences included the words “wonderful” or “we’re excited by…” or “you’ll just love.”. Her sales pitch made your average car salesman sound like a killjoy.
“Coming through!” The shout from behind us had me clinging to the side rail which ran the length of the corridor. A moment later, a woman hunched over the handlebars of a motorized wheelchair whizzed by at eighty miles per hour.
“Hi Mrs. Parker.” yelled Betty.
Mrs. Parker was well out of earshot by this time. Of course, “earshot” could have been inches from her ears stuffed with hearing aides.
“And this is one of our card rooms,” said Betty as we went by a room with four or five card tables. At each table were white-haired or bald men and women, silently squinting over their cards. They could have been mannequins or even corpses in perpetual rigor mortis. Museum statues made more movements.
Harriet’s eyes bulged in excitement. “Are there many bridge players here?” She wouldn’t miss her Thursday bridge club if she’d had to leave me lying comatose on the floor at home.
“Practically everybody plays,” said Betty. “Bridge, mahjong, canasta, bingo, lotto, poker. You name it.”
I gazed around looking for the roulette, crap tables and slot machines.
Harriet shook her head and clucked. She has been shaking her head and clucking at me for the fifty-eight years of our marriage. “Retirement home, Henry.”
She gazed up at the 20-story high rise while I drove the car through a circular drive to the porteco-chere where a young man in a blue-shirted uniform hurried from the podium where he’d been standing, and opened the passenger side door. The pin on his shirt read “Phillip, Valet.”
I’m always wary of parking valets. They gun your car, the tires screeching as they careen off to the place where they back it in at 75 miles-an-hour, missing a back wall by a millimeter.
Another valet emerged, opened the door on my side and handed me a ticket. Big smile. “Welcome to Restful Bowers. When you’re ready to leave, call down and we’ll have your car ready.”
We were here to look over the place Harriet had found in a full page newspaper ad. The enticing spread showed a group of handsome, grinning silver-haired men and women, obviously models, sitting on deck chairs sipping drinks. “A place to spend your golden years in luxury and dignity!” Translation: Buy in and we’ll house you, feed you, and change your Depend® diapers until they box you.
Golden years. Ha!
I was eighty-one and Harriet was seventy-seven. Our “golden years” were a tarnished green. In the past ten years, several of my organs been surgically removed for a variety of reasons, and it now took me fifteen minutes to get out of bed each morning with some guy driving a harpoon into my lower back. I could read War and Peace while I stood at the toilet bowl each morning waiting for my diuretic to kick in.
Harriet was healthy but had gotten to the point where she was losing her glasses every other day, and twice that I can recall, had put her car keys in the refrigerator.
Golden years my ass.
A seventy-ish man in plaid shorts, a bag of golf clubs slung over his shoulder, came through the ornate front door handing the golf bag to a valet who stashed it in the trunk of a Cadillac parked partway through the circular drive. The man waved at the valet saying “Thank you, Sam.” He then drove off.
The guy was obviously a shill the management trotted out when the marketing department was expecting a prospective inmate/resident.
I stood staring at the building. This was an old folks—pardon me— retirement home? Where was the wrap-around porch with a gaggle of toothless crocks, rocking in creaky chairs, humming tunelessly to themselves? Where were the hovering nurses holding drinking straws to the mouths of the wrinkled fossils? Where were the canes and walkers and wheelchairs parked against the wall? The old men playing checkers?
Harriet and I entered the lobby where a concierge behind a marbled counter asked us to sign in as Visitors. We told her we had an appointment with Betty, a marketing person.
“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a pair of easy chairs on the other side of the lobby. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
Ten minutes later, a smiling young woman, probably in her thirties, bounced over to us, hand outstretched.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Callins. I’m Betty and I’ll be your marketing representative.”
She was an attractive brunette wearing slacks and a flowered blouse.
“I’ll give you a tour of our wonderful facilities. I’ve arranged for you to have a delicious lunch when we’re through with our business.”
She kept up an endless chatter en route to the elevators. Most of her sentences included the words “wonderful” or “we’re excited by…” or “you’ll just love.”. Her sales pitch made your average car salesman sound like a killjoy.
“Coming through!” The shout from behind us had me clinging to the side rail which ran the length of the corridor. A moment later, a woman hunched over the handlebars of a motorized wheelchair whizzed by at eighty miles per hour.
“Hi Mrs. Parker.” yelled Betty.
Mrs. Parker was well out of earshot by this time. Of course, “earshot” could have been inches from her ears stuffed with hearing aides.
“And this is one of our card rooms,” said Betty as we went by a room with four or five card tables. At each table were white-haired or bald men and women, silently squinting over their cards. They could have been mannequins or even corpses in perpetual rigor mortis. Museum statues made more movements.
Harriet’s eyes bulged in excitement. “Are there many bridge players here?” She wouldn’t miss her Thursday bridge club if she’d had to leave me lying comatose on the floor at home.
“Practically everybody plays,” said Betty. “Bridge, mahjong, canasta, bingo, lotto, poker. You name it.”
I gazed around looking for the roulette, crap tables and slot machines.
