~by Mark Blackwell
They say that getting old beats the alternative. Who are “they” anyway? I don’t have any idea. But I reckon that will just have to be accepted, mainly due to a scarcity of reports from the “great beyond.” However, the idea of a great beyond makes me think it might be like Brown County.
Maybe it is kinda like going to sleep and waking up by a little stream in a shady holler. The weather is perfect and there ain’t any ticks or chiggers or skeeters, or none of that sort of orneriness. And you see before you a majestic ridge populated with a variety of mature trees and a winding path leading to the crest. And you set out to climb that ridge to see what is beyond.
The ridge is high, but the air is sweet and the path is easy. After stopping to smell the flowers, pick ripe blackberries, and taking time to enjoy the call of a finely tuned wood thrush, you arrive at the top. And there, across another deep holler, you see another tall ridge. The view is spectacular.
On you go, through more shady hollers with beautiful brooks and more high, verdant ridges, enjoying a perfect endless afternoon (or morning or evening. I’ll leave the preference up to the reader’s imagination). The path seems endless.
As Abe Martin might say. “It’s sum travelin’ ta git ta the other side.” But, somehow, you know the path ultimately leads to “Peaceful Valley.”
If you live long enough you wind up getting old. And while old age has its share of downsides, like all the stuff that was your grandparent’s favorite discussion topics. You know, stuff like: Whatever they were currently suffering from including but not limited to, aches, pains, undiagnosable symptoms, and all the ways that “things” are going to hell. But there are some good things about being old. I count retirement right up at the top of the list. Retirement gives you two of the best things a person can have: freedom from other folks telling you what to do, and time. Being retired, you gain a minimum of forty hours a weeks, more if you factor in commuting.
So, what do you do with all of this newfound time? Anything you want to.
Hobbies are always a good bet for folks that worry about idle hands. I know folks that like to fool around in their wood shops and folks that spend time on cars—sometimes for fun, and sometimes just to keep them going.
But I find it nice just to sit back and reminisce. Reminiscing is pretty much just putting all the memories you’ve made over your lifetime to good use.
I believe that there are four kinds of memories. There are happy memories, sad memories, bad memories, and functional memories.
Happy memories are the ones about falling in love, good camping trips, that time you won the lottery, events like that. I will skip over sad and bad memories because they are not beneficial to good reminiscing. Functional memories are necessary for life itself. Functional memories are everyday things, like your wife’s birthday, and when to do an oil change, and paying the electric bill. Sometimes, I functionally reminisce standing in the kitchen, about what it was that I came in there for.
Memory is a wonderful thing. I read where Sherlock Holmes constructed a “memory palace” in his mind. It was a place of multiple rooms where he could organize and store his thoughts and memories. And then by visiting the palace he could go to a particular room and retrieve a selected memory.
I attempted something similar one time but the best I could muster was a rusting, lop-sided, singlewide trailer, where I would periodically dump piles of random Kodachrome slides and some disorganized, undecipherable notebooks. A bad feature of this system is the irretrievability of any specific thing in a timely manner. However, even if I consciously cancel the request for said information, the task lives on in my subconscious.
Then, in the deep of night or in the middle of an unrelated conversation, the word, the name, the thought I had previously wanted, forces itself into my awareness in the spirit of “better late than never.” I find this to be annoying and relieving at the same time. I’m totally miffed at not being able to recall the information immediately but relieved to get it at all. But even this has its upside.
That is the unbidden appearance of random thoughts and memories, sometimes even a philosophical question that you sidelined a long time ago. One of those thoughts came up just the other day. For some reason or another I wanted to know how old Abe Martin is, but I couldn’t remember or work out the math.
I recalled memories (happy) of his One Hundredth Birthday celebration. It was held at the Brown County Inn. I remember it because I was in a group back then called “The Lost Shoe String Band” and we got invited to play for the soiree (that’s wingding, for some of you). That was back in the spring of 2004.
There was a whole passel of Brown County friends and characters attending and performing. My friend Slats Klug was there along with Robbie Bowden and John Franz. They are gone, but they live on in my memories. I guess there is one more sort of memory: bittersweet.
So come on down to beautiful Brown County and make some memories before you get too old and forgetful.
Oh, I never did remember why I wanted to know how old Abe Martin is.