Tag: Grindrod

As a guy who’s tried to support local business whenever possible, when some health adversity arose a year ago after years of battling prostate issues, something that afflicts so many men as they age, I decided to stay with our local docs.

I’m thankful that now in my 70s, I’m still able to work. I find that work provides the frame within which other parts of life neatly fits. For one thing, I surely appreciate the human interaction as I work, since my roomie Alexa isn’t really much of a conversationalist after she gives me weather and an occasional sports score.

Now that winter’s behind us, I got to thinking about how the season began. For me, always a lover of travel, a great time to get away is between Christmas and New Year’s, just right for heading in a southerly direction with my trusty navigator Lady Jane. Over time, I’ve traveled, borrowing a movie title, in trains, planes and automobiles, but I think road trips are my favorite. There’s never an extra charge for a second bag tossed in the trunk, and the seats are much wider.

Well, the great shroud has finally been lifted with our shift back to daylight savings time, and to that, I will shout to the highest reaches of our celestial ceilings, “Hallelujah!”

There is, of course, an anthology of jokes about fishermen and their wives. And, while some jokes diminish the importance of a wife relative to the importance of hauling in a nice small mouth bass, if you asked one of our area’s premier reservoir fishermen about his wife of 20 years, Steve Contini might just say if asked what the best catch of his life was, that would be his wife, Tina.

Of course, every leap year is a unique one, and every four years when one arrives, I have the same thoughts about that extra day we’re granted. Certainly, one thought is how short it seems since the last February 29. The celerity with which time passes, no doubt, is a thought that I think predominates those who’ve been blessed with senior days.

We change as we age, and I’m not just talking about the sad manifestations of physical aging. As for the changes physically, well, while we don’t recognize those changes day in and day out as we gaze into the bathroom mirror each morning to begin our hygienic ritual, we certainly do when riffling through old photos of us from decades ago which prove that things aren’t as they once were.

For those of us who’ve been granted the gift of more time here on earth than was afforded to so many others, we often think of the changes that have occurred during our lives. We have seen so very much in terms of technological advances.

In 1986, the musical group Timbuk3 scored its biggest hit with the song “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.” If an historic building can be personified, it could be said that the St. Marys Theater and Opera House not only has a venerable past but also a future bright enough to require sunglasses.

As still a part of the work world, I see my share of people pretty much every day in the buildings I’m working, in the occasional hotels in which I stay and in the places I grab a bite, in addition to those I pass when I’m not working. While observing my fellow men and women and their actions, I’ve taken note of some things that may carry a larger message.