Congratulate me! I crossed a great divide this week. I’ve achieved another “Big O”! I turned sixty!
In the past, I have dreaded certain “ages”. Believe it or not, I was depressed when I turned twenty. Life was great, right on target, but the teenage years were no more. Looking back, my teenage years weren’t for the most part that great, though I will say they ended better than they began.
I found thirty depressing, as I felt I had achieved everything I had set out to do in life to that point. Though gratifying, I wondered what I would do with the rest of my life. The obvious answer was to set new goals and work toward them. I’m still setting goals, still working on them.
Thirty-three was troubling, for—do the math—thirty-three, sixty-six, ninety-nine—probably more than a third of my life was over. How would the world be a better place for the life I’d lived?
Toward the end of this troubling time of life, I met that woman to which I would become “bound” in the holy “bonds” of matrimony. I’ve never had time to worry about my age since. I’m just amazed at the end of every day that I’m still among the living. That would be one of the goals I set and work on daily.
I would like to blame my age for many things, most notably the seemingly fewer number of books I read each year. I keep a list of authors and titles, and inside the front covers of the books I’ve completed I put the year I finished reading it and which of how many books I finished (e.g., 2025 # 6).
Sadly, there are times that I look through my shelves for a new book to begin, only to open the cover and find that it was # 12 that I read in 2012. I wasn’t sixty in 2012, so what gives?
There are two things I find most relaxing, so relaxing, in fact, that I almost always go to sleep. One is watching television reruns. I tune the television to a show that I have seen to the point I almost know it by heart, then let it play in my head behind closed eyelids. I usually don’t make it to the first commercial.
The other is reading. The key is finding just the right spot, and the right position. If I sit at a desk when I read, I rarely if ever fall asleep. If I read in my easy chair in my home library, it’s like watching television. Clunk. That would explain the ever-decreasing number of books completed annually.
Of course, television shows and book content always seem to work themselves into my dreams, though often I’d be hard pressed to explain, for example, how a book on World War II transposed into a dream about being demoted to a new position by a boss that has been retired and out of the state for almost two decades.
One of my desires in life from an early age was to have my own home library, one as big or bigger than that of the Maynardville Elementary and Horace Maynard High school libraries of my childhood. I have accomplished that goal, at least to my satisfaction, though a few treasures get added sporadically. I have so many books that I will never live to read them all.
What I really enjoy is when friends give or recommend to me a book they feel I would enjoy. Usually, if I don’t have a book a copy of a book a friend loans to me, I purchase my own copy. I don’t like to write in books—that makes them too much like a college textbook. When I read, I mark things that strike me as interesting or comical with an unlabeled sticky note. I leave with you a couple of examples from a book that K. David Myers loaned me, April 1945: The Hinge of History by Craig Shirley (Nashville, Thomas Nelson 2022).
Shirley didn’t just give a droll record of events leading up to the end of World War II—he interspersed tidbits about war legends and life in contemporary America as the war was closing.
As one example, Shirley noted the following about General Dwight D. Eisenhower: “In public, he appeared down to earth, even folksy and friendly with his wide smile and backslapping humor. In private, he swore like a longshoreman and smoked like a chimney and had an explosive temper.” (160-1)
Shirley recalled actress Tallulah Bankhead saying that cocaine wasn’t habit forming, she’d been on it for years. (160) Shirley also included the following regarding changes in colloquial language:

Funk and Wagnall’s was offering their annual famous Standard Dictionary and promised to improve the dialect of a daily vocabulary peppered in 1945, with “dame” (a good-looking woman), “jive bomber” (a good dancer), “cut a rug” (dancing), “What’s buzzin’, cousin?” (How are you?), “killer-diller” ((something amazing), “chrome dome” (a bald man), “Snap your cap!” (get angry), “armored heifer” (a can of milk), “Take a powder” (to leave), “now you’re on the trolley” (now you get it), and “hi-de-ho” (hello). (252-253)

Shirley also included numerous references to newspaper advertising during the early part of 1945, including the following:

There was Serutan for the thirty-five and over crowd for relief from constipation and to restore “regularity.” Also, one ad featured a woman telling the reader “how to keep your husband happy after 35.” The solution, she said, was to “get real relief from constipation.” Her husband, after taking Serutan, was a “changed man. He feels better—looks better. And we’re both enjoying life again.” (115)

I wish Shirley had told how a man could help his wife “get real relief” and become “a changed woman”. I might try it! (I’d proceed with caution, however, as I think it would take more than Serutan to make me a “changed man”!
Shirley was a well-rounded recorder of advertising history. He did not fail to note how wives who so wished could increase their husbands’ discomfort: “And to help create the constipation, Betty Crocker was pushing a ‘corn sausage pie.’” (115)
In cases of distress, martial, marital or otherwise, Dr. Mincey recommends, Dear Reader, taking two Exlax and calling someone else in the morning!

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 66
What did the cook name his combination of laxative and alphabet soup? (ANSWER: “Letter Rip”.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 67
What inspires you to get out of bed every morning? (See next week’s article in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)

EMAIL THOUGHTS

In honor of dictionary day, I was invited to give a few words.

Still trying to get my head around the fact that 'Take Out' can mean food, dating, or murder.

Two fish were in a tank. One looks at the other and asks, do you know how to drive this thing?

I appear to be developing an age-related (I think) memory problem. I cannot seem to remember the things I’ve forgotten.

It's probably my age that tricks people into thinking I'm an adult.

It's weird being the same age as old people.

Think you’re old and you will be old. Think you are young and you will be delusional.

You don't realize how old you are until you sit on the floor and then try to get back up.

You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

I'm not saying I'm old and worn out, but I try to make sure I'm nowhere near the curb on trash day.

We celebrated last night with a couple of adult beverages ...... Metamucil and Ensure.

Ah, being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

“Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”
-- Ronald Reagan