Walking Through Life

[Teresa]

                     Walking Through Life 
This  is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers  large and small and president of NBC News. In  1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Well worth  reading. And a few good laughs are guaranteed.


My father  never drove a car.

Well,  that's not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive  a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the  last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he  told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do  things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look  every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and  enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

At which point  my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh,  bull----!"  she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there  was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household  without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next  door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a  gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford  -- but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines ,  would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3  miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother  and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him  and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in  1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask  how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in  the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.  But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you  boys turns 16, we'll get one."

It was as if he wasn't sure  which one of us would turn 16 first.

But, sure enough, my  brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a  used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at  a Chevy dealership downtown. It was a four-door, white model,  stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my  parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's  car.

Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother  my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when  she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive.  She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to  drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my  two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my  father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I  remember him saying once.

For the next 45 years or so,  until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither  she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on  maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed  himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both  continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my  father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem  to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes,  75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He  retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20  years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's  Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would  wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests  was on duty that morning.

If it was the pastor, my father  then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the  end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant  pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the  church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father  Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always  accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had  no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor,  he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was  summer, have her keep the engine RUNNING so he could listen to the  Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by,  he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base  made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the  multimillionaire on third base scored." If she were going to the  grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to  make sure she loaded up on ice cream.

As I said, he was  always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and  still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a  long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be  something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.
"What?" I  asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago,  your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that  old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming  traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose  your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never  again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again. "No left  turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a  left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three  rights."

"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my  mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make  three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your  father loses count." I was driving at the time, and I almost drove  off the road as I started laughing. "Loses count?" I asked. "Yes,"  my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a  problem. You just make seven rights and you're o kay  again."

I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I  asked.

"No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come  home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so  important it can't be put off another day or another  week."

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening  she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit  driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more  years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102. They both  died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few  years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid  $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had  never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew  the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.) He  continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he  was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but  wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound  body until the moment he died.

One September afternoon in  2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a  neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was  wearing out, though we had the usual wide- ranging conversation  about politics and newspapers and things in the news. A few weeks  earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred  years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in  our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not  going to live much longer."

"You're probably right," I  said.

"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat  irritated. "Because you're 102 years old," I said. "Yes," he said,  "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

That  night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him  through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one  point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to  make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet."

An  hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know,"  he said, clearly and lucidly,  that  I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a  life as anyone on this earth could ever have." A short time later,  he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot.  I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so  lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because  he walked through life.

Or because he quit taking left  turns.

[Judy Harder]

That was very good Teresa. Thanks.

[Teresa]

A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell. He painted a sign advertising the 4 pups And set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy..

'Mister,' he said, 'I want to buy one of your puppies.'

'Well,' said the farmer,

As he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, 'These puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.'

The boy dropped his head for a moment.
Then reaching deep into his pocket,
He pulled out a handful of change
And held it up to the farmer.
I've got thirty-nine cents.
Is that enough to take a look?'

'Sure,' said the farmer.

And with that he let out a whistle.
'Here, Dolly!' he called.

Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran
Dolly followed by four little balls of fur.

The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight.

As the dogs made their way to the fence,
The little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse.

Slowly another little ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up...

'I want that one,' the little boy said, pointing to the runt. The farmer knelt down at the boy's side and said, 'Son, you don't want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.'

With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers.

In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe.

Looking back up at the farmer, he said,
'You see sir, I don't run too well myself,
And he will need someone who understands.'

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup.
Holding it carefully handed it to the little boy.

'How much?' asked the little boy.

'No charge,' answered the farmer, 'There's no charge for love.'

[Judy Harder]

Bless you Teresa, that is a good story.

Thank the Lord for messages like this....and people like you.
Judy