Not old enough yet

At 94, I am still not old enough to answer what I think I owe my present age to.

I suppose I could say that I drank sparingly and quit smoking when I was 20 years old, or more accurately when I met my wife.

I was born on a farm and lived there until I was 6. My parents often told me that we moved to town so I could start school. That was in 1936, in Palouse. I never was comfortable on the farm. My siblings and I always were wondering what was going on in town. We lived four miles out.

So we moved to town, and I started what some might call my failed attempt to get educated. Now, I didn’t think I failed; I stayed at it for 16 years.

I actually moved to town twice from the farm.

My dad had to return to the farm when I started the eighth grade; I guess the guy taking care of the farm had to leave.

I didn’t like it when I was 6, and I didn’t like it when I was 13.

I hated farm life, yet — would you believe it — my wife lived on a farm.

There are two things that were positive from my farming experience, neither adding to my longer life.

I enjoyed what most farmers hated, and that was cleaning out the barn. For some reason, I enjoyed taking the scoop shovel and tidying up the barn. That’s a task that I have endured many times in my lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, I hated cows. Stiill do. I do admit they look nice, from a distance, grazing in the pasture.

The second thing I enjoyed was collecting eggs. My parents let the hens run loose, and it was fun trying to outwit the hens and find where they’d laid.

That is still not close to any reason for living so long. So farming or being on the farm has nothing to do about my age.

So I still need to reflect a little longer before I can tell anyone for sure.

Turn the page to now, it could be getting my mail here in Electric City. My mailbox is furthest from the door at the post office, and lowest to the floor; that’s a lot of bending down over the years. I have never seen the inside of my mailbox. I would have to lie on the floor to do so. So that form of exercise isn’t going to hold up, either.

So I am going to have to be secretive for a little longer. You can bet that when I know, you will know.