The Old Coot grew up in an unsafe world by todays standards. Published Binghamton Press August 2025

 The Old Coot grew up in an unsafe world. Maybe.

By Merlin Lessler

It’s a tough world for parents these days. They try to do the right thing, keep their little ones safe, but they get caught in ever changing “official” advice: face the child forward in a car seat - face the child back - at forty pounds you can use the seat belt - don’t use the seatbelt until he’s eight - use the air bag - turn off the air bag. It never ends. We never seem to do it right. It’s especially hard on grandparents; especially old coot grandparents who are super skeptical of “official” advice. We end up getting scolded by both the media and our grandchildren’s parents. 

It’s not our fault. We grew up in cars that didn’t have seat belts, often sitting in the front seat between mom and dad in a canvas pouch hooked over the seat with a toy steering wheel in front of us, directly in line between our body and the dashboard. I can only imagine how that would have worked out in a crash. I vividly remember sitting in mine, turning the wheel to the left when my father turned his, honking the horn, moving the shift lever back and forth. Don’t ask me how I remember something from so long ago, yet I can’t remember to mail the letters in my pocket when I walk to town.

We were protected back then, even though we didn’t have proper car seats, air bags or seat belts. We had mom’s right arm. The second she slammed on the brakes it shot out and prevented us from hurtling into the dash. It’s hard to imagine that those little, slim, feminine arms were strong enough to hold back a child hurtling forward at 30 miles per hour, but they were. Scientists and public officials say it isn’t possible. They also claim it’s impossible for those same arms to pick up the front end of a car that sits atop a child, but it happens all the time. It’s the mother tiger factor.  

So, what’s a parent to do? Don’t ask me. I’m the guy who drove around with my kids in the back seat (and the compartment behind it) in a VW Beetle, skidding around a shopping plaza parking lot making “donuts” in the fresh fallen snow. I’m the guy who made plaster casts for my daughters to get them to stop jumping out of trees, trying to break their arms so they could wear a cast to school and look “cool.” (It worked by the way; it only took two days for them to beg me to cut them off). No, don’t ask me, or any other old coot what to do about car seats. Or, bike helmets, shin and elbow pads or any other politically correct child safety device. We grew up stupid (and unprotected) and stayed that way.

Comments? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

The Old Coot is green with envy. Published April 2025 in Binghamton Press

 The Old Coot is “green” with envy.

By Merlin Lessler

I pulled a loaf of bread out of the cupboard the other day. It had been there for the better part of the week, so I checked it for that greenish, bluish sign of mold. None! It wasn’t like this growing up. Bread would start turning green after a day or so. I know.  I was my family’s “bread man.” Every other day, my mother handed me a cloth sack with a draw string closure and said, “Go over to Bill Scales grocery store on Pennsylvania Ave and get a loaf of Spaulding bread. Off I would go on my bicycle, with a dime and a penny in the bag, swinging from my handlebars. The dime was for bread; the penny for a piece of Fleer, Double-Bubble Gum. I liked it better than Bazooka Bubble Gum because it came with a tiny comic strip inside the wrapper. I would stop at the top of Moore Ave on the way home to pull a slice out of the middle of the loaf, hoping my mother wouldn’t notice. It was so good when it was fresh. I couldn’t stop myself.  I still do that to this day when I buy bread from a bakery. I can never wait till I get home. Same thing when I pick up a pizza. It’s never perfectly round when it gets to our kitchen. 

 There aren’t many neighborhood bakeries around anymore. They’ve disappeared, just like the neighborhood grocery stores and neighborhood schools. Life was on a smaller scale back then. We walked to Longfellow Elementary School every day. Walked back home for lunch, and back to school again. We got as much education on the sidewalks along the route as we did in the classroom. Even when we graduated and moved up to junior high, we still walked to Longfellow, to catch one of the two buses to the junior high on the other side of town.

But, oh those “good old days.” Back in the 1940’s and 50’s. I started walking to school with my friend Woody when we were five years old. Our parents weren’t involved, except to say good bye and be careful, on our way out the door. Quite a different world! But, back to the bread. Today’s bread, made in factories, that doesn’t turn green. Mothers don’t have to cut moldy crusts off before making their children peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. The aging process in bread is virtually eliminated, by preservatives. I just wish those preservatives did the same thing for me when I consumed the loaf.?

Comments?  Complaints? Send to the paper or to me at mlessler7@gmail.com

     

The Old Coot and six lane roads don't mix. Published in Binghamton Press April 2024

 The Old Coot rides down memory lane.

By Merlin Lessler

 I was on a 12 lane, 70 MPH highway the other day, 6 lanes going north, six lanes south. The way cars wove in and out was amazing. It was like being in the Daytona Five Hundred. I did OK, for an old guy. Did some weaving myself, though I felt like I should do what an 81 year-old is supposed to do; go to the center lane and stay there going, 45 miles per hour with my left signal blinking. Just to add a little drama to the symphony between the lanes.

 It's an ugly mess, compared to the road trips my sister and I took in the back seat of the family sedan, a 1950 Hudson Hornet, gazing out the window counting cows. Cows on her side versus my side. And, reading billboards, twenty feet in the air and Burma Shave signs at street level. There were only two lane roads where we lived in those days. Even the major route through town, Route 17. The speed limit was 50 MPH, but you could rarely go that fast for very long. Not when you got stuck behind a truck inching up a hill or a family in a Buick sedan taking a Sunday Drive.

 We were never bored; when the cows were gone, we played the Alphabet Game – be the first one to spot a letter on a sign, working through the alphabet in sequence. Alice’s Diner would start us off with an “A.” No matter how far ahead we got, the “Q” would slow us down. The first eagle-eye to spot an antique shop usually won, but a “Z” could be a show stopper too.    

 Time went by quickly, between the alphabet game, watching and counting farm animals and the odd sites along the way, like a mailbox 15 feet in the air with “Airmail” stenciled on the front. Our dog spent the whole trip with his head out the window, his ears flapping in the breeze. Dad’s arm hung out his window. Mom made sure ours were inside the car. No seat belts, no air bags, no air conditioning. But we were lucky; we had an AM radio, tuned to a station that played the Lone Ranger and Suspense. The adventure in those days was getting there. I miss it.  

 

 

The Old Coot Didn't shoot his eye out. Published in Binghamton, December 2022

 The Old Coot didn’t shoot his eye out.

By Merlin Lessler

 I didn’t shoot my eye out. Not with a BB gun anyhow. And, not in one of the many BB gun wars we waged in the cow pasture to the west of Denton Road on Binghamton’s south side. (The area is now populated with houses, but back then it was a war zone in the summer, a toboggan & ski resort in the winter). No, I did it much later in life, when a tree branch shot back into my eye on a riverbank in Owego. But that’s a story for another day. An old coot story. This is a kid story.

 My, didn’t shoot my eye out story took place after I’d paid my dues for years and finally waited expectantly, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, to find a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun under the Christmas tree. I’d posed for dorky Christmas cards with my sister Madeline, year after year. I’d forgone my desire for a BB gun and asked for eye safe toys: footballs, sleds, board games and electric trains. But when I turned 10 in 1952, I decided it was time to launch the campaign. Woody, my friend from the next block, had access to BB rifles and BB pistols. I used him and his gun friendly parents as the centerpiece of my case. But, things looked pretty glum. My mother batted every pitch I threw her way out of the park. “Woody has one, why can’t I?” - “Because you’ll lose an eye!”  This was before the term “shoot-your-eye-out” came into vogue. You lost things in those days. Your eye. Your arm. Your life.

 “No I won’t! Woody didn’t!” She pointed out that Woody wore glasses; his eyes were protected. Something I knew all too well. Especially after so recently doing the dishes for 25 cents every night until I’d earned three dollars to pay for the pair I’d broken in one of our backyard disagreements.

 “We don’t shoot at each other. We just pretend to shoot,” I argued, lie that it was, with me sporting a tender, red-rimmed pockmark from taking one in the leg just that morning.

 “We only shoot at stuff,” I said, adding to my lie. She was too smart for that one. She was as concerned for the “stuff” as she was for my eye. She knew the stuff included dopey robins that sat still while enduring shot after shot. Squirrels that scampered back and forth making the game even more exciting. The glass window pains in Mr. Soldo’s garage, Mrs. Bowen’s tulips and the Merz’s dog. But, I had an answer for all those damaged goods. It was home made arrows that errantly misfired in a game of cowboys and Indians. “A BB gun is accurate; it would never damage stuff, ” was my weak-brained argument.

 The whole thing was of her making anyhow. She’s the one who dressed me in cowboy suits since before I could walk, who equipped me with 2 six-guns and helped me mount a wooden rocking horse in the driveway with my faithful dog Lassie at my side. How did she not see this growing into lust for a weapon that could really fire? A BB gun!

 Christmas finally came, in those waning days of Truman’s presidency. It took what seemed like years, those four weeks following Thanksgiving, when the count down started. But it came, and on Christmas morning, under our tree was a three-foot long, slender package with my name on it. I saved it for last. I unwrapped the mittens knitted by my aunt in Connecticut. And, like the other pairs she sent every year, they were too short and would leave me with red, raw wrists when I 

The Old Coot is on a runaway bike! - Published August 2023 in the Binghamton Press

 The Old Coot was in a fix.

By Merlin Lessler

 Do you remember being a kid, peddling along on a bike, minding your own business and your pant leg gets caught in the chain? You couldn’t peddle forward; you couldn’t pedal backwards. The chain was locked in place. Bikes back then had coaster brakes that engaged when you pushed the peddle backwards; most bikes today have hand brakes (except for some cruiser and city bikes). All you could do when your pant leg got caught in the chain was keep going forward, knowing you were going to tip over and skin your knee or elbow when you came to a stop.   

 My worst “pants-caught-in-a-bike-chain” experience took place when I was ten-years old and coming down a steep hill on Denton Road on the southside of Binghamton, headed for a busy Vestal Ave at the bottom. I had one chance to save myself; I had to turn off onto a cinder construction road that jutted to the side, one block from the bottom. I knew I would fall when I made the turn, and most certainly would get banged up, but it was my only hope! Faster and faster, I sped down the hill, flying by the Daley’s house, then the Almy’s house and finally past my friend Woody’s (Walls) house, who was gawking at me as I flew by. I steered toward the construction road and closed my eyes. That’s all I remember. Then, a neighborhood woman yelled out her kitchen window, asking me if I was OK. I looked down at the blood and cinder mosaic on the side of my leg, the skinned elbow on my arm and my torn pant leg, now free of the chain. “I’m OK!” I shouted, got to my feet, picked up my bike, straightened the handlebars and peddled home. It was my third session that week with a bottle of Merthiolate. I can still feel the sting.      

 Now, I find myself back on a bicycle, rolling down a hill, out of control with my pant leg caught in the chain. Except, this time the bicycle is metaphysical and the hill is life, rapidly spinning by. That’s what it feels like to be old, any kind of old: 30-old, 40-old, 50, 60, 70 or 80-old like me. No matter what part of the age hill you are coming down, the scenery is flying by way too fast. And, worse yet, there is no side street to pull off into. 

 So, what’s my point? I don’t know. Someone asked me the other day if I remembered getting my pants caught in a bicycle chain when I was a kid. And, like a typical old coot, I turned it into a philosophical treatise on the meaning of life. How’s your bike ride going? Is your pant leg inching closer to the chain?

 

Old Coots and kids want to be outside! - Published 02/05/2023 in the Binghamton, NY Press

 The Old Coot wants out!

By Merlin Lessler

 “Outside!” Was my favorite place when I was a kid, growing up on Chadwick Road, on the south side of Binghamton. My generation wanted “out” – rain or shine, hot or cold. My favorite sound was that of the screen door slamming shut behind me as I ran out the back door. I usually headed to a swing, made from clothesline and scrap lumber that hung from a tree at the edge of our yard. Beyond it was a woodlot next to an abandoned, overgrown farm field. The rusted hulk of an old farm truck was in a thicket, a few feet beyond, the swing. It had a bench seat and a steering wheel, a perfect venue for a young kid to play in. I put a lot of mileage on that baby, “driving” all around town (in my mind). A small pond sat a few yards into the field. (Now buried under Aldridge Ave where it intersects Overbrook). It was where kids in the neighborhood scooped out clumps of frog eggs and watch them turn into tadpoles in jars on their dressers. When the legs began to appear, they returned the tadpoles to the “watering hole,” as we called it, when playing Cowboys & Indians in the field.

 My friend Woody lived one block from me, on Denton Road. We started trekking back and forth through neighbor’s yards to each other’s houses when we were four years old. Our mothers were not concerned for our safety; we traveled around the neighborhood with my dog Topper and Meg, a beautiful Irish Setter that lived up the street from Woody.

 The urge to be outside grew stronger as we grew older. It was an endless playland out there, providing a place for ball games, hut building, hot rod riding, biking, cowboy wars with cap guns and BB guns, sword fights to defend the castle, tree climbing, roller skating and exploring the mountain that rose above our neighborhood. We hiked up the mountain with peanut butter & jelly sandwiches packed in army surplus knapsacks, with metallic tinged milk carried in war surplus, metal canteens.

 As soon as supper was over all the kids in the neighborhood started campaigning to get back outside. We all had the same curfew, “Come home when the street lights come on.” Sometimes we gathered on “Junk Street” for a game of bat-ball. It was called Junk Street because it was full of junk – piles of left-over materials from houses going up in our neighborhood during those postwar days when housing was in short supply. We played in those houses as they went up, and “borrowed” some of the material laying around to build our tree huts with. But, only from the scrap piles, (for the most part). Playing ball or playing Tarzan, swinging from the rafters in newly framed houses, it didn’t matter. All that mattered, was that we were outside.

 Comments? Send to mlessler@gmail.com

The Old Coot's first Car. Published 06/12/2022 in The Binghamton, NY Press

 The Old Coot’s first car was a beauty.

By Merlin Lessler (A south side kid, now an old coot)

 I bought my first car in May, 1962 from Jack Tyler, a classmate in the Electrical Technology class at Broome Tech (now SUNY Broome). The campus consisted of four classroom buildings and a combination cafeteria – gymnasium-hang-out area and a quad.  

 The car was a 1953 Ford convertible. Jack couldn’t get it started and left it in the parking lot at Cloverdale Dairy on Conklin Ave., one block to the east of Telegraph Street. It sat there all winter, buried under a pile of snow.  Jack couldn’t get any takers, so he let me have it for $60, taking a loss from the $350 he’d paid for it a year earlier.

 My friend, Jimmy Wilson, and I dug it out, jumpered it from his car and twisted the ignition wires together in the Ford, since there were no keys to this beauty. It didn’t start. Out of gas? No, the gauge read half full. We had a brainstorm, try some dry gas. It did the trick; the car started right up; I backed it out onto Conklin Avenue and it quit. I added another can of dry gas and I drove one block to the gas station at the bottom of Telegraph Street, pulled to the pump and added 10 gallons to the tank. At 26 cents a gallon it nearly emptied my wallet of the three dollars I had left after buying the dry gas. The gauge still read half full, yet another of the imperfections of this, my greatest treasure, a 1953 Ford convertible. No Keys to the ignition or the trunk -a non-functioning gas gauge a heater that didn’t work and the motor to lift the convertible top was missing. “Why,” you ask? “Would you buy such a beast?” Did I mention it was a convertible?

 I solved the trunk key problem by taking out the back seat, crawling into the trunk and fastening a cord to the lock so I could open it from inside the car. The Ford had one other problem – a bad spot in the starter motor. If it landed on that spot when I turned it off, it wouldn’t start; I had to get a push, or if I’d parked on a hill, pop the clutch and get it going. It was a game of Russian Roulette, except with a starter motor, not with a gun.

 That car took me through the summer of 1962. Many trips to Quaker Lake with the top down and the wind rushing over me. To my first real job, at Compton Industries on the Vestal Parkway and into marriage in January, 1963. It was parked on the hill outside my parent’s house, waiting for us in six inches of snow when we came out the door after a small in-house reception. Off we went on our honeymoon, only fifty dollars to our name, a car with no heat, no keys, a top that had to be yanked up by hand and a bad starter. But for us, at that age, it was, “No Problem!” We were living the dream. I sold it in the fall for $100 and bought my first of five VW Beetles. Brand new with a thirty-seven-dollar monthly payment. It seemed the mature thing to do since we were expecting our first child in December and needed to become real grown-ups.

 Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com