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

The Old Coot get a comeuppance. Published 11/28/2021 (Binghamton, NY Press)

 The Old Coot Gets a Comeuppance

By Merlin Lessler

 This column was initially published in 2008. It’s being republished to honor the memory of Bill Schweizer, who died this year at age 99. He competed in 291 triathlons and duathlons starting when he was 62 holding 14 world titles and 26 national titles. He’s my Hero, though we did have a friendly bickering over the use of Spandex.

 I was in the Owego Dunkin Donuts the other morning. It was about six am. Nobody was around. Sunday morning was just coming up, a lazy, peaceful time. I was nestled in a chair by the window; the muddy Susquehanna was off to my right; the intersection of Front and Park was straight ahead. I counted the signs at the corner. There were 15 separate pieces of tin giving directions to three car routes, two bike routes and two local streets in view from where I sat. A lot of information to decipher while driving down Park Street, talking on a cell phone, balancing a cup of coffee between one’s knees and looking for route 17C. This is the same spot where the inspiration to write about spandex came to me a few months back. The need to ban it! It started when a spandex clad cyclist pulled up to the intersection and stopped for a red light. He was perched on a high-tech racing bike; an aerodynamic helmet that made him look like a space alien was on his head; a pair of exotic cycling shoes locked into his pedals. The light didn’t change! He, and his bike, weren’t heavy enough to trip the sensor in the road that would turn the traffic signal from red to green, in spite of his being at least fifty pounds overweight. He waited and waited. Finally, he got off his bike and walked it over to the pedestrian crossing button and pushed it. It gave me the chance to examine his spandex profile in depth, the proverbial two pounds of bologna in a one-pound sack. It fueled my desire to ban the stuff, at least for “athletes” of his stature.

 As often happens when I shoot my mouth off in print, I irk a few people. Ok, a lot of people. This time it moved a reader to challenge my spandex stance with a poem. A friendly neighbor who lives a few doors up the street from me penned it. He thought he could do it anonymously but as is always the case when I say I won’t mention the subject’s name, I do.

 Here is the spandex rebuttal poem, written by Bill Schweizer.

 I wonder what bothers the Old Coot                                           I’ve finally run out of “oots”

On spandex he should have stayed mute                                    To disparage the column by Coots

Was this a confession                                                               I’ll give it a rest

To hide an obsession                                                                And wish him the best

Or just a try to be cute                                                               In spite of our spandex disputes

           

Referring again to Old Coot                                                                             

Whose column one must refute                                     

Why can’t he find                                                        

A spandex behind                                                        

Is really a nice attribute                                                

 

The subject of spandex is not mute                               

In spite of complaints by Old Coot                               

He should not pretend                                                  

All’s well in the end

If spandex was given the boot                                        

 

As the biker went by really cruising

His spandex controlling the bruising

He yelled at Old Coot

Your column’s a hoot

But I don’t find it very amusing

 

This message I give to Old Coot

At least try a spandex suit

You’ll ride with abandon

On your 10-speed tandem

Without a suffering glute