ANTIQUE-HOOD

                                                Moo

Another perquisite of antique-hood. \

In a few days I will be 84, which surely qualifies me as ancient.  I am emphatically not recommending antique-hood to all you youngsters of 75 or less, but I feel compelled to point out that there are a few compensations.  For instance: instead of leaping up to a door and ripping it open with excessive force, you hobble up to it slowly to find it held open by some pretty young woman with a dazzling smile.  Do you have to struggle to get your suitcase down stairs?  No: some powerful youngster will do it for you.  And there are many other compensations for looking, acting (and feeling) old.  Of course I would give them all up in an instant to feel – oh, maybe 65 – again.  But that is not to be.

All that is by way of introducing the topic of this blog – my trip to Wisconsin, by train.  I rode the Amtrak train Empire Builder, which plies back and forth between Seattle and Chicago.  I got off to visit my daughter Linda and her husband Paul on their cattle ranch in western Wyoming.  I had an entire luxury suite atop the train to myself.  All my meals, and they were very good, were delivered to me by a nice lady named, I think, Dorothy.  My suite had its own private bathroom.  Dorothy made up a comfortable bed for me each night.  I contrived to be able to see both sides of the train from the same, comfortable, perch.  And so, for 40 hours, I had nothing to do but relax and watch middle America slide by.

So, you ask, what does this have to do with antique-hood?  Well, for one thing it took 1.67 days one way.  You could do it in less than 4 hours, by air.  If I had a job that would be important, but naturally - I don’t.  And then, of course, there was the cost.  I could have flown it twice over for what my Amtrak ticket cost, one-way.  But, heck, I’m an antique.  How much should money matter, anyway?

Whatever.  I recommend long train trips to all you of my generation.  But remember to bring your cane along.