ANOTHER SENIOR MOMENT
So How'd We Live This Long?

by Jim Sponseller

It was another one of those steaming summer days numerous decades ago. A swim to wash off the sweat sounded good. (Deodorant had not yet been invented.) Not far behind our house was the Sandusky River. Most of the river was shallow in the summer but at one spot there was a bend where it measured six feet deep. They called it "Cat Heaven." If you speculate it was named that because it was a good place to drown unwanted cats… you are correct, although I had never actually seen it take place.

All of the swimming there was performed by boys because most of us didn't want to waste our valuable vacation time hiking home to put on a swim suit, if we had one. It didn't seem to bother any of us that the water was murky brown, or it usually had green scum along the banks or dead fish floating by. Upstream, the town had placed a drum from which dripped a sheen of old motor oil to kill off breeding mosquitoes. You ask, "Why didn't all of you get sick and die?" To which I respond, "Beats me."

In fact, any of you old enough to collect Social Security might ask the same question. We were living in an age before warning labels, safety regulations and environmental laws. Living in an age without all this concern about our welfare, one wonders how did we manage to survive this long.

For instance, chances are that our baby cribs were coated with lead-based paint. Many had bars wide enough apart for us tikes to poke our heads through. There were no child-proof lids on medicine bottles or kiddy locks for cabinets and doors. Electrical wall plugs were the screw-in type, making it a tempting place for us to poke in our little fingers for a 110-volt jolt (and I often did.)

As kids, we had no child safety seats in the car… let alone seat belts and air bags. Training wheels were not yet invented as we learned to ride bikes. Neither were there helmets for bike riders or padding for boys who played football in the rock-filled empty lots. With each garden hose purchased today comes a warning not to drink the water from the hose. We did it regularly. In the days of the ice wagon, us kids jumped aboard the back step of the moving wagon and grabbed chips of ice lying around on the floor. And you wonder how we still posses both eyes when every boy in town had a B-B gun or sling shot… or both.

Because peanut butter wasn't very creamy then, we spread gobs of butter under the peanut butter, topped by the gobs of jelly. We washed down whole packages of Hostess Twinkies with a bottle of chocolate milk. We dumped sugar on our bland breakfast food and devoured all kinds of tasty stuff fried in lard. Yet, most of us looked like stick people because we spent most of our spare time running and playing outside, even after dark.

What if some kid fell out of a tree in their pal's back yard? Or dad broke his arm after tripping on a neighbor's broken sidewalk. Today it would lead to lawsuits. Back then they were called accidents. No one was to blame but us. "Accidents happen," was the way it was explained until recent years.

Like most folks in that era, we didn't bother to visit a dentist unless a tooth needed pulling or something equally painful. Doctors weren't called unless it was very, very serious. A prescription drug in the house was a rarity. As far as I can recall, suntan lotion had yet to be invented but we played in the sun all day, becoming brown as toast. We were always told that sunshine was good for us. As I mentioned in a previous column, my buddy and I broke open old thermometers and played with the elusive mercury in our hands. And, using old lead from a factory dump, we cast hundreds of toy soldiers, playing with them for years.

Government regulators get nasty these days with employers who breathe too much dust in the workplace. In my spare time I worked in a dust-filled lumber mill where you often couldn't see across the room. In addition, there was a curtain of smoke hanging over the town from passing trains, from factory smokestacks and from the chimneys atop every home. Trash was burned in the alleys and fall leaves were burned at the curb. And, of course, exhaust controls on cars or trucks were still years away.

You might still remember teens standing up and waving to friends from the rumble seats of their Ford and Chevy coupes as they sped down Main Street. Or what about those who hung onto the sides of cars while riding the running board. Or grabbing onto the rear bumper of a car while sledding down a snowy street.

Dangerous? You bet. Today we would call these actions absolutely crazy and irresponsible. But back then we didn't think they were anything out of the ordinary. Maybe folks were tougher then. However, chances are that that, like smoking, we just didn't know what was bad for us.

Today, we've got every manufacturer and business in the world trying to keep us out of harm's way with warnings. It's no secret that their real goal is to avoid getting hauled into court. As an example, the last stepladder I bought had no fewer than four labels pasted on it with lists of safety warnings and directions on how to use it. When I bought a table saw, the first eight pages of the owner's manual had so many warnings I felt it was suicidal to even turn it on. My new chainsaw warned, "Do not attempt to stop chain with hands."

We consider most of these warnings just plain stupid, such as directions on a stroller saying, "Remove child before folding." Or what about the box containing hair coloring that cautioned, "Do not use as an ice cream topping." Just last week I bought a new pair of shoes. Inside the box was a little packet placed in there to absorb moisture. Printed on it was: "Silica gel. Throw away. DO NOT EAT."

My fellow Seniors, with this barrage of free advice on how to prevent every conceivable misfortune, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't survive to be at least 100 years old. Remember… just don't pour that silica gel on your oatmeal.

Jim can be emailed at sponcom@ameritech.net.