EVEN AMERICANS GROW OLD
Koubek, Richard F.
EVEN A ICANS GROW OLD Growing old in any culture is a curse; in America we curse the old. Our euphemistically camouflaged "senior citizens" are disturbing reminders that even Americans decay...
...He fought off a walker until it was obvious to him that he could not stand without it...
...Rocky, our latest folk hero, is hailed by jubilant theater audiences because he stands the IS rounds, long after physical exhaustion and the force of gravity should have pinned him to the ring mat...
...Long after he was told not to drive, my Dad set out on an icy morning to "get gas for the car...
...Proud...
...When I was four or five years old, my father used to read me the children's version of "Rocky," a story of a little train that refused to quit and, overcoming insurmountable odds, reached the top of a mountain...
...My father, crippled by Parkinson's, barely walks, with a stoop and a palsy that are grim distortions of his youthful strength...
...He is vulnerable and finite after all...
...We revere the will of steel, the man or woman who refuses to accept defeat...
...He took up a cane only when it became impossible to walk without one...
...We curse the old because they endure, forcing our attention to the most glaring blind-spot in the American vision—our mortality and our finiteness...
...Death, infirmity and pain are out of place here...
...Of course he didn't...
...To be American is to be an individual always changing and growing...
...He hardly retired...
...Always punctual, disciplined and hard working, he lived for his company and reveled in its prosperity...
...his grip was strong, his gait was quick...
...How absent death, defeat and disease are from these scenarios...
...And, when asked why he bad done so foolish a thing, he only responded with a puckish, adolescent grin that revealed the triumph...
...When he finally sputtered into his service station, 20 minutes later, with a fender smashed and a headlight pointing up, he casually said to the astonished attendant, "Fill it up, Frank...
...So are his sons...
...Thank God," my distraught mother later shouted, "No one was hurt...
...Like Cooper's American democrat, he once walked proud and upright...
...reckless, stubborn man...
...My mother pleaded in his monoxide wake for him to turn back...
...We are without limits...
...In refusing to accept this strange palsy, he equates resignation with defeat...
...All of us were appalled and stunned by the bravado of his last ride...
...In his youth—»• the productive half century that preceded his affliction—he was a salesman...
...The car struck a tree and a street sign...
...Our need to overcome adversity and alter nature's designs has fueled the American production machine...
...My father has Parkinson's disease...
...The aged are the nemesis of America's dream—of its boundless youth, limitless resources, endless tomorrows...
...Rather, he faced seemingly endless assaults—a stroke and the crippling effects of Parkinson's—with willful determination...
...So is his America...
...that symbolic turning point when people are supposed to withdraw from the fray...
...We Americans steadfastly refuse to be humbled by our humanity...
...Such a mind set is both the source of our strength and the substance of our fantasies...
...My father's struggle with Parkinson's began in his 65 th year...
...But in the afterglow, one could detect in his eyes a twinkle that had not been seen for years...
...Since the Founding Fathers first trumpeted their Enlightenment promises some 200 years ago, Americans have believed in their cultural and personal "Manifest Destiny...
...His success was living testament to the enduring faith of Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin...
...Today the business he nurtured is gone...
...To date, there are no plans to purchase a wheel chair...
...Our euphemistically camouflaged "senior citizens" are disturbing reminders that even Americans decay and die...
...Consider this incident which occurred last February...
Vol. 105 • January 1978 • No. 2
