“Oh! Am I Driving?”

Posted on 10/08/2012 by Grumpa Joe
icon of elderly people

icon of elderly people (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yesterday I posted a serious article received from a friend. Today, I am posting the lighter side, also received from a friend.

FAMILY

Three sisters ages 92, 94 and 96 live in a house together. One night the 96 year old draws a bath. She puts her foot in and pauses… She yells to the other sisters, “Was I getting in or out of the bath?” The 94 year old yells back, “I don’t know. I’ll come up and see.” She starts up the stairs and pauses “Was I going up the stairs or down?” The 92 year old is sitting at the kitchen table having tea listening to her sisters.. She shakes her head and says, “I sure hope I never get that forgetful, knock on wood.” She then yells, “I’ll come up and help both of you as soon as I see who’s at the door.”

TELL ME THIS WON’T HAPPEN TO ME

An elderly Floridian called 911 on her cell phone to report that her car has been broken into. She is hysterical as she explains her situation to the dispatcher: “They’ve stolen the stereo, the steering wheel, the brake pedal and even the accelerator!” she cried. The dispatcher said, “Stay calm. An officer is on the way.” A few minutes later, the officer radios in. “Disregard.” He says, “She got in the back-seat by mistake.”

I CAN HEAR JUST FINE!”

Three retirees, each with a hearing loss, were playing golf one fine March day. One remarked to the other, “Windy, isn’t it?” “No,” the second man replied, “it’s Thursday…” And the third man chimed in, “So am I. Let’s have a beer.”

SUPERSEX

A little old lady was running up and down the halls in a nursing home. As she walked, she would flip up the hem of her nightgown and say “Supersex.” She walked up to an elderly man in a wheelchair Flipping her gown at him, she said, “Supersex.”

He sat silently for a moment or two and finally answered, “I’ll take the soup.”

ROMANCE

An older couple were lying in bed one night. The husband was falling asleep but the wife was in a romantic mood and wanted to talk. She said: “You used to hold my hand when we were courting.” Wearily he reached across, held her hand for a second and tried to get back to sleep. A few moments later she said: “Then you used to kiss me.” Mildly irritated, he reached across, gave her a peck on the cheek and settled down to sleep.

Thirty seconds later she said: “Then you used to bite my Neck.” Angrily, he threw back the bed clothes and got out of bed. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“To get my teeth!”

DOWN AT THE RETIREMENT CENTER

80-year old Bessie bursts into the rec room at the retirement home. She holds her clenched fist in the air and announces,” Anyone who can guess what’s in my hand can have sex with me tonight!!” An elderly gentleman in the rear shouts out, “An elephant?” Bessie thinks a minute and says, “Close enough.”

OLD FRIENDS

Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades. Over the years, they had shared all kinds of activities and adventures. Lately, their activities had been limited to meeting a few times a week to play cards.

One day, they were playing cards when one looked at the other and said, “Now don’t get mad at me.. I know we’ve been friends for a long time but I just can’t think of your name. I’ve thought and thought, but I can’t remember it. Please tell me what your name is.” Her friend glared at her. For at least three minutes she just stared and glared at her.

Finally she said, “How soon do you need to Know?”

SENIOR DRIVING

As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife’s voice urgently warning him, “Herman, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on Interstate 77. Please be careful!” “Hell,” said Herman, “It’s not just one car.. It’s hundreds of them!”

DRIVING

Two elderly women were out driving in a large car – both could barely see over the dashboard. As they were cruising along, they came to an intersection. The stoplight was red, but they just went on through.

The woman in the passenger seat thought to herself “I must be losing it. I could have sworn we just went through a red light.” After a few more minutes, they came to another intersection and the light was red again. Again, they went right through. The woman in the passenger seat was almost sure that the light had been red but was really concerned that she was losing it. She was getting nervous. At the next intersection, sure enough, the light was red and they went on through. So, she turned to the other woman and said, “Mildred, did you know that we just ran through three red lights in a row? You could have killed us both!”

Mildred turned to her and said, “Oh! Am I driving?”

********** 

Please !!!! TELL ME THIS WON’T HAPPEN TO US

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I Love Cruise Night With Lots of 32’s and 34’s

Posted on 11/08/2011 by Grumpa Joe

There is something about nineteen thirty-two and thirty-four vintage Ford hot rods that turns me on. It must be related to the fact that those were the most predominant cars of my childhood. My dad never owned a Ford of that vintage but some of my neighbors did. Back then very few neighbors owned a car.

Maybe it is because as a lad of ten, I watched a seventeen year old kid who lived at the alley end of the block build a thirty-four three window coupé into a hot rod. He even took it to Bonneville and had a brass plaque proclaiming his ninety-three mph run. What ever it is, these cars turn me on. There is nothing more beautiful than a hot thirty-four coupé or a deuce sportster.

Here is a collection of the finest cars that visit Frankfort’s Cruise Night.

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CARS I HAVE KNOWN

Posted on 30/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

The automobile is still a big part of my life.  My dad raised us with a car in the family just as I raised children with cars, and now my grandchildren are growing up cars.  Even though I used streetcars and buses to go everywhere, we always had a car in the family.

The earliest car I can remember was Dad’s 1929 Buick Century.  He also had an earlier Chrysler, and a Huppmobile before that.  He might have had others, too, but it is too late to ask him.

The 1929 Buick served him well for many years. I remember standing on the front seat as a toddler. I could barely see over the seat back. I was a teenager when he got rid of it.  He eventually sold the Buick to the welder who lived at the end of Avalon.  It seemed strange to watch the Buick drive past with someone else driving. Two years later, the welder cut it up for junk metal.

Dad’s  replacement was a 1937 Dodge.  He bought that car used too.  In fact, he didn’t buy a new car until 1959.  The Dodge only lasted a year when Dad sold it to buy a 1939 Buick Century.  I called it the Green Hornet after my favorite radio program.  This is the car I got my driver’s license in.  I was driving it by eighth grade.  The Buick lasted until my junior year in high school.  Two years after Dad bought it the Buick started making some horrible knocking noises. The rear universal joint needed new bearings.  Rather than spend money to fix the car, Dad traded it in on a two-year old 1954 Plymouth.  The Plymouth was beautiful. It had two toned paint with a white top and turquoise blue bottom, and lots of chrome.  The leatherette and cloth seat colors matched the exterior colors.  I moved back and forth to college with the Plymouth.

Finally, in 1959, dad bought a new Ford Fairlane. The Fairlane was also blue and white, with giant round tail lights; the front fenders hung over the top of the headlights. It had an automatic transmission and a radio that worked.  I was at the University of Illinois by this time and used it during the summers to go to work.  Dad walked to the Illinois Central yard on 95th and Cottage Grove so I could drive to International Harvester on 26th and Western.  Even though Dad hated the Ford because of it’s poor reliability, he kept it until another car hit him broadside while driving in a funeral cortege..  In l969 he traded it in for another Ford.

The ‘69 Ford lasted through most of his retirement.  He and Mom used it a lot to go back and forth to the farm in Michigan.  Dad’s final car was a 1983 Chevy Celebrity.  He began to slow down with this car, and eventually gave up driving when he reached his late eighties.  He sold the Celebrity to one of the grandchildren.

In a later episode I’ll tell about my first car, and every other car I have owned after that.  Each one played a role in my life as a transportation appliance.

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Oh My God, Did I Just Jinx Myself?

Posted on 02/02/2011 by Grumpa Joe

I am proud to announce that out of six record-setting blizzard snowstorms that dropped over twelve inches of snow on the Chicago area, I  shoveled out of four of them.

The worst was in nineteen sixty-seven. Everyone who was alive at the time remembers that one. Many of my friends who worked downtown took three to seven days to get home. Stories about people helping people abound. Stories about the adventure of leaving a car stuck in the snow somewhere were plentiful. I got lucky on that storm. My job was in the city on forty-eighth and Halstead. Normally, it was a fifty minute drive. That Thursday morning it was snowing. There was a drift in front of my garage door that tapered out to the street sixty feet away. The drift was pretty high, so I decided to call in and tell my boss that I’d be a little late because I was going to wait a couple of hours before I began shoveling my car out. It kept snowing, and it kept snowing, and it never stopped until the next day. By early afternoon there was a nine-inch accumulation around the city. People left work early to get home. Many of them did not make it home that night. Some didn’t make it home for several days. I sat in a nice warm house watching it happen.

My neighbor, Kevin Caulfield, didn’t get home until Monday. He abandoned his car along the Outer Drive. The following Saturday, five of us armed with snow shovels, piled into a car and wove our way through the city streets to look for Kevin’s Ford. The streets were barely passible. Many places were still one lane wide. We managed to find Archer Avenue and headed toward the loop. I think we took Twenty-second street out to the Drive. The Outer Drive, Chicago’s showpiece road, was a war zone. The fire department and garbage collectors had worked feverishly to open two lanes. They cleared a section of road up to a car,  yanked the car off to the side into the clear spot,  and moved forward to the next car. There was no place to put the snow, so they piled it onto the cars they just moved. One week of labor and they had cleared a path to move in.

We scoured the area that Kevin remembered leaving his car. Eventually, he spotted the ugly green fender showing through a mountain of snow. It was his Ford. The five us worked quickly to  uncover the car. The front bumper was hanging. The snow crew yanked it off while moving it out-of-the-way. Again, the five of us managed to bend it upward so the car was drivable. We extricated the car and Kevin got it running. We followed him home to make sure he got there.

I’ve seen pictures of yesterday’s snow on the Outer Drive. They remind me of nineteen sixty-seven.

This morning, I dreaded going out to shovel (sno-blow). I procrastinated at my desk. I watched the birds play hide and seek in the evergreen shrub outside my window. Then, Mary, my neighbor across the street came out to snow-blow her drive. “Hey Peg,” I yelled. Grandma Peggy  came to see what I wanted. “Look what some wives do for their husband.”

“She’s less than half my age,” she said.

“Well, I guess it’s up to me,” I said out loud. Ten minutes later, I went at it with a vengeance. Three non-stop hours later, I had cleared a lane from the garage to the street.

I came in exhausted and very hungry. Something smelled good. I wonder what she is cooking for me. Grandma Peggy, was clearly upset. The smell turned out to be a pot of turkey soup that burned. She had been defrosting the frozen soup on a low heat and forgot about it until all the liquid had boiled out and the turkey was frying itself to the pan.

The doorbell rang. It was my son Mike and my grandson Dan. “Now you show up,” I kidded him, “It’s all done.”

“I just finished my own drive for the second time Dad, if you want , I’ll do the other half of yours.”

“Go for it,” I told him. Mike and Dan made very short work of the remaining half. They finished in forty-five minutes. Ah, to be young again. The boys didn’t stay long because they were going to his father-in-law’s house to clear another drive. I ate a sandwich and crashed. I’m beginning to feel the love all through my body. I think the muscles are sending me a message, “Don’t you DARE do that again.”

If the pattern stays on course it will be twenty years before we see another twenty-inch snow.

Oh my God, did I just jinx myself?

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