[AT] No Left Turn Part #2

John Hall jthall at worldnet.att.net
Thu Sep 7 15:12:51 PDT 2006


Great story but I need some help here. I am missing a lot of emails or they 
are coming in out of order. As you can see I have Charlies reply but never 
got the original. This has been happening a lot over the last couple weeks. 
Spencer explained something similair to this once. I'm just wondering is it 
my ISP or does it have something to do with the new Norton I installed a few 
weeks back.

Thoughts, opinion?
John Hall
jthall at worldnet.att.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "charlie hill" <chill8 at cox.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 3:25 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] No Left Turn Part #2


> That's a beautiful story and very well told.
>
> Charlie
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "jfgrant" <jfgrant at triton.net>
> To: "ATIS" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 2:45 PM
> Subject: [AT] No Left Turn Part #2
>
>
>> No Left Turn Part #2
>>
>> No Left Turns  Part #2
>> After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever 
>> she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were 
>> going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a 
>> stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could 
>> listen to the Cubs game on the radio. (In the evening, then, when
>> I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on 
>> second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the
>> multimillionaire on third base scored.") If she were going to the grocery 
>> store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to
>> make sure she loaded up on ice cream.
>> As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she 
>> was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret
>> of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be 
>> something bizarre.
>> "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked.
>> "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read 
>> an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when
>> they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your 
>> eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So 
>> your
>> mother and I decided never again to make a left turn." "What?" I said 
>> again. "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three  rights are the 
>> same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make  three rights."
>> "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," 
>> she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."
>> But then she added: "Except when your father loses count." I was driving 
>> at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. 
>> "Loses count?" I asked. "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes 
>> happens. But
>> it's not a problem. You just make seven rights,
>> and you're okay again."
>> I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said. "If 
>> we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, 
>> nothing in life is so important it can't be put off
>> another day or another week."
>> My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car 
>> keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999,
>> when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died 
>> the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had
>> moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years 
>> later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny
>> bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then 
>> and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for 
>> the house.) He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill 
>> when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but 
>> wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body 
>> until
>> the moment he died.
>> A happy life
>> One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to 
>> give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all
>> three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging 
>> conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the
>> news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first 
>> hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in 
>> our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to 
>> live much
>> longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" he 
>> countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old,"
>> I said. "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next 
>> day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with 
>> him
>> through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, 
>> apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an
>> announcement. No one in this room is dead yet." An hour or so later, he 
>> spoke his last words:
>> "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no 
>> pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as
>> anyone on this earth could ever have."
>> A short time later, he died.
>> I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then 
>> how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
>> I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life.
>> Or because he quit taking left turns.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AT mailing list
>> Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005
>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>>
>>
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>
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