[AT] No Left Turn Part #2

Fri Sep 8 04:23:37 PDT 2006

Don't feel bad John.  I've been having that problem with mail from this list 
off and on for a couple of years.  I might be having the same problem with 
other mail too.  It's just that the nature of this list makes it possible to 
figure out that a message is missing.  The last time I raised the issue 
Spencer said it was out of his control.   I guess it's just the way of the 
internet.

Charlie (hope you get this)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Hall" <jthall at worldnet.att.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 6:12 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] No Left Turn Part #2

> 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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>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AT mailing list
>> Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005
>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.1/440 - Release Date: 9/6/2006
>
> 