Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, When I'm 64

I remember playing in someone's front yard with Gail Shipp; I was 5 and she was 7. Odd, what you remember from those days. This memory, very distinct, is of me thinking, "7 ... that's old." I've no explanation for why I didn't think of my brother, at 9, as some sort of fossil.

In my early grammar school years, the sixth graders (I think) were allowed to become crossing guards. Again, distinctly, I remember the nuns introducing them to us in that way and I thought, "Sixth grade ... they're all grown up."

When our next-door neighbor Buddy Hewitt, at 15, was walking down the street with someone, they were sort of looking down. Either I was told, or I assumed, that older people walked that way and someday I would, too.

People at 27 were of some indeterminate, unclassified, blah sort of age. Not kids any more, not real adults like our parents.

Above 60? Family garden, take gramps for a drive on Saturdays, speak loudly, tape your name on the bottom of things you want.

So, here I am: 64. I'm too active to have a garden; you don't need to yell, because I can hear the grass growing. My brother and I have been the same age for quite a few years now (at a certain point, four years ceases to be a difference).

I'm a religious person, unlike professional atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hare, who was also born on this day. I love trains, but that's not why the Pennssylvania Railroad was founded on this day.

I arrived at 6:27am on Monday, April 13, 1942. A gentleman named George Rihan was on a bus going to work, and he was passing the hospital pretty close to that time. He lives just a few miles from me now and we have been great friends for over 30 years. "Who goes around, comes around."