Today, I found myself lunching at one of those buffet places where many old folks gather for senior-discounted meals and some peer-group camaraderie. I've heard rumors that many of them wrap extra food in napkins and sneak it out with them for a later meal. I'm happy to say I did not witness any food-related crimes of that sort or any other sort. (With the possible exception of a few people simply eating way too much which, technically, isn't a crime. Not yet at least.) Besides, I wasn't there to stake out the geezers hoping to bust one or two of them for buffet violations. I was there to enjoy a quiet lunch and catch up on a bit of reading.
I sat at a table, by myself, enjoying my high-calorie/low-nutritional comfort food. Laid out in front of me was a recent issue of Smithsonian magazine I'd brought along to read. Between too many bites and swearing I could actually feel my cholesterol level rising and my fat-to-muscle ratio increasing, I casually read an article about Missoula, Montana. I'm no cowboy. Nor am I a particularly outdoorsy type. But the more I read, the more I decided visiting Missoula and spending some time there was now on my bucket list.
As I ate and read and ate some more, I kept glancing up, looking at the many old folks walking the buffet's aisles as they headed to and from their tables, empty-handed or with plates piled with food, or as they milled about in the food serving areas deciding what to eat from the many entrees and other offerings sitting in steam trays or under heat lamps or in big bowls nestled alongside each other on crushed-ice-carpeted serving counters.
Most of the people dining there seemed to be in their late sixties, seventies, or eighties. Although I'm just a bit past sixty myself, the vast majority of these folks struck me as belonging more to my parents' generation than being my contemporaries. Perhaps, in my mind, I think of myself as being much younger than my years and, again in my mind and possibly my mind only, all those other folks seemed a lot older than me. I mean a lot older. Certainly as old as the wrinkled wear-and-tear on their faces and the general decline of their bodies seemed to announce. Something that, in my opinion, my face and body is not announcing. Leastwise, not quite as loudly.
A newly arrived couple caught my attention. They were probably both about 80-ish, give or take a couple of years. The man wore a pair of beige slacks and a white tee-shirt that featured an American flag and the words, "United We Stand," under the flag. The woman was dressed in dark pants and wore a bright red tee-shirt with the word, "America," emblazoned across her chest.
"Patriots," I thought, neither approvingly or disapprovingly.
As I continued looking about between bites, I decided most of the people I was lunching with, given their average age and peer-group status, likely thought of themselves as patriots and were mostly on the conservative side of things. A quote, one that is often incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill, goes something like this: "Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart. Any man who is over 30 and is not a conservative has no brains." Most of the people lunching with me today were certainly over 30. In fact, most of them were more than twice thirty and twice thirty gives them many more years past 30 to turn any liberalism they might once have endorsed into opposing, conservative views.
I suppose those somewhat well-known words which did not come from the mouth of Winston Churchill have more than a little to do with my assessment that many older people are generally conservative. After all, many of them, much like my parents, were born or grew up during the Great Depression, fought or lived through World War Two and Korea, created an American baby boom, witnessed the assassination of a president and then, soon after, watched their country nearly tear itself apart over Viet Nam. That era culminated in the resignation of a president who was once the assassinated president's opponent. You likely remember him: He was the tricky one who was no crook!
In the subsequent years, they've seen politics and the nation's financial health turn into a roller coaster ride, a fundamentalist religious revival, corporate greed reaching for new heights, a terrorist attack that brought down two mighty symbols of American strength and dominance followed by two wars resembling medieval crusades, both fueled by fear and fought for political and military leverage in one of the world's most oil-rich regions. All this, of course, followed by the current state of political insanity. For whatever reasons, many people who have lived through all that seemed to have arrived in the present with fairly conservative views.
Many of these people, I also thought as I ate, probably also believe they've lived long enough to see the beginnings of the end times; things being as crazy as they are these days. I know I sometimes think that.
It also occurred to me that it's not easy being an all-around patriot these days, whether you're young or old. While blind faith certainly isn't a rare commodity these days, it never has been, it must be harder and harder to maintain because there are so many variables and simply too much easily available contradictory information to maintain it. Well, that's what logic tells me. With so many conflicting issues making it difficult to decide which of them are deserving of patriotic nourishment and which should be opposed, even if that opposition might seem, in some ways and to some people, unpatriotic, I simply cannot understand how anyone can become blindly faithful towards anything. Perhaps that's just me naively giving too much intellectual credit to too many people? Perhaps.
To guess that many seniors are of a conservative bent, politically, religiously, and socially, certainly is no stretch, although my stereotyping of these folks might be biased. Back in the day, I was one of those young people who strongly opposed the Viet Nam War and was, at the time, very distrustful of anyone over 30. (Until I turned 30, that is.)
Then, I wondered, "How many of these people must truly feel conflicted these days?" For instance, should they support or vote for those who share many of their ideals, much the way they've (probably) always done? Or, should their livelihoods be their top priority when it comes to who and what to support or vote for? It's not a stretch to think, given most of the ages of the people in that restaurant today, that a big part of their "quality of life" is contingent on so-called entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, two things today's conservative right, which I believe many of the folks I was dining with have traditionally supported, seem so hell-bent on cutting way back on.
Back to the couple in the patriotic tee-shirts...
The man slightly resembled the actor, Jason Robards, in his later years. I watched this Jason Robards near-look-a-like as he picked out his food. He stood tall and, in spite of his obvious years, didn't seem bent at all. When he walked, his stride was smooth and purposeful. He looked like a generally nice guy as much as anyone can be perceived as a nice guy by simply looking at them.
The woman with "Mr. Robards," I'm guessing his wife, was short, petite, and had a pair of very playful eyes! It occurred to me that, behind those eighty-something-year-old, twinkling, mischievous, youthful eyes, a 12-year-old girl still existed and still sometimes thought about things like jumping rope, playing hop-scotch, and having sleep-over slumber parties with her friends.
Between trying to read my Missoula, Montana, article, sandwiched between weighing important decisions regarding heading back to the food service areas for another plateful, I wondered what the man's tee-shirt meant to him? Did the "United" part of "United We Stand" refer to all Americans? Did it mean just those of his party or those with similar political views as his? Was he referring to people in his age group? People of his color or ancestry or something else?
And what about "Mrs. Robards'" red, "America," tee-shirt? Was there a political statement contained in it? Or, was she simply wearing it because it made "Mr. Robards" happy? Perhaps it was something even more simple-- Maybe she merely likes the color red?
You see, that's a big problem these days. When someone says or wears a tee-shirt that proclaims notions like, "United We Stand," or simply has the word, "America," on it, it's hard to
know where those people actually stand or who they're talking about or are they simply partial to the color red... followed, of course, by blue and white.
There was a time when people who wore patriotic words like those on the old couple's tee-shirts or shared them via bumper stickers pasted on their cars or displayed in other ways could be counted on to be more easily categorized. And you could usually categorize them as conservatives, most likely Republicans.
But that was then and this is now and now I can't quite figure out where most of those people are coming from or what it is they believe in, support, or are trying to say. They might still be conservative. They might even still be Republicans. But they might not still support or vote for the things and the people their party tells them to support and vote for. I smell change on the wind. I'm not sure what that change will mean and I'm not sure I'll like it but, in today's binary world, everything might not be as simple as zero/one, black/white, up/down, right/left in the privacy of the voting booth. I suppose time will tell.
