•     •     •

A major problem as one ages, we’ve found, is accommodating oneself to increasingly sophisticated everyday devices. I don’t think it always was that way.

When both radio and I were in our infancy, people struggled with the “cat’s whiskers” on their crystal radio sets and then later had to deal with the dials, three as I recall, on those “superheterodyne” radio sets. But as time went on, things got simpler.

Radios with simple dials made it easy to find the desired station and adjust the sound. Even the introduction of FM didn’t complicate things.

The same was true of television. We began with few choices when it came to channels but were required to adjust antennas — rooftop or “rabbit ears” — to get good reception, and later we had to learn how to deal with color adjustments, but we did learn to cope. We even learned to play movies on our VCRs without any great difficulty.

But then came the refinements, especially in the hand controls, with all the things you could do, all the tricks you could learn. It was all so simple that, we were constantly told, “A child can do it.”
True enough, but where do people in our age category come up with a kid to handle these simple chores which are beyond our ability?

We went for one of those “new and improved” control systems touted by our television provider and ended up with so much trouble that in anger, chagrin and disgust we switched to another. Guess what? We’re still in the same boat. Maybe the oars are different, but we’re still rowing around in circles.

I’m not even going to start in on what happened when I changed to a different computer provider or server or whatever they’re called. I’m still feeling my way along — and very gingerly, let me tell you — on that one.

There’s no way to find out who coined the pronouncement, but whoever it was who first said, “Old age is not for sissies!” certainly knew what he was talking about.

•     •     •

A churchgoer who stuck around on Easter after services to watch the kids searching for their eggs noticed that rather than the real thing, most of the hidden surprises were egg-shaped plastic containers filled with candy and other goodies.

She noticed one little guy proudly carrying an unopened one, and asked him, “What do you think is in that egg?”

The youngster must have spent plenty of time in markets with his mom, because he had an immediate answer. Holding his “egg” aloft, he piped, “My mommy’s pantyhose!”

•     •     •

Friend of mine sent me a clipping of a comment by presidential brother Jeb Bush on a proposal to create a Gubernatorial Fellows program to bring in college students to work closely with his Florida administration for a year at a time:

“It’s helpful for me to get outside the box as to who I hang with as a leader.”

You suppose that’s a muddled way of echoing Benjamin Franklin’s remark at the signing of the Declaration of Independence? You know, the one that goes: “We must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

•     •     •

My friend Harlow is well past the child-rearing stage, but there’s nothing wrong with his memory, including that of the holiday when he, his wife and five offspring were forced to all pile into their VW for the trip from Oakland to San Jose.

It’s not a long drive, but those five offspring squabbling in the back seat made it seem forever. I mean before he even started the engine in Oakland.

So he turned to the back seat, fixed the unruly quintet with a glare, pointed menacingly and said: “OK, listen up! This is not the station wagon. This is the Volkswagen, so with one hand I can reach back and get one of you by the throat! Do you understand?”
Ten eyes opened wide, he reports, as five heads nodded and five voices whispered, “Yes, Daddy.”

Whether he was Jim or Ellis that day matters not, but he says if he just could have patented his tone and his look, he could have sold the patent and retired early and rich as the man who created a cure for attention deficit disorder.


After retiring from a long and respected career with The Sacramento Bee, Stan Gilliam found that he just couldn't stop writing. So he brought his "Stan's Sacramento" column to the Spectrum, where it has been a favorite of readers for 15 years ... and counting.

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