I’ve heard of zero to 60 ... let's try 70
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 15, 2025
- 487
Take this quotation out for a test drive … just see how you like it.
It sure was more fun being 20 in the ’70s than being 70 in the ’20s.
I’m not entirely certain who said that first or if I totally agree with the sentiment itself, but I appreciate the symmetry of it.
There’s a mathematical purity, blended with a wistful — but not maudlin — wisdom that appeals to the writer in me, much the same way I treasure lines like, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” or “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” or “We’ll always have Paris.”
Speaking of movies that matter, I wasn’t all that surprised when “A Complete Unknown,” which tells the story of Bob Dylan’s seminal performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, failed to win a single Academy Award at this year’s Oscars. Its subject matter wasn’t grand enough, I suppose, when scaled against the Holocaust.
But I’m happy enough just to have seen it on the big screen at the downtown theater in my little town and to have shared that experience with my wife as we continue to adjust to life back home.
It’s been 14 months since we left the coast after having lived in North Carolina since the turn of the century, and well, one of us is doing a whole lot better at handling the reentry than the other one.
Part of the problem is as obvious as it is simple: I miss the ocean.
There’s no substitute for its vast majesty, its mysterious depths.
I’ve tried to make do with a weekly stop at the duck pond in the park, but aside from learning it thaws from the middle inward, it’s a bit like scanning a Reader’s Digest version of “Moby Dick.”
But there’s a white swan that glides with the ducks, which is cool.
I suspect, though, I’m guilty of romanticizing the Atlantic’s allure even as I choose to forget the crowds that invaded my space, the small children left to their own devices at the edge of the waterline and the fact that as I got older, the surf seemed to get rougher, making it more and more difficult to stagger to the shore.
“Selective memory,” the psychologists call it, and that phrase ranks right up there with “self-fulfilling prophecy” in my book.
We’re told human beings use about 10% of their brains for thinking, which may or may not be true, but the fact remains that clearly, as we age, our mental acuity diminishes. Just the other day, for example, I found myself in the backyard and couldn’t remember why it was I left the warm house in the first place.
As the snow fell and my feet froze in their slippers, I felt ridiculous.
I hope I’m not drifting into Henry Fonda territory and that “On Golden Pond” becomes my blueprint for the future, though there’s a comfort in knowing my wife could outdo Katharine Hepburn if I ever found myself unable to handle even the most basic functions.
“There was nothing familiar,” he tells her after getting lost. “Not one damn tree. Scared me half to death. That’s why I came running back here to you. So I could see your pretty face and that I could feel safe and that I was still me.” That gets me every single time.
When I was 20 in the ’70s, I drove a gold Chevy Impala, and it was a beast, more horsepower than most muscle cars, and a sound system I installed myself, one capable of rattling windows and creating a bass throb that could make a sternum shudder from a hundred feet away, the kind of eye candy they don’t make anymore.
Before the end of the decade, though, I totaled it. Don’t ask how.
My aunt had gifted it to me for my birthday, and it was a clean machine, one I took pretty good care of until I wrecked it.
After that, I bought a 1973 Buick Centurion, used and abused, and I still owed several payments on it when the engine block cracked.
Then, at my girlfriend’s urging, I signed the papers on my first new car, a 1984 Ford Mustang with five on the floor, a front spoiler and more get-up-and-go than I expected, a fine-handling automobile for all those country roads I used to get to sporting events I was covering. It tended to slide a bit in the snow, but I managed.
Its metallic silver paint shimmered in the summer sun, and I used to love washing it in the driveway, applying two coats of Turtle Wax to achieve maximum luminosity, even under an autumn full moon.
Much too soon, though, it started breaking down, and by the time my girlfriend had traded me in for a new model, I was much more conservative, deciding on a reliable Honda Civic, not a sports car.
It was 1991, and Benny — that’s what I named him when I left the lot — was everything I could have wanted in a means of conveyance. He got 50 miles to the gallon, had a smooth five-speed transmission and, even though he came equipped with crank-down windows and an AM/FM radio, no power steering or AC, he and I covered nearly 200,000 miles, before old age drove us apart.
At my wife’s insistence, I donated him to some charity, and in a sign from God or something, I got a Christmas card a few months ago, picturing him all ready to roll again, somewhere in Carolina.
So now I’m 70 in the ’20s, and when I drive, I use my wife’s SUV, another Honda, and that’s fine. I mean it’s nearly impossible to get lost in this little town, and if I break down, I know the way home.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where age is just a number and the highway’s calling.