What’s in a name?
Like father, like son

    Old Guy attended the recent group meeting where committees studying improvements to the town of Rome presented their progress reports. Last week’s Rome page promoted that meeting, but it didn’t address the question with which a few Rome citizens confronted Old Guy: Is Old Guy old enough to be called Old Guy? I deftly avoided their inquisition, but in the days since, I have been doing a lot of thinking about age.

    I remember starting this column last year and feeling particularly creaky at the time, which led to a vision of myself as an old guy. It seemed right at the time. Today, it’s right for other reasons entirely.

    The more I live this daily adventure, the more I find myself reflecting the best and the worst of the guy who raised me, my dad, Werner. He was a strict German disciplinarian to those whom he felt needed disciplining. But my Old Man’s lessons to me in obedience, stubborn-headedness, and love—even in the middle of his impatience—have had a lifelong influence in all that I have become, good and bad.

    The snows of last weekend brought out Old Guy’s best and worst. My 212,000-mile Honda got stuck in my hilly driveway after a half-dozen attempts to scale its snowy path. An equal number of attempts to free the car followed, with Still-Young Bride assisting behind the wheel. My impatience with her and my persistence to get that car into the garage reminded me of similar situations I had experienced with my Old Man.

    WWWD? What would Werner do? He’d yell (I yelled) and he’d keep at it (as I did) until the job was done. Still-Young Bride knows the transformation Old Guy makes (into his Old Man) in such situations. She puts up with the Old Man for the time it takes to solve the problem. Pretty soon Old Guy returns, job completed. Apologies to her, naturally, follow. And I prove, once again, that persistence can be a vice, as well as a virtue.

    The moniker of Old Guy is one that I’m beginning to feel comfortable wearing. The bearded face that stares back at me in the mirror is one I recognize, even as it becomes rimmed with the gray follicles of age that surround my face, ears, nose and eyebrows. The wrinkles of experience are there too, to keep the follicles company.

    It just so happens that today was trim-the-follicles day—a weekly ritual steeped in Old Guy/Old Man tradition. The electric clipper which I use to trim my beard each week is the very same one my Old Man used to clip my hair when Old Guy was Young Boy. Can you imagine a piece of equipment being built today that could last fifty-plus years? Me neither.

    That’s why I will always take special care of this clipper. It is a link to my past and the memories—bad and good—that will lead this Old Guy into Old Manhood soon enough.