Being an old fool in old-time Phoenix

One of the things that I remember my father saying when I was a kid was that "there's no fool like an old fool". And as harsh as that sounds, it shows a reflection of expectations, forgiveness for the young, but not for people who are old enough to know better. This set an expectation for myself, as I was determined to not grow up to be an old fool.

Walking onto a city bus with my best friend in high school, and immediately blurting out the stupidest things that we could think of, as loud as we could, was age appropriate. The grownups would be annoyed, but they'd glance up, see that we were young and foolish, and forgive. We weren't old fools.

Now calm down here, I'm not saying that being old necessarily makes you a fool - in fact, it should do just the opposite - with age comes wisdom. The kind of things that kids don't know become the kind of things that adults should know, like not parking in a handicapped spot, for example. Once I reached a certain age, I knew that if I did those kinds of stupid things that I wouldn't be forgiven for my age, I'd be an old fool. And some older and wiser person would call me on it, hopefully gently, possibly with a punch in the nose.

And this morning I'm pondering the kind of things that would have been expected that people would know after a certain age in old-time Phoenix, and if they didn't do them, they would be considered an old fool. My first thought is the proper way to tie up a wagon, or a horse, when you were in town.

An old fool would be someone who looked old enough to know something, and yet would wander off without properly tying up their team when they went into a building. This isn't the same as being a "country bumpkin", and spitting on the floor, but it's close, and the people around you would probably forgive you if you were young, or had straws in your hair, but not so much if you were of age, especially a full-grown man, or a man with a bit of gray in his hair, neatly dressed. The expectation is that you were old enough to know better, but were behaving like a fool.

There are, of course, people who just seem they'll never learn. Age doesn't bring wisdom, it just makes their foolish behavior all the more embarrassing to the people around them. At a certain point they become the "village idiot", or something like that, and no further expectations of them are made. Speaking for myself, I like to be cheerful, but I'm not the village idiot, and I'm not an old fool.

Image at the top of this post: In front of Coffee Al's in 1899, Washington just west of Central, Phoenix, Arizona.

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