Getting really, really old in old-time, and modern Phoenix, Arizona


It must be the desert air, or something, because people live for a very long time in Phoenix. And although I've often pondered getting old, and even getting really old, I haven't yet pondered getting really, really old, which I'm doing right now.

We need to start with defining what "old" means, and I can tell you as one of the young people who was told "don't trust anyone over 30", that's what it was for me in my teens and twenties. And I remember the first time I read "Around the World in Eighty Days", when I saw that the hero was forty years old, my first thought was wondering why they chose to have such an old man do that trip?

I live in Glendale, which isn't far from Sun City, which always gave me the "heebie-jeebies" when I went there back in the 1970s. When it first started, in 1960, you needed to be at least fifty, which I guess was considered "old" then. But whenever I went there, with my brown hair and my sports car, I felt as if people were watching me, and whispering. Even when I got into my fifties, and had grey hair myself, I still felt uncomfortable, as if someone was gonna walk up to me with a horse whip and call me a "derned young whipper-snapper!" (whatever that means!).

Now that I'm in my sixties, I no longer consider myself an "older man", I'm an old man. And since I'm sound as dollar and robust as an old mule, living into my seventies is just around the corner. And then my eighties, nineties, hundreds?

I talked to a woman who was bicycling past me a few days ago not far from the old folks trailer court (oops, I mean retirement community mobile home park), and I mentioned that I'm planning on getting to 100, and she replied by saying that she was gonna do 110, both of which sound kinda crazy, but will probably happen.

People have been getting really old in Phoenix for a very long time. My favorite example includes John Lincoln (who founded Lincoln Hospital) who lived into his nineties, and his wife outlived him!

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!

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