Pete's BLOG-Day 26,426. A day brightener story.

Today is Tuesday, March 26, 2013. My stats today: 10 minutes of yoga, 10 minutes on the ball and 54 minutes of walking = 3.0 miles for a March total of 49.6 miles. My weight was 161.0 pounds.

QUOTE from Jim Doyne: "There is an unusually large assortment of heads on the current scene: Egg, Meat, Fat, Sore, and Swell Head, among others (like s_ _ _)

My THOUGHTS today. I volunteered to be on the Friend-to-Friend church group. We go visit people who are older or younger than me (72) and basically need or want company. My partner is Jim Albrecht and we have good time visiting these people. We try to "Brighten their day" a little and get them laughing and/or talking about old times, etc. Yesterday we visited Ken, age 91, and Doris, age 89.  They still live in their own home and are in good health (Ken is getting a little forgetful). They are retired farmers, had six kids, and have been married 72 years.

I really love talking to these people. I find what they have to say to be so interesting. For instance:
- Doris is remarkable in that at age 89 she leads a fitness class for about 20-30 other women at our community center - three days a week. The other women are all younger than her.
-They got married in 1941 when she was 17 and Ken was 19. They met in country school and only lived a mile or two from each other when growing up. They didn't have a honeymoon - the day after they were married they were out in the woods cutting up wood for the fireplace. But Doris said "We did have a honeymoon ten years later after our first three kids were born." Doris continued by telling us that they actually had two families - after kid #3 reached 10 years they had three more.

-Ken used to make his own wine. He made wines from fruit, (grape, strawberry, apple, peach, etc.)  and  he made a potato wine. Doris said potato wine needed some additional ingredients but it was really good. (I had never heard of potato wine.)

-They even had horses when they started farming. Their first tractor was a 10-20 Farmall. They also milked cows by hand but Ken said Doris wasn't strong enough to get any milk out so he had to do it all. They got milking machines after a few years.

-They showed us the high school graduation photos of their six kids. I had 5 of their  6 kids in my class. One lives in Arizona and one North Carolina - the rest are in Iowa. They are all doing well - they are assets and not liabilities in American Society.

-Doris said she comes from a family of long-livers. She has three sisters that are ages 102, 96, 92 and her Grandpa lived to be 105. She said he decided he had lived long enough so he quit eating and drinking until he passed away. Nobody could make him eat or drink - if they tried he would hit them. She said he was ready to go.

As I said before- I really like talking to old people. I love history and I love to get people talking abut their own personal history. I look forward to these visits every month. One thing you need to do something like is to be able to ASK QUESTIONS and then LISTEN. I like to think I'm pretty good at both of those.