50+ Lifestyles

Life is What You Make It

By David W. Deuth, CFSP
President, Weerts Funeral Home

Unofficially, I’m as old as the Super Bowl; we were born the same year. Many continue to postulate that Payton Manning will “retire” after the big win because, after all, he’s 39 now…

Now that the Super Bowl is over, I guess I’m officially, well…50+. And,um, not retired.

I grew up during a time when we had one television, two rabbit ears and three channels – and that was when the weather was good. We had rotary dial telephones in avocado green and harvest gold and five-digit phone numbers. Stamps were 8 cents (two Lincoln four-centers would mail that first class letter), candy bars were a dime and gas was about thirty-five cents a gallon. For that price, the service station attendant would pump the gas for you, clean your windshield and check your washer fluid and engine oil. We called them “service stations” back then instead of “convenience stores,” because they actually serviced and repaired automobiles in their repair shops before they ever thought about selling big gulp sodas, chips, beer, wine, brats, energy drinks and small household goods.

We still wore spats when I started in the marching band. Johnny Carson owned late night TV, and Ironside, Colombo, Kojak and Mannix were names every household understood. If Mom and Dad would go out for dinner on a Saturday night and Grandma came over to watch us kids, we would have to lobby hard with Grandma to watch Emergency! instead of Lawrence Welk…and with only one television, someone was going to be unhappy.

Pay telephones, both in and outside of telephone booths, were commonplace; a dime would connect any local number. Jukeboxes played actual 45’s, and “HiFi” meant LPs, 8-tracks and cassette tapes. The booths at Lange’s Café had mini jukeboxes at each booth…one song for a dime, three for a quarter. The A&W restaurant was a drive-in, with Coney Dogs as the Tuesday night special. (Dad never let us eat in the car very often; when I got my first car and spilled the root beer, I quickly connected those dots.)

At the airport, anyone and everyone could walk right up to the gate to meet the arriving passengers; there was no security. Cars had keys and carburetors, not fobs and fuel injectors. You had to press the accelerator to start the car, not the brake. I remember penny gumball machines and wooden nickels. The elderly neighbor lady paid me three bucks to mow her lawn.

When Payton Manning was born, I was a paperboy for the local weekly newspaper. Every Wednesday afternoon I’d come home from school to find four bundles of newspapers in our driveway, each tied with a white string. Beneath one of the strings was an envelope with my pay in cash and change. Who would ever think of leaving an envelope containing cash in the driveway today?? Yikes!

Someone said fifty is the new thirty-five or some such thing. Someone else said age is a state of mind. Someone else said you’re only as old as you think you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah…

I don’t think of 50 as old, and I don’t think of myself as old. Just like Payton, I can’t do everything as much or as well as I could when I was 25, but I’ve also learned that I can also do some other things now that I couldn’t do then. Many a tradeoff in this life, to be certain.

Whether Payton retires now or later, one thing is certain: he’ll retire before me.

Someone else said life is what you make it. I’m going with that.

And I’ll “Remember Well” along the way.

David W. Deuth, CFSP, is a funeral director and the owner of Weerts Funeral Home in Davenport and RiverBend Cremation and Quad Cities Pet Cremation in Bettendorf. He can be reach at Dave@WeertsFH.com or by phone at (563) 424-7055.