Stephen Foster gave his song the title
“Old Folks at Home.” If he were writing a song now, maybe the
title would be “Old Folks In the Home.” We just have to define
which home we are talking about.
Stephen Foster gave his song the title “Old Folks at Home.” If he were writing a song now, maybe the title would be “Old Folks In the Home.” We just have to define which home we are talking about.
In spite of the things I may have said about the media, especially when it comes to political reporting, I still watched the CBS Evening News recently. One of the stories involved the eviction of elderly tenants because they might be ill or have a disability. CBS featured the case of Hop Symons, an 82 year old resident of Sanibel Island, Fla.
Symons has diabetes and glaucoma. While diabetes is a chronic and serious illness, neither are debilitating if given proper attention, which Symons does. However, these illnesses were given as proof that he was no longer capable of living on his own when his landlord served him with an eviction notice. This in spite of the fact that he was shown dancing and riding his bicycle.
This was not a greedy landlord trying to find a way to get rid of a longterm tenant in a rent-controlled apartment. This was a city agency trying to purge its housing of anyone who might become a problem. When evicting the elderly and ill becomes governmental policy, then we all of us have a bleak future.
I have seen a note from one Morgan Hill resident to another, older resident which said that it was “natural” for the older people to sell their houses and move to a retirement community. The home would then be purchased by someone young, with a family, and the neighborhood would become active again.
I have a feeling that this might be considered “natural” only in America, where our society has lost the roots of the extended family. Maybe the roots of the extended family continue to exist only in those groups with strong ethnic or cultural connections.
I was reading a novel recently that was set in New York’s Chinatown and Hong Kong. It was the duties and obligations of the extended family that drove the plot. For some, it is impossible to escape the reach of the extended family. For others, the price that they pay when they do escape proves to be too high.
While the book may have been fiction, its truth is more natural than the real examples I cited above.
My own family spread itself around the country. A brother in Texas, a sister in Ohio, another brother retired to Kentucky. When it came time to retire, my parents looked for some place warmer than winters in Flagstaff. Everyone was talking about the new retirement communities and how great they were for the elderly. My parents checked into Del Webb’s Sun City, Ariz. They took one look and ran as fast as they could go. It was just inconceivable to them to live in a community that banned children and pets.
They found what they were looking for in southern Missouri, a small town with just enough going on that not all of the young moved away. They said that it gave them energy. Not the fake, on the stage, entertainment energy of Branson, but the steady, energy of Cabool, a town not willing to die. This is a town where people got up in the morning, went to work, some at the furniture factory, came home and worried about how their children were doing in school. In short, it was a small town like the one where they themselves had grown up.
The fact is that our population is aging more every year. This is an economic issue as those called baby boomers are reaching retirement age.
It is also a cultural issue as our public culture is being captured by the images of youth. Our film industry focuses on attracting the young male who buys most tickets and is said to prefer pure action to a film with a hint of an idea. It seems that in our MTV mediated culture, there is little room for the elderly and if there were, we will be shown an extreme make over plastic surgery solution. It is just one more way of hiding the elderly.
I don’t think that I will ever go to a retirement community. I would much rather play catch with a neighbor’s son than to play old man’s golf on a par 3 somewhere. I think I will go see if Blockbuster has a copy of “Harry and Tonto.” It will remind me that there is some dignity after eviction.
“I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on.” – Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Wes Rolley is an artist and concerned citizen. The Board of Contributors is comprised of local writers whose views appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.
