HOW TO BE A DIGNIFED OLD MAN [T, 11-19-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—HOW TO BE A DIGNIFED OLD MAN [T, 11-19-24]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, was recently recalling one of our family reunions when she was a college student. The McFarlands are a big clan, eight in my father’s generation, and this particular reunion was larger than usual, because the Smiths, my Grandma Mac’s family, were included. Most of the Smiths had not come before, and one of the older Smiths picked Katie to help with identifications. She pointed at me. “Who is that man?” “That’s John McFarland.” She laughed. “Yes, I know that’s John McFarland, but who is he?”

It took quite a while before they figured out that Viola Smith thought I, in my late 40s, looked just like my great-grandfather, John White McFarland, and she thought that is what Katie meant by calling me John McFarland.

When Katie figured it out, she explained, “That’s John Robert McFarland, son of John Francis and Mildred McFarland.” “Oh,” said Aunt Viola. [1]

I’m not sure I’d heard that story before, but I’m glad I have now. I’m glad that I looked like my great-grandfather, for he was an interesting man.

He was fourteen when The Civil War broke out. He lied about his age and joined the Union navy, serving on a gun boat on the Ohio River. He got some fatal disease and was mustered out with a pension “for life.” The government assumed he would die soon. Too bad. They didn’t realize what it meant to deal with a John McFarland. He lived to be 104.

He was a farmer, but because he had a pension--not really very big, but big enough--his real vocation was reading. Books were hard to come by, but he would borrow from anybody who had one. Books were precious, though, so it was a point of honor with him, that he would return a borrowed book the very next day. He would walk to some near-by town to borrow a book, read it as he walked home, sit up with fire light or lamp light and read through the night, and finish his reading as he walked the book back home the next day. [2]

I met him once, when he was the age I am now, and I was about four. He was a dignified old man in a black suit and tie and shoes, and white shirt.

Without intending to copy my great-grandfather, I always assumed I would be a dignified old man, the kind who has a black cane with a silver knob on top, who wears a fedora that he tips to ladies, who speaks kindly and politely to women and children, and wisely to younger men, and who leaves a cloud of gentle good cheer in his wake.

To this point I have been asking children to trade hair with me, since they have so much and I have so little. I have been telling old ladies on walkers that they are clogging up the aisle at church. I tell young men that the secret to a good marriage is the absence of communication. When wait persons ask if we have any questions, I say, “Yes; what is the meaning of life?” I leave a cloud of confusion in my wake.

I may look like John McFarland, but so far, I’m a lot more like John Robert McFarland than John White McFarland. If I am going to be a dignified gentleman in my old age, I need to get started on it very soon now. First, I need a fedora…

John Robert McFarland

1] My father was named for both his grandfathers—John White McFarland and Francis Marion Smith. He was the second son, but the first was named Arthur Glenn, for his father, Arthur Harrison, so John and Francis were both still available when my father was born. Strangely, neither my grandfather nor his first-born son went by Arthur. They were Harry and Glenn. Uncle Glenn was known as a great berry-picker. When he visited us on our farm shortly after we moved there, when I was ten or eleven, he took me berry-picking and taught this city boy to tie kerosene-soaked strings around my ankles to keep chiggers from crawling up my legs and getting into places where you don’t want an itchy chigger bite.

2] He was the model for the character named John White in my Christmas story, “Sheets for Christmas,” about how walking reader John White fools a KKK bunch into providing Christmas for a black family.