MUSTARD’S LAST STAND [W, 1-21-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—MUSTARD’S LAST STAND [W, 1-21-26]

He’s getting’ too old, he’s done got too old,

He’s too old to cut the mustard any more…

 

Red Foley and Ernest Tubb had a big hit record with that song in 1951, when I had just begun to play cymbals in the marching band. I really wanted to be in the marching band as well as the orchestra, because it got to go places, but I was a bassoonist, and our band director, Mr. Adams, did not want to expose the school’s very expensive bassoon to the elements a marching band has to endure. So, he handed me the cymbals and said, “Nothing loud.” Apparently he had not read Psalm 150.

It was football season, and the band was preparing for the half-time show at the homecoming game. For me, that meant mostly standing in formation while the others squinted in the hot, slanting Autumn sun to make sense of the tiny black dots on the little music cards perched precariously on the wavery wire lyres screwed to the tops of their flutes and trumpets. Mr. Adams was still trying to figure out songs appropriate for homecoming. “What’s a song we could play for Mr. Disler?” he asked us.

Delbert Disler was the football coach and history teacher and probably almost 40 years old. Sweet little fourteen-year-old flautist, Carol Hardy, called out, “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.” It got a hearty hardy laugh, even from Mr. Adams. He decided against it, even though he was only 25.

I thought about that yesterday when we had our annual review with our financial advisor. He wanted us to move some money into an account that would pay us more. “We have to do it soon, though,” he said, “because 88 is the upper age limit, and you’ve got a birthday coming up soon.”

What? I’ve gotten so old people won’t even take my money!?!

The first time I encountered ageism personally I was 26. I was looking at the job ads in The Chicago Sun-Times. One of them said, “No one over 25 need apply.” What? Was “over 25” senile? These days, of course, you are not allowed to put anything ageist or sexist or racist into an ad like that. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. If they aren’t going to hire a woman or an old person or some other undesirable, why make them go through the process only to waste their time? They should probably be required to say something like, “We are small-minded racists and sexists, so you probably wouldn’t want to work here, anyway.”

At 26, I was too old to get a job. Now I’m too old to invest the money I made from my job. Age, and our reaction to it, is a funny thing.

I’ve dealt with that often as a pastor, at the time of death, when it seemed that someone had died too young or too old. Especially too young, like Joel, who was murdered when he was only ten.

I knew Joel. In some ways, he was our first grandchild. When his parents separated, his father would bring Joel to our house on the weekends he had custody. He was just a little boy then. He’d sit beside me on the sofa as we read books together. He’d bake cookies in the kitchen with Helen.

But I knew Joel in a wider context, too. I had seen him with his mother and stepmother and grandparents. So at his funeral, I said, “A life is not measured best by years. It is measured best by love. Joel loved, and he was loved. That is a full life.”

That is so wrong. Joel was so smart and so sweet. He would have contributed so much to the world. It was wrong that his years were so few. Could that possibly be a full life?

Yet, it is so right. You might be too old or too young for certain jobs. Too old or too young to invest your money. Too old to cut the mustard. But love is ageless. If you love and are loved, your life is full.

John Robert McFarland

“I hold it true, what ere befall, I feel it when I sorrow most. Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Tennyson