At the end of time when historians finally record all of the philosophical thoughts produced by American scholars, it is likely that the contribution of Miss Kay McCormick will be excluded. It may be that her thoughts are excluded simply because she is a woman. On the other hand, it may be that her thoughts are not included because she has no academic credentials. She did not attend Chicago University in her home town, nor did she ever attend classes at the Cook County Community College, a school widely known as the Four C’s. Yet Miss McCormick had a philosophic thought that must have occurred to every rational old-timer.
The story starts during the latter part of the great American Depression. At that time, jobs were almost impossible to acquire. Kay McCormick was underage, so she borrowed her older sister Katherine’s birth certificate and applied for a job as a junior telephone operator in the AT&T offices in downtown Chicago. The job paid around $12 or $13 per week. Because she used her sister Katherine’s birth certificate to gain employment, this young lady was known until her retirement as Kay. Her actual name is Helen. Over the years, Kay, who used to be Helen, worked her way up through the ranks. She was a junior operator, an operator, a junior service assistant, a service assistant, and an assistant chief operator, and, finally, a chief operator. I am here to assure you that any woman who endures this ordeal and emerges as a chief operator is a tough one. But in spite of all of the travail, Kay McCormick never lost her sense of humor. I always found it a pleasure to visit with Kay in the telephone operating rooms at the number one office in Chicago.
Phil Coulter, the Irish composer, wrote that “the minutes fly and the years roll by.” The years did roll by for Kay McCormick and eventually she retired with more than 45 years of service with AT&T. Kay never married. What usually happens in cases such as this is that friends move away and some die. So after a while, the old-timers are pretty much left alone. And so it was that a few years ago I wrote a Christmas card to Kay McCormick. I suppose she was in her 88th or 89th year. She responded with a very cheerful letter which included the phrase that “I don’t know why I have hung around so long.” As things turned out, it appears that Kay did not hang around much after that letter. There were no more letters from Chicago and I assume that her days of hanging around were finally over.
Recently I had an interview with the world-renowned physician, Andrew Beamer. Professor Beamer is a doctor of medicine as well as a Fellow of the American College of Cardiologists. Now that I have passed the age of puberty, as the conversation drew to a close, I included Kay McCormick’s remark that perhaps at my age, I had hung around too long. The remark was intended not as a throw-away line but as the observation of an 85-year-old patient. I suppose I should have kept my remark to myself because the physician began to question me about depression. I have no clinical signs of classic depression, but it was entirely reasonable for Professor Beamer to pursue that line of questioning. In the end, I more or less agreed to write an essay on the pluses and minuses of being 85 years of age and the attendant mental difficulties that accompany such an aged person.
Again, as I have stated earlier, it seems to me that anyone of my age and with my medical background is entitled to a period of gloomy thoughts. Those gloomy thoughts are rational and logical. Any 85-year-old man who believes that he can run a four-minute mile is delusional.
A person of this sort is entitled to believe that we went to war with Iraq because of its possession of weapons of mass destruction. He is also entitled to believe that the mission there was truly accomplished. Further, he is entitled to believe that the Iraqis would welcome us with roses and kisses, and that the farthest thing from their minds would be an insurgency. And finally, he is entitled to believe that the insurgency is in its “final throes.”
I am not delusional but I have a realistic outlook on my length of life. I have no intention of harming myself as a means of bringing the end more quickly. I do not intend, for example, to hire a cab to take me to US Highway 22, where among the porn shops I might find a gun dealer. When the gun dealer would point out that my blindness would prevent me from truly enjoying what the army calls “a piece,” meaning a gun, I would intend to reply that Vice President Cheney insists that all of us have a second amendment right to carry a gun. The second amendment says nothing about blind people, so I insist on having a gun.
Even in my days in the American Army, I was uncomfortable around guns. I was issued a Colt 45 caliber, but only carried it on two or three missions because it had the reputation of the gun that couldn’t shoot straight. In the final analysis I am uncomfortable around guns and have never owned one.
Now, on the other hand, I find that there are numerous reasons why I am determined to stick around for a while. Kay McCormick had no family and her friends were gone. I have a family, including a wife. It would be disastrously short-sighted for me to hasten the end of my life because of my enjoyment of the company of my wife Judy. As long as I collect my pension, it makes things a little easier for her and for myself. So in the first instance, I expect to continue to “hang around” because it is helpful to my wife. At such time as I become a burden on her, there will have to be another evaluation.
It is my intention to hang around for the foreseeable future because of my relationship with my daughters and their husbands. If I were to go away, it would take a long time before that hurt would vanish.
Then there are my five grandchildren. They are all good guys. The ones in New York are going to be professional baseball players after they graduate from college, or so I hope. The oldest grandson has mastered the Japanese language, which is a monumental undertaking. Another grandson is a champion debater in Texas. And then there is the most lovable guy in the world, old Jack Shepherd. It would be a cruel piece of work for nine year old Jack to recognize that he no longer had a grandfather.
Jack has a mild case of Down’s Syndrome, and when we are together he comments that the two of us are bound together because we both have a disability. Jack is an expert in handholding and in writing letters expressing the thought that someday I will be able to see again.
On top of my family, there are many friends who are concerned about me and seem to care a lot. Just this week, Tom Scandlyn paid a visit here that was most enjoyable. From time to time, other friends call me to buoy my spirits. I still maintain an active relationship with Sven Lernevall, who is a Swedish humorist and philosopher.
And then there is Esteban and Fabian, sons of Costa Rican immigrants who consider me as their “American Grandpa”. And finally, I take some degree of pleasure from writing essays which are often the memoirs of my life. My curiosity about life remains. For example, I am now contemplating an essay on “Whiskers.”
At least for the short term, I intend to hang around, as Kay McCormick would say, if for no other reason than to see the Bush administration roundly defeated in 2008 and their miserable secrets exposed. I have always been a student of history and I have long since come to the conclusion that George W. Bush is absolutely the worst president that has ever been visited upon the American people.
So you see, I have many reasons to hang around. If that were not so, why am I down there in the basement four days a week exercising? Is it to be assumed that those 70 minutes per exercise are intended to end my life? Quite to the contrary: the exercises are there to prolong life.
Any man who reaches the age of 85 years and does not contemplate what might come next is, as I said earlier, delusional. If anything, I am a realist. My experiences in World War II made me familiar with death. I know the sinking feeling when I looked at the empty cot next to me that was occupied last night by an enlisted man. All things considered, death is part of living. I accept that. When things are added up, I believe that there is more for people in my situation to live for than to die for. Above all, I wish to live for whatever contribution I can make toward making my wife’s life easier. And I know that my children and grandchildren would be greatly hurt by my passing. But a man has to make a rational and logical assessment of his life at 85 years. And if that assessment is logical and rational, there may be no reason at all to suspect depression. I am not giggly as my life draws to a close but I am determined to be a pragmatist.
In the end, I propose a toast to Kay McCormick, who probably never heard of the medical term “depression.” If she did, she would have applied it to the economic circumstances that existed at the time she was looking for a job. But in any case, it was her remark about having hung around a little too long that provided the hook for this essay to be written. Any comment that provides such a hook is entirely laudable. If an 85-year-old person with a history of serious illnesses in the past does not ever suffer a degree of depression, that person may be eligible for psychiatric help.
E. E. CARR
September 17, 2007
Essay 261
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Kevin’s commentary:
Kay’s note seems to have left a heck of an impression on Pop, since it was brought back up in another essay in 2009 which you can read here.
I’m quite pleased that Pop has made it through the end of the Bush administration; I didn’t realize that it was an explicit goal of his. He’s made it through a hell of a lot of things, really, and yet most of the relationships mentioned in this essay seven years ago have persisted. We hear plenty about old Sven, and a man named Harry Livermore is on Pop’s speed dial. The capacity to build lasting friendships seems like the mark of a good guy to me.