The Madness of Wild Bill, Continued

There is a hoary tale concerning two Beacon Hill matrons meeting in front of one’s elegant brownstone on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue, the axle of the Hub of the Universe. As they chatted about the fine spring weather and the latest Brahmin gossip, the front door of the lady’s elegant townhouse burst open and four burly Irishmen bearing the woman’s son on a litter emerged and hustled him into the family Packard parked in front as the uniformed chauffer held the door.

“Oh, my God, can’t he walk?” asked the alarmed neighbor in an hysterical burst.

The retort was swift and sure, “Of course he can but thank Heaven he doesn’t have to.”

Fast forward to my own youth shortly after W.W. II in the great shoe manufacturing center of Brockton, Massachusetts, only twenty miles but an infinite social distance from where those matrons met and where my family and neighbors walked the several miles to their jobs in the local factories. Prosperity was coming even to Tipperary, our little Irish ghetto on the east side of town, and the more successful denizens were beginning to acquire cars. The message was loud and clear, “Thank Heaven, we don’t have to walk any more."

My parents’ generation broke a tradition of walking that went back to antiquity, and they wouldn’t dream of walking across the street if they could possibly drive. Only after I became an adult did the gurus of preventive medicine come up with the notion that we could walk and jog our way to health and longevity. I feel terrible about my relatives and friends who missed this education; they went to premature graves in their eighties.

But our generation has no excuses and we tramp like infantry troopers marching to Pretoria, good health and long lives assured. As I type these words, exhausted from my daily forced march in the Piedmont of Virginia, between gasps I press the keys barely able to reach each one but rich in the knowledge that I’m doing great good for my exhausted heart and aching muscles.

Each day in triumph I pass the ten thousand step milestone demanded by the medical savants and as measured by my electronic pedometer and, completely spent, drop to the curb to rest before beginning the long trek back home where I can crawl into my bed, if I’m up to it. Struggling the last mile, I watch the poor fools in their cars pass. They smile and wave happily oblivious to their fate of early graves for failing to walk to work.

Lucky me!

Blog on!

Wild Bill