Retirement Age, But Not Just Yet

If I were foot loose and debt free, I could retire. Last week, that magical figure, 62, popped up on the meter. To the pleasure of some and chagrin of others, it will continue to whirl. The news of Cape May County could surely be edited by someone possessing the valor of a knight from King Arthur’s Round Table, the Wisdom of Solomon, the scowl of H.L. Mencken, the foresight of Adolph Ochs and the guts of F. Mervyn Kent. Until then, hang in there. We do the best with the tools in hand. Could they be better? Couldn’t anything?
Retirement, however desirable it may be, is simply not in the cards. Does it bother me? Well, not right now. What bugs me most is that many former classmates are laying out plans for their golden years. Those who went into some sort of government service have done their 20 or 25 years, cashed out their chips, and had driven off into the sunset. Actually, many put the old homestead up for sale as retirement day drew close.
As soon as they cleaned out their desk, cleared off the bulletin board and tightened the gold watch, they set the GPS in the SUV to I-95 and away from New Jersey.
They are the ones that make me wonder, “Was there something I missed back in 1971? Answer, “Yes!” Instead of being bull headed, and wanting to work at a Cape May County weekly newspaper with stars in my eyes, I should have registered correctly (which I never did) jumped on the band wagon, and life might have been better.
Then I look around and reality sets in. There is much that still needs to be done, stories reported and photos taken. There is work to be done, and retirement smacks that in the face. Retirement means kicking off the shoes, giving up on the daily grind and growing fat and lazy with a remote cradled in your hand.
Nope, not ready for that.
It is becoming clearer what many folks told me in my young years, when they had gray hair and mine was dark. “I don’t feel old,” they said. Some were in their eighties, feeling like someone in their fifties. I still heard Louis Armstrong crooning, “You’re as old as your doubts, but brother, you’re as young as your faith.”
The years ahead will be more challenging than in the past. The news business has changed light years since my very first byline in 1965. (A fatal train wreck at Schoolhouse Lane in Court House).
For someone whose career began in the back shop at the Cape May Star and Wave gathering lead to melt into “pigs” for a Linotype machine, to see that reporters today can Tweet from a cell phone at an event to an audience of news junkies is amazing. Photographers don’t need heavy gear to produce eye-popping pictures. It’s all different and exciting.
On my birthday, I was blessed, and I truly mean that, by taking my granddaughter and grandson to the County Library for some books. It’s a ritual we all enjoy that I know, in a few short years, will be just a memory. Time has taught me that children teach the value of time. They just don’t know it.
Can it be that, only the day before yesterday, we (my dear wife mostly) attended the needs of a son and daughter. She supervised school projects and homework, music and dance lessons. Then, like a mist in the morning, there were graduations, and that boy and girl were adults.
Through most of those years, I was armed with a camera. Colleagues have heard me utter many times, “All I ever wanted to do was take pictures!” When the closet gets cleaned, there are bags filled with snapshots. All of them evoke a memory, and I am glad I took them, although most were taken under the threat, “Don’t take my picture.”
Odd, but I still recall going into the lobby of the First National Bank of Cape May Court House and getting a loan to buy my first Nikon F camera body and a few lenses. I believe that loan was for $495, and I could barely imagine ever paying off such a princely sum.
Time has changed Court House, maybe not for the better, but change is inevitable. Getting across Route 9, even on Sunday morning, is a challenge, and that’s one of the things I am still finding difficult to accept.
At the rate things are changing, I might well spend what little retirement comes just trying to cross the street to cash a retirement check that won’t buy much more than life’s barest essentials. Right now, there are more important things to consider, like next week’s edition. Retirement? Next door down, please.