by Vaughn Bocchino

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time recently with her advanced-octogenarian grandparents.  I’ll admit, at first it was a bit of a chore.  Old people have a habit of talking about whatever ails them and what medications they are on.  They talk about this because heart palpitations and irregularity is their small talk.  Arthritis and catheters is their right now.

But, after a few visits, my grandparents-in-law began to open up.  They started to talk about their childhood, their regrets, their passions, their accomplishments, and their failures.  One could ignorantly ask, “What is there worth knowing about life in northwest Arkansas?”

As I found out, quite a lot.  Rural Arkansas may as well be anywhere else in the world.  Humans with human concerns and human needs.   Same shit, different scenery.  Except, of course, that Wal-mart tends to have a lot more street cred out there.  Not the “corporate behemoth” or “necessary evil” descriptors attached to it elsewhere.

I’ve realized that their generation is the last generation that will appreciate anything of value.  We are encouraged to throw stuff away so we can constantly be buying new stuff.  Today I almost threw out a jacket I love because the zipper broke.  The fuckin’ zipper!  A $.85 piece of equipment broke on a $40 jacket and my first instinct was to throw away the jacket and buy another!  AND, my wife is a seamstress, for God’s sake.

We gladly buy another $500 phone because our previous $500 phone is a year old…or dusty…or fingerprinted.

Good God, what has happened to us?  We are a consumerist, locust culture.

As I write this I am sitting at a table made of plywood, eating shelled nuts with a rusty cracker out of a cracked K-mart bowl, both of which are soon destined for the trashcan, and typing on a laptop I am near ditching because I am having power supply issues.  Last Sunday we ate with my wife’s grandparents on a 200-year-old mahogany table, with 100-year-old Gorham silver, and drank good wine out of hand-blown glasses.  These weren’t affectations of wealth.  They were just that generation.  That generation has known poverty, so then know the meaning of wealth.

–Related to poverty, I have realized these last few weeks that my Grandmother’s and my Grandparents-in-law’s generation is the last generation that will appreciate food.  Everybody under 70-years-old in my country is a fat, fucking slob.  If you are reading this and are under 70-years-old and aren’t a fat, fucking slob, then you are trying very hard not to be.  And if you are a skinny 50-year-old and don’t work out, congratulations, you have rolled all 20’s, proceed with your life and leave the rest of us to our diabetes and medications.

My wife’s grandfather has said things to me like, “I can tell you aren’t afraid of eating, boy.” and “You’ve never had a bad appetite, have you, son?”  —  He means to say that he thinks I look healthy and the absence of an appetite is a serious medical concern.  I hear, “You’re looking sorta’ chunky, boy.”

There is a definite disconnect in our understandings of food.

I love food.  I’m a snob.  I cook.  I never turn my nose up to anything.  I have traveled and tried some of the best the world has to offer.  I still take food for granted.  There has always been food.  There will always be food.  I bust my ass five days a week at the YMCA to keep this pudgy figure.

My Grandfather-in-law remembers a time when nobody had food.  Food is a luxury that can go away.  I can hear it when older people eat.  They are constantly remarking, “This is good!” or “Wonderful!” or if their mouths are full, “Mmmmmm…”

—We Americans are fat and self-entitled to new shit.  Lets correct these problems before we deal with the rest of the world.

–When not eating shelled treenuts (his favorite being macadamia), Vaughn is busy writing stuff and not proof reading.  He hopes you enjoy the grammar and stylistic errors.–