The Wrinkle

by Captain Perry Wrinkle

They say that old age comes creeping like a thief in the night. It crawls into your joints and your muscles. It makes you ache all over. They say that the elderly are “spreading aids.” They are Band-Aids, Rolaids, hearing aides and more. When they say that the elderly are contributing to aids, they mean foreign aid, economic aid and aid to dependent children. My father says that the only difference between the old and the young is that older people take longer to do things because they take the time to think about what they are going to do, and then do it well.

When I was a boy there was this old fisherman who would go down to the town wharf and sit there in the summertime. He had his own lobster crate and he would sit on it and whittle on a piece of cedar with a big knife. The tourists would take pictures of the harbor and sometimes of him.

Being of curious nature, they would try to engage him in conversation and they always asked a lot of questions. Their favorite question was: “Have you lived here all your life?” While still whittling away he would answer shortly, “Not yet.” As more questions usually followed he would look up at them and frown. He liked to have several of them standing around listening. He would let out a holler and take that big old knife by the handle and throw the thing so that the blade went through his pants into his leg. And with the knife firmly embedded in his leg he would let out a terrible cry of pain. Then he would holler at them, “Now look what you have made me do!” That wharf would clear out of tourists in a hurry and we could hear him laughing all the way across the harbor. Of course those tourists never suspected that he had a wooden leg.

Older people see life more clearly then when they were young and they get pleasure from just taking the time to observe. One time I was driving along Route 1 in Down East Maine and I saw these two old ladies boldly stealing blueberries from improved blueberry land beside the road. Their car was parked partly on the road and I slowed way down to pass safely. The back door was open and one woman took two full boxes of berries from on top of the trunk and turned to put them in the back seat of the car. About that time a trailer truck approaching from the rear blew his air horn and that old lady literally dove into the car. All I could see was legs and feet in the air. Justice was served.

So, the next time you see some older person just sitting around you may think to yourself, “He looks older than dust,” but beware, he just might be thinking something about you, and don’t get too close, especially if he happens to be whittling.

Good Fishing.