Rick's June Tirade
Lady Longevity
Let it be known that on the 16th of April, A.D. 1998, Sarah
Knauss of Allentown, Pennsylvania, became the world's oldest known
living human -- and for that matter, the world's oldest known living
MAMMAL. She assumed these twin titles at the robust age of 117,
having outlasted a Canadian woman 26 days her senior.
Of course, the world is full of living things older than Sarah
Knauss. Compared to the ancient stands of sequoias and bristlecone
pines, she is a mere toddler on the living-room carpet of history.
Numberless tortoises and quite a few parrots have seen more sunsets
than the aged Allentonian.
But I've always been preoccupied with lifespans -- probably from
a cynic's awareness of how unequally they're parceled out by the
gods. And here was our species' reigning champion, Lady Longevity
herself, living not two miles from my own door. How could I resist?
This morning I hopped into my Oldsmobile and drove to Allentown's
Phoebe Home, the stately abode of Mrs. Knauss. I glanced up at the
imposing fieldstone facade and white pseudo-Georgian cupola, then
strode inside the portals.
I knew the administrators couldn't grant me an interview with
their most celebrated tenant. But I wanted to inhale the same air,
walk the same floors and banter with some of the people who had seen
Her Agedness in the flesh. The two gentlewomen behind the front
desk, mere saplings in their late sixties or thereabouts, obliged me
long enough to satisfy my curiosity.
The first woman confessed that she had never actually laid eyes
on the Ancient One. The other proudly told me that she and Mrs.
Knauss had been photographed together not long ago. She added that
the Senior Resident was still alert and responsive, though her
near-deafness makes it difficult to communicate with her. Still,
you'd never think she was over 90.
As I strolled around the lobby, I saw a framed newspaper article
about Mrs. Knauss in a display case. There she was in the photo,
slim and sprightly, grinning like Grandma Moses... as girlishly
happy as any 117-year-old has a right to be.
Born September 24, 1880, in a Pennsylvania mining town, Sarah
Clark Knauss entered the world when Rutherford B. Hayes was
President. (You remember Hayes -- he was one of a series of bearded,
interchangeable nineteenth-century chief executives who looked like
the Smith Brothers on the cough-drop box.) In fact, Mrs. Knauss has
lived through the administrations of twenty-three U.S. Presidents,
more than half the total since George Washington. When she was born
-- so help me God! -- there were people still alive who had SEEN
Washington and heard him speak, valiantly mumbling through his false
teeth in a manner now lost to the ages.
In 1880, Edison had just patented his electric light bulb. There
was no Statue of Liberty, no Eiffel Tower, no Brooklyn Bridge (it
was under construction at the time). The vast majority of Americans
still had British surnames. The tallest buildings in major cities
throughout the Western world were churches.
When Mrs. Knauss was born, Billy the Kid still walked the planet,
as did Dostoyevsky, Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Victor Hugo,
General Grant, Richard Wagner and Sitting Bull. George M. Cohan was
in diapers; Caruso was seven; Rudyard Kipling, a lad of 14. Young
Vincent van Gogh was a failed preacher, not yet dreaming of
cypresses and sunflowers in the south of France. Jack the Ripper
hadn't begun to terrorize the streets of London, and the first
Sherlock Holmes tale was yet to be written. Queen Victoria would be
granted another two decades to sit on her throne and not be amused.
Mrs. Knauss was born before Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, Ty Cobb, Al Jolson, Virginia Woolf,
James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Pope John XXIII, Cecil B. DeMille, Fanny
Brice, Babe Ruth, Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Truman and Grand
Duchess Anastasia (21 YEARS before Anastasia, as a matter of fact).
She's left every one of them in the dust.
She arrived before the internal combustion engine and the motion
picture camera. Nobody had ever bought a phonograph record or played
a game of basketball. Indians still roamed the plains in search of
buffalo, though their hunting days were numbered. And graceful
cloud-topped clipper ships still plied the trade routes to China.
Just how old is 117? Let's take a closer look.
We all know that Mark Twain lived to be a reasonably old man. But
if he'd made it to Sarah Knauss's age, he'd still have been with us
in 1952. That means he could have lived in a split-level home,
watched "I Love Lucy" on his 13" Admiral TV, and
ogled Marilyn Monroe at the local drive-in theater.
Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe and Felix Mendelssohn, all born in 1809,
would have survived until 1926 -- long enough to watch flappers do
the Charleston and hear Calvin Coolidge speak on the radio. They
might even have become charter members of the Book-of-the-Month
Club.
Emily Bronte, who perished from consumption at 29, would have
lingered until 1935 instead of 1848. She might have become the
grande dame of "Lost Generation" literati in Paris between
the wars, entertaining the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald at her
flat in Montparnasse, sipping vermouth and telling gothic tales into
the wee hours.
Composer Franz Schubert, a contemporary of Beethoven's, would
have lasted until 1914 -- long enough to ride in a Model-T Ford,
wheeze a righteous curse at Igor Stravinsky and see his native
Austria embroiled in World War I. As it was, Schubert died in 1828.
And what about George Gershwin, consigned to the compost heap at
38? Granted the full-bodied lifespan of a Mrs. Knauss, he might
have been composing new tunes and rhapsodies until the year 2015.
Imagine what he could have done with "Cats."
It's tempting to keep playing the game, defying fate and history,
generously extending the lives of great individuals to Knaussian
dimensions. Mozart, 1756-1873. Keats, 1795-1912. Robert E. Lee,
1807-1924. Chopin, 1810-1927. Dickens, 1812-1929. Emily Dickinson,
1830-1947. Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1975. Toulouse-Lautrec,
1864-1981. But the poignance and futility of it ultimately become
maddening.
You have to take it up with the gods, who have never been
egalitarians in matters of longevity. Think of the people born the
same year as Mrs. Knauss who never made it to the age of 17, let
alone 117. Silent cemeteries hold their crumbling remains --
forgotten waifs who died before they knew their first love or earned
their first dollar, who never crossed the threshold into the new
century, never saw a motion picture, never saw an aeroplane gleam
brightly in the afternoon sky.
What kind of world gives us the CAPACITY to live more than a
century, then snatches it away with decades still left on the clock?
"You there, time's up. I know you're only 48, and you've never
seen the Pyramids, but your cookie has just crumbled. You say Mrs.
Knauss is 117? You say we should take her first? Sorry, sport, it
doesn't work that way."
The injustice of it has rankled me since childhood. I remember
browsing through the World Almanac with its roster of dead
celebrities, their lives identified only by an unyielding pair of
dates. Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926). Jean Harlow (1911-1937).
Tyrone Power (1914-1958). Adolph Zukor (1870-1973). Anything wrong
with this picture?
I don't begrudge the ancient ones their extended intervals on our
lively orb. They've earned their anciency. But I do inveigh against
the rude truncation of our spans, the clipped possibilities, the
early sendoff to oblivion. And don't think I haven't noticed the
tendency of cynics and other disgruntled types to be culled in the
early going. It's not enough that we're chronically frustrated,
unable to find a suitable niche, deprived of love and contentment,
overworked, underappreciated, and/or struggling fruitlessly to
fulfill our youthful dreams -- here's PREMATURE DEATH to reward us
for our pains! This is war, my friends!
How fitting it is -- and how exasperating -- that the secrets of
happiness and longevity seem to be inextricably linked. You master
the one, and the other comes with the package. You fail at one, and
you fail at both. Not always -- but often enough to give us a
grudging respect for the power of happiness.
The venerable Mrs. Knauss is a case in point. So let's return to
the aged Allentonian and examine her life for clues.
Here is the dossier I've gathered. I was informed that she
married a Pennsylvania Dutchman prominent in Allentown politics, one
Abraham Lincoln Knauss. The couple remained wedded for 64 years,
until his untimely death at 86 -- a third of a century ago. (No
doubt he expected his missus to follow him to the Elysian Fields
within a couple of years, but she had other plans.) She was a
homemaker with a penchant for bridge and sewing... a soft-spoken
lady whose children and grandchildren regarded her as a "kind
disciplinarian" who "only cared about her family."
According to her 93-year-old daughter (imagine having a mother to
deal with at 93!), Mrs. Knauss is "a very tranquil person and
nothing fazes her." In fact, when informed that she was now the
world's oldest living person, she nonchalantly replied, "So
what?" She craves milk-chocolate turtles and potato chips. Yes,
there's a history of longevity in her family -- but nothing to rival
her 117 years. And she reportedly told a minister she has no plans
to die. That was ten years ago, when she was already 107. So far,
she's been good on her word.
We see the picture emerge. Contentedly married for over six
decades. Unperturbable. Graced with good genes. Never worked in an
office. Alert mind. Gentle and good-humored. Not fastidious about
her diet. A devoted mother and grandmother. And she lived to see her
grandchildren become great-grandparents.
Do you suppose Mrs. Knauss jogged three miles a day? Did she
scrupulously avoid bacon, cheese and hydrogenated vegetable oils?
Did she consult psychiatric professionals to get in touch with her
feelings? Did she consume antioxidant pills by the fistful at
breakfast? I doubt it somehow. She probably cooked everything in
lard, including string beans and oatmeal. The woman just has a
genius for not dying.
She's a stellar example of what Socrates called "the
unexamined life." And at least in her case, the unexamined life
has been well worth living. No angst, no conflicts, no fretting
about missed opportunities or bad career choices. No questioning of
values, no grappling with slippery ideas, no struggle to adapt
herself to an unforgiving environment. In short, no FRICTION. It's
friction that wears out our engines and sends us to the junkyard
while the race is still on.
I've endured more than my share of friction, so I'd better watch
it; younger men than me have seized up and sputtered out without
warning. I have a good mind to start practicing Knaussmanship in my
own life. Maybe we all should.
Deadlines? SO WHAT? Broken romances? Just give us some chocolate
turtles and potato chips. The decline of civilization? WHAT
civilization? Let's play bridge with our friends, have some
great-great-great grandchildren, and make no plans to die.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
