# How many over-60 Dopers are there? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 9, 2003, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541 "2003-10-09T21:26:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/41 "2003-10-13T00:51:43Z")
**Gingy** ’s right about me on both counts. **John Carter** , I’d had you pegged for somewhere between 35 and 45. Boy, was I off! And I envy your having seen all those greats perform. **samclem** - given that Baugh’s career ended in 1952, I knew you had to be older than me, that’s fer sher. **Gus** - you _just_ turned 60? Hate to say it, but you look older. 😃 (Never met Gus, folks, but he’s posted pix of himself elsewhere.) ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/42 "2003-10-13T01:05:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by yosemitebabe \* > \*\* > My mom talks about living on the farm in South Dakota, where they had an outhouse and a dirt floor. (They were _really_ poor.) Pretty amazing. \*\* Your didn’t have to be poor to have no indoor plumbing on a farm. Consider what would be required to have a flush toilet. First you would have to have an elevated storage tank for water so that you would have pressure to fill the toilet tank. Then your would have to pipe water from the pump on a windmill, or a hand pump, up to the storage tank and then down into the house. But wait, we aren’t through yet. You need some place to put the sewage after you flush. This would have to be a septic tank with a leach field to get rid of the liquid. And every so often someone would have to pump out the septic tank and haul the sludge out to the field for fertilizer, or something. You would have to be pretty rich to have such an arrangement. A high school friend of mine lived sort of out on the edge of town, but in town (1930’s). They were not on a sewer line and so had a privvy. I would suspect that outdoor toilets lasted well into the 1950’s in some places. Curse Roosevelt all you want, but the Rural Electrification Administration was a tremendous step forward for farms. They got electricity and could now pump water on demand any time they wanted to and houses on the farm suddenly had water piped in, electric lights, and indoor toilets. And I will tell you. There are few experiences a brutal as using an outdoor toilet in Iowa, or South Dakota, in February. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/43 "2003-10-13T01:38:29Z")
FWIW, we went to St. Mary’s, Idaho in the early '60s as part of a long Canada-PNW trip to see relatives. An objective of the trip (1962) was to get my paternal grandmother’s house fixed up with indoor plumbing. She lived in town, but at that point still had an outhouse. ---
**Author:** ![ageless6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@ageless6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ageless6)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/44 "2003-10-13T01:59:48Z")
Johnnie Carter of Mars: Son, you may be too young to understand,but I’ll give it a go. You snipped my quote before the part where I wished for my 35ish body back, and that has to do with just about everything.I gave up cigs vountarily a couple of years ago just because they got too expensive and I noticed that in the horror movies anyone who smoked was killed off BEFORE the black guy and if you were black AND smoked terrifically horrendous things happened to you.(Maybe during the opening credits). And I’d been smoking for 45+ years.It was time to quit. I had two hospital bouts with cirrhosis. I was supposed to die from both of them. I decided to stop pushing my luck after I walked away from the second one. I’m actually pretty shy without alcohol and bars were my principal female hunting grounds. So I’m still extant but with only a part of my liver working and my body is,well,lets say I avoid eye contact with mirrors when I shower. So my women chasing (or at least catching) days seem to be gone. If I could do it over,hopefully without AIDS being around,I’d do the same damn thing. When are they going to invent a cheap personal time machine? But am I bitter? You bet! Oh, there’s one more thing that prevents me from carousing. My SO frowns heavily on it. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/45 "2003-10-13T02:39:33Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by David Simmons \* \*\*Only that the idea that age = wisdom is illusory. \*\* This is absolutely priceless. I must use it for my sig line. Hell, I might even get a tattoo of it, to make it all the more ironic. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/46 "2003-10-13T02:43:25Z")
While I’m a mere child of 53, I can identify with some of the older members. On the other hand I can identify with some of the teenagers here too. I think that’s the best thing about a place like this - everybody is just a person first, and later you find out how old or young they are. My mother also grew up on a farm (near Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, just about in sight of the Alberta border) and used an outhouse for most of her childhood. I seem to recall they still had it into the middle of the 50s. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/47 "2003-10-13T04:52:47Z")
**yosemitebabe** I’ve been around for going on 65 years and I have no idea how one _orks a cow_ 😕 ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/48 "2003-10-13T05:36:41Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by kniz \* > \*\ ***yosemitebabe** I’ve been around for going on 65 years and I have no idea how one _orks a cow_ 😕 \*\* We try to keep it close to the vest because it is frowned upon in many circles and is illegal in most of Dixie. ---
**Author:** ![ageless6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@ageless6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ageless6)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/49 "2003-10-13T10:20:21Z")
Oh I wish I was in BOSSY,away,away… Mmm,cow porking. Can’t anyone spell this right? Stupid dopers ---
**Author:** ![OldBroad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ed655f/32.png) [@OldBroad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldBroad)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/50 "2003-10-13T11:41:13Z")
I’ll be 61 next month (November). But unlike **Spavined Gelding** I am not 25 above the ears. I’m 33 above the ears. Much more mature than 25! ---
**Author:** ![johncole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5f9b8f/32.png) [@johncole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johncole)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2003, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/51 "2003-10-13T15:17:16Z")
Not _quite_ sixty yet, but working hard on getting there. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shirley Ujest \* > \*\* > 2)How is it that you managed to figure out your computer and the internet and the vast world of the web, when I cannot get my mom - just a few years younger than you - to grasp the concept of operating her VCR and answering machine? ( Was it by sheer will and determination or were you just avoiding other things on your to-do list?) \*\* Because I have been in the business since 1968, mostly as a system engineer on IBM kit, and I have happily programmed mainframes and PCs both in machine code and high-level languages (and still learning). Any other bits of equipment that turn up - well, the more buttons the more fun. The idea that we “old” folks have problems with technology is very old, and getting older. Most of the bright new world on the web is built using concepts developed and implemented by people who now qualify as geezer-geeks (and - credit where it is due - some of it by youngsters with good ideas). > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by David Simmons_ > **Only that the idea that age = wisdom is illusory** True enough, but equally spurious is the popular belief that age = incapacity. ---
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2003, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/52 "2003-12-03T21:22:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David Simmons \* > \*\*Just to end the breathless suspense, I will be 81 next 3 December. > > The suspense was breathless, wasn’t it? \*\* HAPPY BIRTHDAY! ---
**Author:** ![Old\_Goat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/5daacb/32.png) [@Old\_Goat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Old_Goat)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541/53 "2003-12-11T07:54:15Z")
Made it to 60 and eagerly awaiting Social Security [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-over-60-dopers-are-there/206541.md?page=2)