[ExI] 100 yr old on leno, was: RE: Severe Diet Doesn't Prolong Life, at Least in Monkeys

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of BillK
...


>>...Reminds me of the story about the old couple who went to see a lawyer
about getting a divorce.
The lawyer was shocked. "But you are 94 and your wife is 90! Why do you want
a divorce?"
The couple replied, "Well, we had to wait till the children were dead."   :)

>...As well as being a joke, it is a reflection on how attitudes to divorce
have changed from their generation.  BillK

_______________________________________________

BillK, funny story about that.  The great^2 grandparents I mentioned
earlier, Isaac Jones after whom I named my own son, married his bride in
1861 just before he was drafted by Jeff Davis.  Not our Jeff Davis, the
president of the CSA.  I discovered a puzzling record that showed they
divorced in 1906, after raising six children, one of whom was black (long
story.)  Paradoxically, the 1910 census showed them living together with one
of their daughters (Aunt Bertha's mother.)  I asked my Aunt Bertha about
this, and she explained that the rumor had gone around that old Isaac, then
in his mid-60s by 1906, elderly by the standards of the day, had been seen
with the local bad woman.  

According to Aunt Bertha, what happened is that Isaac's youngest son, nearly
indistinguishable from his father from a sufficient distance, who was then
in his 30s with young children, was the one who visited the harlot.  Grandpa
Isaac's children were grown, and he didn't want to risk seeing his own
grandchildren growing up without a father, so he took the blame and
confessed publicly in church that he was the sleazy bastard who was seeing
the harlot.  Grandma did what cheated women did back in those days and filed
for divorce on grounds of unfaithfulness, after 43 years of marriage.  Both
left that small town and moved far away (15 miles) to Ashland Kentucky, and
were found by the census taker, living together unmarried (why bother
getting remarried?) in sin (as defined by the strict de-facto theocracy of
that time and place) in the home of their oldest daughter, Aunt Bertha's
mother, for the next 8 years until a flu epidemic took Grandma in 1914.
Grandpa was slain a year later in a train accident.

See the kinds of cool stuff you can find out if you talk to your elderly
relatives?  All that would be gone forever had I not found that elderly
aunt.  So go ye and do likewise.  Go do it.

Robert Bradbury-ism:  DAVAI!  DAVAI!   DAVAI!

spike