Capped Teeth, Lucky Strike's & Chesterfield's, Minnesota Mining

Going to AA meetings with new teeth.

Newly divorced in 1974, 50 years old and wanting to attract willing women, it seemed to me that getting my teeth capped would be an enormous step forward.

I had  a slightly gapped front tooth and teeth somewhat yellowed from 30 years of smoking 4-5 packs a day of either Chesterfield's or Lucky Strike's (both non-filtered).

It seemed, to me, like a logical thing to do if I wanted to chase and catch broads. The capped teeth idea actually turned into a fucking disaster. Didn't make me look like a movie star nor did my new teeth attract women. In retrospect, no fucking surprises.

My teeth are now perfect except they are not mine. The dentist had capped my teeth that were decaying, putting me in the hospital in Amsterdam and in the office of the Queen's dentist in London. The natural teeth went bye, bye. I went from a mouthful of real teeth to a bridge in my mouth; to a full set of phonies called dentures. My false teeth, not my age, gave me credentials to become a senior citizen.

Being old ain't a barrel of laughs. More like a barrel of kvetches. Getting out of bed in the morning, feeling like shit, and hoping, to paraphrase Dean Martin, that it will prove to be as bad as I am going to feel all day.

It doesn't seem too miraculous to me that I am, at 90, still alive but it is no small trick. The bigger trick is to have had two serious bike crashes in my very late eighties and a serious fall at 90 without breaking any bones and retaining good memory. Another miracle is that someone hasn't killed me because of my big mouth. But as my revered Pop used to say, "Honesty can be the biggest swindle in the world. As long as you tell the truth, you can get away with murder."

At Alcoholic Anonymous meetings one of my mantras was 'that as long as I stayed in motion physically, mentally and emotionally I would be okay'. Physically meant working on fitness, mentally meant creating and meeting challenges and emotionally meant making and keeping friends. Women and sex was a huge part of making friends. Meaningful conversations and orgasms go a long way to achieve mental health.

So, when farming in Iowa turned into a self made disaster (A Bronx Jew slopping hogs didn't make for a pretty picture.) I turned to a very imaginative friend/shirt tail relation for ideas.

My friend, Izzy, was so creative, that as a Major in the Army in North Africa during WWII, he married a gal in the States by telephone. Got home, got divorced then married two more times. The first to a gal with a drinking problem and the last to a great gal.

Izzy came up with the idea to make bumper strips for cars out of newly invented reflective Scotchlite. He had a friend at F.W. Woolworth who bought and inventoried the bumper strips. Izzy and I with his sister Sarah would sit at the kitchen table, slicing up the Scotchlite sheets into strips and inserting them into cellophane envelopes. Laugh, laugh, laugh swapping war time stories while stuffing the envelopes, which was a brainless task.

I came up with the notion to convert the Scotchlite into advertising specialties and made replicas of Baby Ruth candy bars and the Ralston Purina corporate logo.

Today's use of  Scotchlite reflective sheets in advertising.

Both companies liked the notion but Minnesota Mining, the manufacturer of Scotchlite, didn't cotton to the idea that two nobodies, or anybody for that matter, should be exploiting Scotchlite. Stopped selling the stuff to us and shut us down.

It was fun leaving Mason Fucking City to go to St Louis to call on Ralston Purina and to Chicago to visit Baby Ruth. Being able to drink without being in the protective custody of the Princess was a great taste of freedom. And fun working with Izzy, an idea factory with a great sense of humor...no fun getting shut down.

Lessons learned? Choose wives, husbands and dentists carefully.