The astonishing (and 100% true) story of my mother and the Nazi war criminal

1943: Speer receives an award for his service
as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production from Adolf Hitler

She was a 63-year-old widow from a Missouri farm town. He was Adolf Hitler’s principal architect, Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, and, by the time World War II ended, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany. The odds were slim to none their paths would ever cross but not only did they cross, he invited her to his home for coffee and a chat. And amazingly, she went.

She was my mother, Ruby, who died last year at the age of 102. Ruby was a Methodist Sunday School teacher, a DAR and FDR Democrat who, at the time, had never lived in a town of more than 700 people.

He was Albert Speer whom, in the 1930s, Hitler personally picked to design a 400,000 seat stadium in Nuremberg, the Nazi party headquarters in Munich, and the reich chancellery in Berlin. In 1942, Hitler put him in charge of keeping the Nazi war machine well-supplied and running at full capacity, a position he held until he was arrested by the Allies in April, 1945, at the end of the war.

Thirty-one years later, in 1976, mom was visiting my brother, Jerry, an Army officer stationed in Heidelberg where he was living with his wife, Nancy, and their children. Jerry’s youngest daughter was a fifth grader at the base school.

His daughter's teacher, an American, told her class that her husband's grandfather had served as a judge during the Nuremberg Trials in which leading Nazis were tried for war crimes. Many of them, including Goring, von Ribbentrop and Streicher, were sentenced to death. Speer, the only defendant to admit his guilt, escaped the hangman's noose by claiming he knew nothing about Hitler’s final solution, a claim that, after his death, was disproven. He was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau prison, from which he was released in 1966.

Three years later, he published "Inside the Third Reich," a memoir in which he related his years as Hitler’s BFF and cabinet member. Speer hadn’t been allowed to have a writing pad in prison; he wrote the book based on notes he had penned in micro-handwriting on sheets of toilet paper a sympathetic guard smuggled out for him.

In 1975, he published his second book, "Spandau," detailing his 20 years in prison where, he estimated, his walks in the prison yard collectively covered the distance between Berlin and Guadalajara, Mexico.

My niece’s teacher told her class that she and her husband had actually met Speer, whose address they had looked up in the Heidelberg phone book. When they introduced themselves as the relatives of one of his judges, Speer told them he remembered the judge.

At the time of Mom's visit with Jerry and Nancy, "Spandau" was still atop the best-seller list. They told mom about the teacher and her husband who had met Speer. Never dreaming it was within the realm of possibility, mom, an avid reader, history buff and book collector, announced, “I’d like to have him autograph a copy of his book.”

Nancy, who has always had more moxie than anyone else in our family, went to the phone book and, sure enough, there was his number. She called and was surprised when Speer himself answered, “Speer hier” (“Speer here”). When Nancy explained her mother-in-law was visiting and would like to have him autograph his book, Speer, who had learned perfect English from his British and American prison guards, invited them to come to his home at 11 a.m. the following Saturday.

When it came time to leave for Speer's house, Nancy couldn’t go – their six-year-old son, as six-year-olds sometimes do, was having a meltdown. Since Emily Post says it’s considered bad form to take an out-of-sorts child when calling upon Nazi war criminals, Jerry drove mom in his green Buick station wagon to Speer’s villa in the hills above Heidelberg Castle.

And that ... was about all I knew of the tale other than that mom always said she had committed a faux pas by asking Speer if he had ever visited her country. He said no. She later found out that American officials wouldn't allow him to set foot in the U.S.

Last night my wife and I were watching a documentary about how the Nazis looted Europe’s great art treasures during the war, and, naturally, Speer was mentioned. That got me to thinking that I should write this story down. So this morning I called my brother to get more details about his and mom’s visit.

Jerry said that when they arrived, Speer’s grandson, a boy about his son’s age, was in the yard with a large dog. Speer answered the door and showed them around his villa, a grand home that had fallen into disrepair – wallpaper was peeling off the walls and ceilings. The floor and furniture in one room were completely covered with scraps of toilet paper, the smuggled notes that became the basis for Speer’s books.

Speer served coffee in his parlor and they talked for a half hour or forty-five minutes. Understandably nervous, Jerry doesn’t recall specifics of what they discussed other than mom asking Speer if he had ever visited America. Speer autographed mom’s book, “To Ruby Dryden with best wishes.”

Jerry said mom took the book back to the states, gave it to him a few years later, then asked for it back. As we were going through mom’s collection of 700 plus books in 2012 after she had moved to an assisted living facility, Jerry pulled it off the shelf and took it home with him.

I’d have to guess the book is one of the few autographed copies in existence. Unlike most best-selling authors, Speer didn’t go on a book tour and certainly wasn’t invited to sign his book in any bookstores – none in Germany would allow him to promote it lest they appear to sanction his behavior. He remained by and large a recluse until his death in 1981.

So why, you ask, am I telling you this bizarre story?

I’m not telling it for you. I’m posting it for members of my family born in the last 40 years who have no clue their grandmother, great-grandmother, grandfather, uncle and great-uncle not only came face to face with one of the most notorious men of the twentieth century, they actually sipped coffee with him in his parlor. Many of my readers knew mom and know Jerry, two of the most unlikely Nazi sympathizers on earth, and will have trouble imagining them sitting in Albert Speer’s parlor making small talk, but it happened and, by God, I'm a storyteller and this is one story that needs to be told if for no other reason than to allow me to write the headline above.

I don’t know if mom would want me to tell it -- she probably wouldn't -- but Jerry, when I asked him, said to go ahead.

And I just did.

How to lose 6 lbs. in 6 days

Want to lose six pounds in six days without dieting or exercising?

Do as my wife and I did – go on the Salmonella Diet. Yesterday was the first day since last Tuesday we’ve felt vaguely normal thanks to carryout chicken salad we ate for dinner that night. Chicken, mayo and a careless cook proved to be a near-lethal combination for us. Though all of the symptoms have pretty much subsided, I'm still feeling like, well, you know.

I never want to see, smell or taste chicken salad again. Heck, I may never even eat chicken again. The clip below, one of my favorite movie scenes from Five Easy Pieces, expresses my sentiments perfectly.

Eat safe. Be well.

Ask Madam Secretary

An FBI insider who participated in Saturday’s meeting with Hillary Clinton slipped me some startling information just minutes after today’s statement from the FBI director in which he announced he won’t be recommending the Justice Department indict her.

Turns out Mrs. Clinton insisted on maintaining her own server during her years as Secretary of State for a simple reason: she had a second job she didn’t want anyone in the administration to know about as, of all things, an advice columnist.  

Here are a few emails the FBI was able to recover that the insider shared exclusively with tomdryden.com.

To: AskMadamSecretary

From: HA

I'm beside myself. Just learned that A. texted yet another dick pic to some chick. I told him last time that if it happened again I was going to do something drastic. Knowing you have experience in handling horndog hubbies, what do you recommend I do?

To: HA

From: AskMadamSecretary

Run for an office. Trust me when I say the sympathy votes will put you over the top.

To: AskMadamSecetary

From: CCM

We are thinking of trying to get pregnant. What would you and dad prefer -- a boy or girl?

To: CCM

From: AskMadamSecretary

Girl. Females make up 51% of the population, which means the majority of people of voting age who are parents have daughters and/or granddaughters, so they’ll identify with our family. That two percent edge could mean the difference in '16.

To: AskMadamSecretary

From: AM

My name is Abdul. I am 8 years old and admire you very much. Would you please send me an autographed photo? Also, my father wants to know if you can introduce him to someone who can sell him some uranium. Can you?

To: AM

From: AskMadamSecetary

Of course, darling, I’m happy to accommodate your request. You'll find my autographed photo in the attached PDF file. As for your father, tell him to contact the Clinton Foundation. The routing number is 52626673 and the account number is 10058205702850206660. (Your dad will understand what I am talking about here.) Once he has established contact, the bank will let him know about a private phone number he can call.

To: AskMadamSecretary

From: DJT

The more I think about about it, the more I agree with you. It’s clear that the idiot Republicans won’t be able to field a single electable candidate in ‘16. Isn't it grueling to be on the campaign trail for months at a time?

To: DJT

From: AskMadamSecretary

Not if you have your own 757 and your expenses are being covered by my campaign. Though you will, as we discussed, lose in a landslide, just think how much value you can add to your brand name by running against me. Instead of being known just in America, your brand will become famous globally, which means you'll be selling more condos, vodka, golf memberships and neckties than ever!

More gobbledegook from the Fed

I recently finished reading The Courage to Act by former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who wrote that one of his primary goals as chairman was to preside over a Fed that was more transparent than it had been under his predecessors.  

He then spent several hundred pages detailing meetings in which he and his staff agonized over the wording of statements that were intentionally vague in order not to send the stock and bond markets careening up or down crazily because the Fed had said something markets might possibly interpret as positive or negative about the economy.

The Fed under his successor, Janet Yellin, is, if anything, even less transparent. The markets are chomping at the bit to find out if and when the Fed is going to announce its next prime rate hike. Every statement – every speech, press release, verb and conjunction – is analyzed in the hopes it will provide some sense of where the Fed’s head is at. I can’t begin to imagine how much time the Fed spends crafting communiqués that basically say it is as clueless about the economy as the average Wendy’s counter person.

To enable officials to avoid angst over the wording of such statements, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a “mix-and-match template” the Fed can follow in the future. It gives them hundreds of ways to, in a few short seconds, wordsmith non-committal statements nobody will be able to figure out. With all the extra time they will save, Yellin and her governors will actually be able to get out of their ivory towers and mingle with the hoi polloi to get a sense of what is going on in the America world whose economy they control.

Today’s statement from the Fed

A rate hike is

( ) neither on nor off the table at this point in time provided

( ) something we may or may not consider should

( ) within the realm of possibility in the event

( ) not inconceivable with the caveat that

inflationary pressures

( ) do not exert untoward upward or downward momentum on

( ) remain low to moderate in that they affect

( ) are containable within the context of

( ) neither negatively nor positively impact

employment in

( ) both the public and private sectors.

( ) small, medium and large businesses.

( ) the broader economy.

( ) certain sectors.

A determination may be made at such a time as

( ) indicators show signs of weakness, moderation or growth.

( ) Goldman signals they have completed shorting every sector that would be negatively impacted by such an event.

( ) Haley’s Comet appears between Labor Day and Halloween in a year that ends with 7.

( ) the global economy appears sustainable.

Further information may be forthcoming subsequent to our next monthly meeting provided

( ) such a statement is deemed prudent for the sake of transparency to which we have signed a pledge signaling our collective commitment.

( ) headwinds and tailwinds neither subside nor increase to the extent such a statement is warranted.

( ) the Richmond Fed, which hosts our next meeting, serves Virginia ham on those delightful little cheese biscuits for which its private dining room is famous.

( ) we can agree on what we want to say.

Grandpa's diary: Payback time

Our oldest son, Ben, calls every Sunday, the only time we get to talk with him all week. He works long hours and, on those weekends he doesn’t have to go into the office, is kept busy with his two sons, 26-month old Teddy and two-month old Isaac.

During this morning’s call I asked him how Teddy, who was basically ignoring Isaac when I visited last month – as if he somehow hoped that Isaac, like grandpa, had just stopped by for a visit – is interacting with his new brother.

He said that yesterday he, his wife and the boys went to Costco. En route home, with both boys strapped into their infant seats, Isaac, who apparently likes the motion of the car, started crying whenever the car stopped, prompting Teddy to order him to be quiet. This went on for the entire ride from the suburbs back into the city, with both Isaac and Teddy becoming more agitated and more vocal at each stoplight.

I can’t tell you how happy this news made me. For years, our sons, who were three years apart, made every car trip – whether to the supermarket or cross country – approximately as pleasurable as the Bataan death march. They argued, they hurled accusations, they cried, they whined. The one that never failed to make me pull over, stop the car, jump out of the driver’s seat, yank open the back door and order them to settle down or else: “Make him stop looking at me.” Whenever I'd lose it, my wife would also lose it, yelling at me to act like a grown-up, then we'd all sulk for the remainder of the ride. This went on for years (and years and years) and, even today, now that the boys are 33 and 30, I don’t like to ride in the same car with both of them lest they start up again.

“Better get used to it,” I told Ben, not even trying to disguise my delight. “Payback time.”

Under siege from a crazy-ass Cardinal

The crazed Cardinal rat-a-tat-tatting on the doors
in our darkened den. As you can see, I've lowered the storm
shutters almost to the ground but that doesn't stop him.

We have been under siege for two and a half months from a whacked-out cardinal who is trying to break into our house. 

He appears in the yard every morning with the sun, chirp-chirp-chirping as he maniacally flits from tree to tree, stopping every minute or so to rat-a-tat-tat on the windows and doors. Our dachshunds, who weren't that emotionally stable to begin with, have been driven insane by the nonstop noise. My wife and I aren't far behind them.

From what I’ve been able to learn, Mr. Cardinal sees his reflection in the glass and, thinking he’s face to face with another bird, attacks his own image. But I wouldn’t call what he is doing an “attack.” It’s too gentle. He's not doing damage other than leaving bird poop on our windowsills and porches and beak boogers on the glass.

I placed some ugly coral fish the previous owner left behind in the windows, thinking those would scare him away. He ignored them. I positioned lifesize wooden sculptures of beach people (yes, we have such things) in front of two large windows. They scared our pool guy so badly he said he almost wet his pants. The bird stayed away from those particular windows for a couple of hours then resumed his attacks. Online message boards suggested taping kraft paper over the windows so I did that where I could and lowered the storm shutters over the rest of the windows and doors, a no-no according to our community association which stipulates they are only to be deployed when a hurricane watch has been issued. But they are made from shiny aluminum so he pecks at those too.

Thursday, for the first time in weeks, we heard nothing all morning so I raised the shutters. Within seconds he was back, trying to drill his way inside. It’s almost as if he is trying to get into the house to tell us something or that there is something he wants.

Friends have suggested we buy a BB gun and blast him but we would never do that. He is an exquisitely beautiful creature. And, in a strange way, we have come to admire his exuberance and persistence.

That said, it is tiresome living in a dark house with barking dogs. 

The boy in the oval picture frame

This column was first published in the Wilton (Conn.) Villager the week before Memorial Day, 2000. It was reprinted in the paper twice and this is the second time it has appeared on tomdryden.com. Several people mentioned in the original have died since I wrote it, and I've made a few updates to reflect their passing.

Atop a table in our guest room is a hand-tinted photograph, taken in the summer of 1933.

The photo is of my grandparents, Burton and Judith Tate, and the first four of what would eventually become a brood of 14 grandchildren born over a span of 35 years.

On my grandfather's lap is my cousin Robert, six months old. Robert grew up to be a computer specialist. Grandma is holding another baby, my cousin Nancy. She grew up to be a nurse. Kneeling in front of them is my six-year-old cousin Paul, who, when he grew up, married his childhood sweetheart and became an Army General. Next to Paul is my cousin Jimmy, a boy of four. Jimmy was killed in Korea in 1951. He was 21.

Nancy, Paul and Jimmy were the children of my mother's sister, Margaret, a tiny wisp of a woman. In 1923, Margaret married a giant of a man, Pat Timmerberg, who stood six feet three inches tall. Pat's parents had immigrated from Germany and settled on a farm near my grandparents' Missouri home. When America entered World War I, Pat joined up and was shipped off to fight his own people in the fields of France. When he returned, he was a soldier through and through, who loved to sing war songs and tell war stories.

Margaret and Pat's oldest, Paul, joined the army in 1945, the year he graduated from high school, just in time for VJ Day. Like his father, Paul showed a natural aptitude for soldiering. He was selected for Officer Candidate School and, shortly thereafter, was a Second Lieutenant, on his way to earning his stars.

Jimmy, who graduated from high school in 1947, enlisted in the army the next year, when he was 19. After basic training, he was sent to Colorado, where he captained the 21st Engineer's basketball team. He was shipped to the Yukon for eight months, back to Colorado and, in August, 1950, to Korea, where he was a machine gunner with the 21st Infantry Regiment of the 24th Division.

Jimmy was killed in action near Changgong-Ni on April 28, 1951. His tour of duty was almost over.

When they received word of Jimmy's death, the Timmerbergs were preparing for Nancy's high school graduation. She had graduated first in her class, and was looking forward to giving the valedictorian's speech at Montgomery City High School. She went ahead and delivered it, though her heart was broken and the audience knew it.

In those days before jet planes, families often had to wait months for their loved ones to arrive home for burial. Jimmy's flag-draped casket arrived in Montgomery City on a Wabash train on November 20, and he was buried with full military honors. According to his obituary posted on cousin Robert's family web site, a quartet sang "In The Sweet By and By" and "Safe In The Arms of Jesus." A solo, "God Understands," was also performed. My mother couldn't attend. She was in the hospital, having given birth to me three days earlier.

We visited Aunt Margaret and Uncle Pat often when I was growing up. They were always full of news about Paul and Nancy and their growing families. But I was always aware of the presence of a third Timmerberg cousin, a handsome dark-haired boy of 18 or so with a fixed broad smile, who peered from a gold oval frame on the dining room wall. Of him, never a word was spoken.

Pat died in 1963 and Margaret, who lived alone, began spending a lot of time at our house with my mother. They spent hours discussing the family and events of the past. But they would never mention Jimmy. Every Memorial Day, my mother took Margaret, who never learned to drive, to the cemetery, and they would return looking grim.

As a teenager, I used to accuse Aunt Margaret of being a pessimist. She wasn't much fun to be around. She always seemed to look on the dark side, to expect the worst out of life.

I take it all back, Aunt Margaret. Now that I have held my own sons in my arms and have seen them grow into young men with their own hopes and dreams, I understand. And I want to tell you this: You were amazing. I don't know how you were able to go on, but you did.

Margaret died in 1988, and was laid to rest next to Jimmy and Pat, near my grandparents. My mother continued making the trek to the cemetery every Memorial Day until she stopped driving.

Paul died in 2008 and was buried at Arlington in an impressive military ceremony with a 13-cannon salute befitting his rank. He was inducted into the Military Police Hall of Fame and there is a building named for him at Ft. Leonard Wood.

Up to the day before she died last April, Mom talked on the phone at least once a week with the last of my Timmerberg cousins, Nancy, and kept me up to date with what was going on with her and her family.

But nobody in our family ever spoke, or speaks, of Jimmy. I don't think those who knew him can. Though his headstone has faded, the horror of his loss never will, until the last person who loved him is gone. And there aren't many of them left.

Many of my grandparents' 14 grandchildren accomplished great things. One graduated from West Point, as did Paul's son, their great-grandson. The youngest, named for his cousin Jimmy, is president of a major music company. All of us married, most had children and grandchildren, and two are even great-grandparents.

Scattered from Florida to California, the ten of us who are left will celebrate Memorial Day. We'll enjoy sunshine and picnics. And I guarantee that all of us will remember the boy in the oval picture frame on Aunt Margaret's dining room wall, the boy who, unlike the rest of us, never grew old.

I hope that, whatever else you have planned, you will also take the time to remember Jimmy Timmerberg ... the hundreds of thousands of other young men and women who paid for our freedom with their lives ... and their parents, who buried the best of themselves with them.

Mr. Fixit

I am the unhandiest man on the planet. I don’t understand how to put things together, how things work, how to maintain them, or how to fix them when they break. I don’t understand tools. I can neither comprehend nor follow instructions, especially those that use diagrams instead of words.

What I do understand, fifty years after I learned how, because my father insisted I take Latin rather than Shop, the only other elective offered to freshman males in my high school where my classmates were taught practical manly things about which I shall remain forever clueless, is how to conjugate verbs in Latin, the official language of the Roman Empire which undoubtedly collapsed because it was run by guys who sat around all day conjugating verbs rather than keeping the Colosseum and aqueducts in working order.

Go ahead. Laugh at me. Everyone does. Which makes me all the more determined, whenever something needs to be assembled or repaired, to do it myself.  I’m always convinced, whenever I start a project, that this time I’m not only going to complete it, it will be done right. But it never is and I always have to call someone in to finish the job. 

Right now I’m frustrated because I’ve spent two full days trying to repair an elaborate pool umbrella that collapsed two days ago. The pole that holds the canopy snapped off just above the round thingamajig that’s filled with sand and keeps the whole shebang from toppling over. It looked like a simple fix.

Since then, I’ve been on the phone with the manufacturer three times ordering replacement parts that now total $972.13. I was pissed today, when I visited the store where we originally bought the damned thing to get an idea of how to fit the parts I’ve taken apart back together, to see a floor model identical to ours on sale for $899 including delivery and set-up.

When the parts I've ordered arrive I’ll putz around for a couple of more days trying to figure out how they fit together with the parts I’ve disassembled from the original, and will wind up having to call Tony, the handyman I keep on speed dial, to put them all together. That’s assuming I have ordered the right parts in the first place which I probably haven’t.

Realistically, I don’t want anyone sitting under that umbrella until I’m sure it has been repaired properly because it weighs a ton and they’d be hurt or killed if it collapsed on them. 

And that, as they used to say in ancient Rome, would be a horribilis thing.

Nursery rhymes for today

Rock a Bye Baby

Rock a bye baby,

In the treetop.

When the wind blows,

The cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks,

The cradle will fall.

Then we’ll sue the tree service

For not telling us this could happen.

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill went up the hill,

To fetch a pail of water.

Now they live in foster homes

Because Social Services says children 

need to live in buildings with running water.

Pop goes the weasel

Round and round the mulberry bush

The monkey chased the weasel.

The monkey thought t’was all in fun

Until the weasel demanded a safe space 

and that the zookeeper resign for failing to provide one.

This old man

This old man,

He played one.

He played knick-knack on what I had always told myself was my thumb but, 

with the help of my therapist, have come to realize was a part 

of me nobody should ever, ever touch without asking

which is why I’m coming forward after all these years.

Pat-A-Cake

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, 

Baker’s man, woman or trans.

Bake me a gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free cake 

As fast as you can.

There was an Old Woman

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children,

She didn't know what to do

Thanks to the Republicans who blocked funding for Planned Parenthood.

Old MacDonald

Old MacDonald

Had a farm

E-I-E-I-O.

And on his farm he had some chicks

But they weren't free range so PETA picketed the nation’s 

leading supermarket and restaurant chains urging them 

not to sell Farmer McDonald’s eggs 

 so now he's a greeter at Wal-mart.

Three blind mice

Three visually impaired mice.

Three visually impaired mice

Were admitted to Harvard, Yale and Princeton respectively 

because slots had been held open by the diversity officers 

in the admissions department at each school 

for applicants like them.

Georgie Porgie

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie.

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

Now he's on the list of registered sex offenders.

Little Tommy Tucker

Little Tommy Tucker

Sings for his supper.

What shall we give him?

White bread and butter.

How can he cut it

Without a knife?

How will he be married

Without a wife

Or husband?

The best damn pie in the whole wide world

I belong to a gym located in a strip mall that also contains a Winn-Dixie supermarket.

A month or so ago, following a workout, I popped into Winn-Dixie to pick up something to grill for dinner. Just inside the entrance was a display of pies promoting the chain’s newest variety, Apple Caramel Drizzle, which, the sign proclaimed, was awarded the 2015 National Pie Championship by the American Pie Council. (Forget the UN: The United States should fund this worthy organization if it truly wants to promote world peace and happiness.)

I don’t even like apple pie. On the other hand, if someone were to drizzle caramel over dog shit I’d probably try it so I picked one up. And that evening, after a healthy dinner of grilled chicken, I cut myself a slice.

There are some things you will never forget. Holding your newborn, for instance. Your first forkful of Winn-Dixie Apple Caramel Drizzle ranks right up there with life’s most profound experiences. This is the best pie not only in America but in the world. The sugary but still slightly crunchy apples in a gooey sauce. The flaky crust. The buttery caramel -- not too little, not too much, just the right amount to complement the filling and allow your mouth to know you've tasted perfection. There isn't a tarte aux pommes in all of France that could hold a candle to it. I allowed my wife one small slice then ate the rest myself, except for a small sliver I saved for breakfast but I couldn’t wait – I got up in the middle of the night to polish it off.

While I’ve always been a casual gym-goer, I now go every other day, which just happens to coincide with how often I need a new Apple Caramel Drizzle pie. Last week I went into full panic mode when I discovered my local store had sold out but, mercifully, the Winn-Dixie in a neighboring town had one (but only one) left. 

The good news: Thanks to an incentive to go to the gym every other day, my chest, arms and legs are nice and toned. My rapidly expanding pot belly, on the other hand, makes me look eight months pregnant. I don’t care.

Only a handful of my loyal readers live in states where Winn-Dixie supermarkets are located  -- the chain's web site says they're in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana -- but trust me when I say that Winn-Dixie Apple Caramel Drizzle pie is worth moving from wherever you are to be near one.

I could go on and on but I need to go to the gym.

The rewards club

Twenty-something blonde cashier at shoe store: Hi, are we a member of our rewards club?”

TD (placing four boxes on counter): No.

Cashier: Okay, give me a moment while I check these sizes. (She opens one box and looks at the tongues of both shoes to make sure the sizes match. After examining the second pair, she asks …)

Cashier: Are we a member of our rewards club?

TD: No.

Cashier (after examining the third and fourth pair). Okay, they all match up.

TD: Glad to hear it.

Cashier: Are we a member of our rewards club?

TD: Um … no.

Cashier (after scanning UPC codes on all four boxes): That comes to $231.82. Are we a member

TD (interjecting):  No! We most definitely aren't.

Cashier: Okay, slide your card. Is that credit or debit?

TD: Credit.

Cashier: Do you want your receipt in the bag?

TD: Sure.

Cashier (placing receipt in one of two bags and handing both to me): Okay then, here you go.

TD: Aren’t you going to ask us if we want to join the rewards club?

Cashier: Are you here with with someone?

TD: No. Just me.

Cashier: So why would I ask if you and someone else want to join?

TD: Because four times in the last minute you’ve asked, “Are we a member of our rewards club?”

Cashier: Well, do you want to sign up?

TD: No.

Cashier: Okay, have a nice day.

Old Lives Matter

I always gave my mother, Ruby, a book for her birthday, which would have been tomorrow. Mom, who died last year at the age of 102, was a voracious reader. She stayed up late the night before she checked into the hospital for what should have been routine surgery to finish the latest birthday book I had given her.

I want to give Ruby one last birthday gift by writing about something that was important to her, the way our society treats the elderly.

Webster’s defines “elderly” as “rather old; being past middle age.” That requires defining what the term “middle age” means. Webster's says it means, “The period of life from about 45 to 64.”

I’ll turn 65 in November. Just eight months more until I am, by Webster’s standards, elderly.

While I don’t think of myself as elderly, some people clearly do. The tattooed twenty-something who held the door open for me at the gym yesterday. The ticket seller at the movie theater who extended the senior discount without bothering to ask for I.D. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled and get a free senior-sized soft drink at Wendy’s with any purchase of 99 cents or more.

While I’m just starting to confront the concept of my impending elderliness, my mother had to deal with it for nearly 40 years. Ruby hated being old because, as she learned, people tend to disregard old folks, particularly the uber-elderly – those 90 and up. And the older she became, the more she found herself disregarded.

Mentally, Ruby never deteriorated. Not. One. Whit. Not only did she never forget anything from her early years – she could easily recite entire poems, like Hiawatha or The Raven, that she had memorized as a schoolgirl – she, unlike many uber-elders who can remember picayune events from decades past but have forgotten what they ate for lunch, could rattle off the previous day’s closing price of Apple or AT&T.

Ruby’s worst nightmare was that she might someday become mentally infirm, as her older sister had in her final years, so she did everything she could to keep her mind sharp. She worked Sudoku puzzles, read two or three non-fiction books a week, played duplicate bridge, and cruised the Internet on her iPad.

I always joked that, when she died, we were going to donate her brain to science so pathologists could study it to see whether her sharpness was due to determination or to genetic luck. But we didn’t; she had a post-operative stroke the day before she died so her brain was damaged.

Physically, however, Ruby deteriorated as she aged and the deterioration accelerated once she reached her nineties. Her hearing failed. Her blood pressure sometimes surged into the stratosphere, requiring hospitalization. Following a series of falls in her late nineties, she had to use a walker. Despite her infirmities, she remained determined to continue living in her own house. It wasn’t until her ninety-eighth year that she finally conceded defeat and moved into an assisted living center. 

Judging strictly on the basis of her physical appearance, people who didn’t know Ruby tended to write her off as just another old person, someone to be treated like a child.

Two years ago I received a phone call from the head nurse at her assisted living center, inquiring if I wanted mom to receive a flu shot. “Why don’t you ask her?” I said. “She makes her own decisions.”

“She does?” the nurse replied, sounding astonished that I would even suggest such a thing. “Have you ever talked with her?” I asked. “No,” she admitted. This woman was in charge of dozens of elderly residents yet assumed that anyone mom’s age didn’t have the ability to make his or her own decisions.

Ruby was disgusted when I called to tell her the nurse would be stopping by. “She sits in her office all day thinking we’re idiots,” she said sadly.

My sister always drove Ruby to doctors’ appointments. Because our mother had trouble hearing, she would accompany her into examination rooms in case mom missed something the doctor said. While mom had outlived most of her long-time doctors, those who had known her for years addressed her directly, explaining what they were recommending. New doctors addressed my sister, referring to mom in the third person, like a pediatrician speaks to the mother of a toddler. “Don’t talk to me,” my sister would advise them. “Talk to her, she’s in charge. And speak loudly.”

In November, 2011, when she was still living in her own home, mom made the near-fatal mistake of opening her door to a home invader who kicked her, beat her and left her for dead. After attacking two more elderly women in their homes, he was arrested and charged with assault, battery and elder abuse, a crime for which he had already served a 20-year prison term. Mom refused to dwell on what happened and rarely talked about it.

Preparing for his trial, Ruby was deposed by his defense attorney who assumed that, because of her age, he would have an easy time making her appear less than certain about identifying her assailant.

“Had you ever seen (the perpetrator) before the day he allegedly showed up on your doorstep?” the attorney asked.

“No, mom replied wryly. “He and I don't run in the same social circles.”

“How is your eyesight?” he asked, thinking he could discredit mom because her vision, at her age, had to be iffy. “It’s 20/20 in my left eye and 20/40 in my right,” she told him.

“How would you know that?” he asked.

“Because I went to the eye doctor last Thursday and that’s what he told me. Would you like his name?”

The deposition wound up quickly as the attorney realized his strategy was doomed to fail.

But when mom later testified at her assailant’s trial, the local newspaper ran an above-the-fold headline, “99-year-old testifies.” It would have never printed that a “45-year-old testifies” or a “28-year-old testifies” but it implicitly discredited mom because of her age. Adding insult to injury, the paper revealed her name, something it didn’t have to do, which made her and her family – I’ll never forgive the Columbia (Mo.) Tribune – furious. “They made me sound like I didn’t know what I was saying, just because I’m old,” mom said bitterly.

The jury realized otherwise and the judge sent her assailant away for the rest of his natural life and then some. Reporting on the trial’s outcome, the Tribune went out of its way to point out that the African-American perpetrator was tried by an all-white jury, implying racial prejudice on their part, but didn’t acknowledge its own prejudice against old people that it had unwittingly revealed. The Tribune’s coverage caused mom nearly as much anguish as the crime itself had.

Horace is a friend we consider part of our family. For years, he has wintered here in Florida at his condo. At 96, he is not only mentally unimpaired, he’s in great physical shape. Last week he won a golf tournament in which men half his age were competing. While he would like to golf every day as he once did, he says that nowadays, when people find out how old he is, they don’t want to play with him.

Every Monday night his condo association holds a poolside potluck that Horace has attended for 30 years. This year, he says, he only went to a few of the parties because hardly any of his new neighbors – most of his friends who bought condos when Horace purchased his in the mid-1980s have passed on – will have anything to do with him. They assume he is either incapable of saying anything of interest or will soon be gone.

Horace flew C-47s around the Pacific during World War II.  Over Easter lunch, he was talking about the day, near the end of the war, he landed his plane on a roped-off Manila street that had been turned into a landing strip to enable him and his fellow airmen to pick up American prisoners of war who had been relocated to the San Miguel Brewery after being liberated from Japanese POW camps.

Coincidentally I had just finished a book about American POWs in the Philippines in which that daring street landing was mentioned. “That was you?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Mine was one of several planes that landed one after another at the brewery. They didn’t tell us before we took off for Manila who we were picking up but I’ll never forget how God-awful those men looked. They’d been starved and beaten for years.”

The people standing around the pool at his condo are making small talk about minutiae -- their golf scores, grandchildren, politics and the like. Little do they realize that the white-haired man sitting off by himself, balancing a plate of food on his lap, is a living, breathing history book, an American treasure the likes of whom we will never see again. Horace says that this is the last year he will winter in Florida. He has said that for 20 years but this time we sense he means it. 

There’s a lot of talk these days about lives that matter. Black lives matter. White lives matter. Women’s lives matter. Latino lives matter. Unborn lives matter. I have yet to see anything about a movement called “Old Lives Matter” and that’s a shame because they matter every bit as much as anyone else’s.

A month or so before she died, I asked mom what she, being presumably closer to death than I was, felt Christianity was all about. Is it about eternal life? About being reunited with those you lost on earth?

“Jesus's main message wasn't about heaven, it was about the Golden Rule,” she replied. “Being kind, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And that is how all of us, regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof, should treat everyone, especially the uber-elderly who almost universally find themselves the victims of age-related prejudice, even from people who think they harbor no prejudices at all.

It is safe to say that none of the uber-olds, whether they remain in full possession of their mental faculties or have lost some or most of them, set out to live as long as they have – there is no upside in outliving your contemporaries and those you love. But, because they have somehow managed to, they deserve and yearn to be spoken to, and treated, like the valuable members of society they are, and to be shown the same respect to which all people are entitled.

In other words, treat old people like you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes because, thanks to modern medicine, genetics, determination or a combination of all three, you just might find yourself in them one of these days.

Happy birthday, mom.

Smart phones in the hands of stupid people

Last week I attended a new business presentation made by executives of a major corporation whose name you would know instantly. I went to the meeting as a member of a committee of a not-for-profit organization that is charged with making a purchase worth more than $30 million, so, needless to say, we are interviewing a number of companies. The presentation was held at the local branch office of one of those companies.

This particular company called out all the troops. There were senior vice presidents, plain old vice presidents, managers and supervisors. Each executive, at one point, stood up and presented the specific capabilities for which he or she was responsible.

Let me preface what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I recognize that I’m an old fogey. I’ve been retired for five years. I have gray hair and wrinkles. I will admit I was a bit baffled by some of the technological aspects of the purchase we were discussing but I pretended like I understood.

But what I didn’t get – and refuse to understand – is why every executive in the meeting, if he or she wasn’t talking at any given moment, was looking at his or her smart phone. There was lots of wrist action, so I’m assuming they were answering text messages or responding to emails. Or, maybe, they were checking the stock market. Or Facebook. Or watching porn. Or TV. Or reading books. Or shopping at amazon. Or asking their significant others what they wanted to do for dinner. 

Whatever they were doing, they might as well have worn signs on their foreheads that said, “We don’t give a shit about your business." Sure, all of them had heard the spiels their co-workers were giving before, but it would have been nice had they left their phones on their desks, feigned interest and given the illusion they cared about our business. But none did.

If I were their boss, I would have, two minutes after the meeting ended, sent a text firing every executive who attended that meeting. All would have been in the unemployment line the next morning, where they could examine their smart phone screens at their leisure while scanning Monster.com or Craigslist or LinkedIn or however it is people find jobs these days, I have no clue.  

Technology is great, but not when it replaces common sense. Or common courtesy.

I could go on and on but my iPhone just dinged which means I have a text and you, my dear readers, can’t possibly be as important as whatever message it may contain so I’m finished here.

See what I mean?