Seniors seem well-prepared to deal with bitter cold
Staff writer
With Marion in the throes of some of the coldest weather it has seen in years, spare a thought for local seniors.
Then again, maybe don’t bother.
Most seniors were unconcerned — hearty souls as they are — when asked their thoughts on the brutal weather.
“It’s OK,” Ronald “Bunk” Ludwig said. “I got a walker I use instead of a cane.”
If roads are good, Ludwig typically goes about his day as normal.
“I was raised up as a farmer,” he explained.
Despite a good amount of snow outside, no one in the senior center was wearing boots Thursday.
A few explained their usual plans for a snowy day.
“I am very cautious of ice,” Dale Lind said. “The thing about our age — when you fall, you usually break something.”
At age 94, Bea Kelsey said she had “no business getting out when the weather’s bad” and just “diddles around” at home.
“In my childhood, I liked the snow,” she said. “I don’t now.”
Sharron Schutte said she enjoyed staying home and watching snow fall.
She describes the 16 inches that came to Marion last winter as the most beautiful she’d seen in years.
“It came down just like rain,” she said.
Seniors’ plans often are curtailed when weather is bad. The senior center closes for “snow days” when the school system does.
Even when the center isn’t closed, weather severely limits the number of people who show up for lunch or a chat.
A closed senior center necessitates some planning.
Last Tuesday, the day before last week’s snow, a crack team of Kelsey, Cathy Henderson, and Sharron and George Schutte went to the grocery store to stock up.
George Schutte, the youngest of the four at 80, was behind the wheel.
He transports the ladies often; they call him their taxi driver.
Schutte was raised on a farm in Missouri and appears to be impervious when it comes to cold weather.
“It don’t make any damn difference,” he said. “You got cattle to feed; you go out there and do it.”
When 16 inches of snow came to Marion last year, Schutte didn’t stay inside and cancel his cardiologist visit. He spent an hour shoveling and made his appointment.
“You do it just like you did when you was young,” he said. “It don’t bother me.”
As a chauffeur for the ladies, he trots through slushy driveways to pick them up.
Like a true gentleman, he holds onto their arms as he walks them to the car.
But even Schutte has his limits.
“When it gets to five below, I think I’ll stay in the house,” he said.
Mary Lou Herren, who grew up in Marion, recalled that in her youth, kids who lived in town had to go to school in heavy snow while rural kids were excused.
Not only did Herren’s family live in town, they didn’t own a car.
“I had to walk to school,” she said. “I wasn’t a big fan [of snow] even back then.”
Perhaps it was trauma from Kansas winters (sometimes, she said, “you couldn’t tell where the curb was”) that led Herren and her husband Bobby to begin spending their winters in Mission, Texas.
“That’s about as far south as you can go,” she said.
Herren is toughing out this winter in Marion, but she’s taking precautions.
“I took the dog in to be groomed this morning,” she said. “I told them, ‘don’t cut her too short.’”