The Coonridge Digest: Just a theory… not enough grease

Greetings from the Ridge.

Remember Chester?

There’d be a terrible brawl break out down at Miss Kitty’s Long Branch saloon. Cowboys would be flying out the windows like Methodists after a long-winded service, the swinging door would be riddled with bullets, Sam the bartender had taken cover behind the counter, Doc Stone couldn’t heal the wounds up fast enough and Festus hadn’t joined the series yet. Which always left poor Chester running down the street shouting, "Mr. Dillon! Mr. Dillon!"

Except Chester didn’t run. He hopped. Chester had a limp.

Chester was ahead of his time. Either it’s my imagination or Darwin’s theory of evolution has taken a left turn somewhere on the road out of Dodge. As our technology increases, and our knowledge multiplies by the day our joints seem to be falling apart.

For the life of me I don’t remember my grandparents’ generation suffering from such joint troubles… knees, hips, shoulders. I swear that every joint I know is beginning to at least creak if not blow out completely. Maybe great-grandpa didn’t live long enough to have his knees replaced. Maybe the aroma of his barnyard provided some sort of inoculation. And maybe… maybe as a race we’re just wearing out.

Used to be, joint problems were a malady reserved for the old. Now it seems like you get your first shoulder surgery just after puberty and then every 20 years you go in for a new knee. Some experts claim that the increasing demand of high school athletics is to blame for the eruption in orthopedic procedures but we all know folks who were a far cry from defensive tackle yet they seem to be as prone to suffer a muscular separation as the most steroid-pumped athlete.

Another oft-cited culprit is a society with loads of repetitive jobs. Most folks I know spend a good deal of their day rolling an electronic mouse across their desk. But again, this just doesn’t explain why generations of bale buckers, posthole diggers, and sweatshop seamstresses weren’t plagued with our modern spate of shoulder and knee injuries. It’s got to be something else.

Okay, I have a theory. Like all theories it’s open to dispute, and like all columnists I have the pen and you don’t. I think it’s the lack of grease in our diets.

Both of my grandfathers started the day with fried eggs, fried bacon, real butter slathered onto homemade bread, and on Sunday a heaping mound of greasy gravy was added as a reward for a week well lived. "Oleo" was still something between the acts of a Vaudeville show, "diet" was what you did to an old bedspread that was beginning to fade, and Weight Watchers were those guys who worked at the grain scales down at the elevator.

We are quickly become the first un-greased generation in the history of the world and our sockets are simply running dry.

I have a carpenter friend named Rick. He’s in his forties, slim as young oak and as sinewy a young fellow as you’ll ever meet. He climbs, walks, and stretches more in day than most folks do in a week’s time, he has no bad habits that I’ve ever seen, and he had to buy his current set of knees. You see, Rick eats like a bird. He’s a young Adonis who only puts healthy fuel in his body and when he orders salad he even forgoes the dressing. He’s not a health nut, he just likes healthy food. Two knee replacements… Rick’s just run out of grease.

Let’s at least consider the possibility that the loads of lard-laden pies, shortening drowned fried chicken, and cholesterol-packed pork chops were the very things that kept Uncle Henry’s joints swinging. At least play with the notion that generations of Americans with no better sense than to enjoy the sublime pleasure of mouth-watering cheeses, sugar-encased strawberries, and who thought "lo-cal" was a reference to the height of President Coolidge, had knees, elbows, hips, and shoulders that didn’t need replacing like two-ply tires on a dump truck. God love him, Grandpa was greased.

If you watched Gunsmoke carefully, you’ll have noticed that Chester never carried a gun. The show’s producers originally designed him as a character that for some reason had given up violence. To somehow explain his peaceful approach to life they asked Weaver to come up with a disability and the next day he showed up on the set with his stiff-legged limp. My theory? He was skinny. Not enough grease.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.