(In honor of “Of Mice and Men,” that begins April 19 at Shreveport Little Theatre, here’s a column from 2014 on (sort of) the same subject. Also, if you’ve never read “Of Mice and Men,” don’t let its being a classic scare you. Like “The Old Man and the Sea,” it’s only about 100-150 pages long. Wonderful and sad story, real-life story. This column is not quite so serious. At all.)

Favorite Old Guy Joke. Three old guys are out walking.

First one says, “Windy, ain’t it?”

Second one says, “No, it’s Thursday.”

Third one says, “So am I. Let’s go get a beer.”

Say what?

I love me an old dude.

They are on my mind today more than usual because of a Townhall Spotlight report forwarded to me citing a “landmark study that sounds like science fiction” in which “a professor at Harvard Medical School regenerated the brains of aging mice by turning on a switch inside their cells.”

This reads, beautifully:

“The mice, WHO ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF ELDERLY MEN (my favorite part), had all the classic signs of old age: Their brains were smaller… they were going blind… they stopped having sex… their hair was gray… and they couldn’t find their way through a maze or remember where their food was.”

But when this Harvard professor hit the switch in their cells, the tissues and organs in their body — including their brains — started to regenerate and grow back to normal size.

From the report: “Even a slight change in brain size would have been a miracle… but what happened was remarkable… The gray hair was gone. So was the poor eyesight and shrunken brains. In fact, there was nothing left that could distinguish them as ‘old.’” (Except the baby blue jumpsuits they wore?)

This “Age-Reversing Switch can be turned on in us too!,” states the report, through increased production of telomeres, “the enzyme that helps you rebuild the ‘biological clocks’ at the end of your DNA.” The report claims that once the mice had their telomerase turned on, shrunken organs grew (hello!), key organs functioned better, the mice got their sense of smell back and, my second favorite part, “the mice went on to live long healthy lives.”

Good for them! And if you wish to try telomeres, good for you. But I want to know if this improved for the mice:

Did they still have to use reading glasses?

If so, were they able to consistently FIND their reading glasses, and how many pair, within 10, did each have located at different strategic reading spots at whatever house or field or automobile or office they were infesting?

Did their butts grow back? (One day I looked back there and someone had stolen mine. It had followed me around for more than 40 years and then, poof!)

Did they become younger than their preacher and doctor again?

Did it still seem to them that Arnold Palmer should be in his 50s and were they still consistently surprised to recall, throughout the summer, that the Houston Astros were now in the American League?

Could they rip the “Only White Tees and Decaf” bumper stickers off their golf carts?

That’s what I’D like to know.

Meanwhile, we males who are getting older (and smaller) can at least appreciate, first-hand, old dude humor, something we couldn’t do back before we discovered the hauntings of ear hair.

For instance:

One old guy asked another how he was feeling. “Like a newborn baby,” he said. “No hair, no teeth, and I think I just wet my pants.”

And, an old guy was telling his neighbor he’d just bought a new state-of-the-art hearing aid that costs $4,000 but was perfect.

“Really,” the neighbor said. “What kind is it?”

“12:30.”

And finally, the show-stopper that I shouldn’t even tell you:

The old man limps into the ice cream parlor, makes it to the stool and orders a banana split.

The waitress says, “Crushed nuts?”

“No,” he says. “Arthritis.”

-30-

“If eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;…”

That was written around 150 years ago by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “On being asked, whence is the flower…”

Hang with me a second; I’m not going to let Emerson get away with using “whence.”

But first…

A year ago when our daughter became engaged, we figured we would not plant flowers this spring. Saving money for the wedding and all.

So about two months ago, my spousal unit said something along the lines of, “It sure would be nice if we had a few flowers and things in the backyard like you always plant.”

I said something like, “I know. Wedding and all though. But yes, it would be.”

Maybe a month ago she said the same thing. I might have nodded.

And then a couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that just a few flowers sure would be pretty, that I planted them so well and picked them out so well and took care of them so good, and then it made sense: I was being asked to plant some stuff, and it would be wise if I actually did.

So I did. Not bunches, but some. Not as many as usual, but enough.

The past two weekends I had some time off and went to the flower store and came home and found my spade and made it happen. And besides my spousal unit asking me to, there was another reason.

Back to Emerson: I’ll agree that “On being asked, whence” is a bit verbose, and if not that, then high-falutin’. The flower contemplated was a rhodora, sort of an azalea without leaves. Unless you’ve ever read the poem you wouldn’t know it’s called “The Rhodora,” and why would any of us possibly care.

But ….

The point is worth thinking over. “Beauty is its own excuse for being” is one for the money. Whether or not we can figure out the “why” of beauty isn’t the point. Things are pretty to us because they are. Not many of us take enough time to notice, but that doesn’t keep things from being beautiful, for their own sake.

The 2018 Masters should end today in Augusta, Ga., on a piece of property that opened in the 1850s as Fruitland Nursery. You should see what they’ve done with the place since. If Emerson were here today, he could whence and wherefore until the cows come home, writing about the pines and azaleas and magnolias.

They never get tired of “adding pretty” around here.

My yard would not be poem worthy, mainly because it’s just a few plants and because I can’t think of anything to rhyme with celosia, a few of which I planted in an old gas grill; they bloom in plumes of orange and yellow and red, and look a lot like the top of a Smurff’s head.

In one container is Persian shield, deep purple and green, plus some spike grass and vinca.

King Coleus is another plant that’s easy and makes you look like you know what you’re doing. I got the Kong Mosaic and Kong Red and Kong Rose.

There are some Gerbera Daisies around the porch—they come in many colors—and some hanging baskets of pink and white and red vinca, and some other baskets of sweet potato vine. Asparagus fern is easy to plant and grow too; it complements just about any flower you wish to plant.

Other easy starter-kit plants are ornamental grasses, like Cordyline Red Star or Pennisetum Fireworks. Ornamental grasses have really grown on me.

You can stick some lantana in the ground and come back in six months, and what was fist size will be as big as your car engine, lots of little bundles of blooms of yellow or red or purple or my favorite, “Sunrise Rose,” a mix of bubble gum and yellow. It loves the heat and not too much water.

If you need an excuse to plant flowers—like maybe your spousal unit asks you to—that’s more than good enough. But you don’t need one. Either way, pretty is going to keep on being pretty with your help or without it. Whence, go forth and plant.