Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1908 — Old Folks Everywhere. [ARTICLE]

Old Folks Everywhere.

Kentucky is making a proud boast of its old people. There is old man Dave Galloway, of Uno, who is 50, and hasn’t been out of Hart county he was a boy. He plowed considerable this year, but never got too tiled to stop his mule and tell that flaa-bitten sage what Henry Clay said to hint once. There’s Mr. Phil Waters, too, six years older than old man Dave, and chipper as a cricket If it weren’t for him and Aunt Sally Huskinson, who lives over on Fountain Run, and is 102 years old come her next birthday, folks around the "Barrens” would have to look in the almanac to find out what century they were living in. But these hardy old pioneers are almost children when compared with Uncle Israel Tisdale, of Horse Cave. Uncle Israel says he’s 117, and there’s nobody to prove differently, besides, his shiny black face is as wrinkled as a butternut The last heard of him he was “cuttin’ capers” around a young cullud “widow ’onian,” and they say he’s got his eye out for another chance at matrimony. Such is the gallantry of old men in Kentucky. Kentucky is right to be proud of her old people. It is a land where folk take a great joy of life. The sun is bonny in Old eKntucky, the bluegrass is paradoxically green, and the air sweet with the bloom on the corn. ' All good things are there —the mellow dew of mountain moonshine, hominy and hog meat, tobacco as fragrant as though the lips of fair women had breather kisses on it. Its inhabitants are loath to leave this land dripping with fatness and perhaps that is why bonny in Old Kentucky, the bluegrass with their boots on and a few little puffs oL white smoke hanging in the foreground. Most of them just live on an on, enjoying life and its blessings, until one day there comes a strong wind blowing out of the mountains and it catches them up and the place thereof knows them no moie. But the oldest inhabitants are not all confined to Kentucky. Providence be thankful,we have them everywhere Life is better regulated and' better protected now than it used to bs. What would the world do without its brave octogenarians, with their ripe judgment, their cheery voices, their unfailing wisdom to guide the footsteps of those who must carry the business , of life where they have already trod? Blessings on the men who grow old serenely and on the women who grow old graceful y, for theirs is a beautiful autumn and a well earned time of rest!