Piney Woods Philosopher believes Americans should rethink the last period of life.

BY BILL COBBS
Columnist

Piney and She Who Must Be Obeyed (his beautiful wife) were very much interested in a phenomenon found mainly in aging Americans. It was very strange!
It seemed that all of an American&rsquo;s life was involved in copycatting, that is doing what &ldquo;everybody else&rdquo; does. This meant that women wore similar clothes, men all seemed to grow beards even if scanty ones, a great number of men wore bill-caps, commonly called &ldquo;baseball caps,&rdquo; many watched sports or went to their performances just because &ldquo;everybody did it.&rdquo; Worst of all, many watched television just because it was there, not paying attention to the fact that of 500 programs, perhaps two had enough value to be watched and with the news or so-called news, one could pick whatever version one wanted because the morons who ran most of the television news programs, plumped their own curious beliefs on the public. But all that was not as dangerous as the main human American fault!
That thing was an acceptance for males and females that (1) One should retire and stop working at age 65 and then (2) one should die in about seven or eight or ten years after that! It was the custom to so retire and so die!
Piney believed that if a national American habit could be induced that made the average American believe that he or she were entitled to, say, 80 years of work and 100 years of life, not 65 to 75 as they believe, then the death rate would raise itself automatically to (if not 100) to nearly that and certainly a higher rate for men and women than the present ones.
The prevalence of killing diseases of course plays a great role in American deaths, but those can with good medical treatment and early warnings be somewhat avoided. Americans must learn to think health and be prompt in stalling health problems! Mainly, Piney and She thought, the fact of expecting a long life would add years to anybody&rsquo;s existence!
 Proper eating habits, proper exercise, avoidance of argumentative situations, ignoring government idiocies, and other relaxations would mean much. 
Life has been pretty much the same for the world&rsquo;s people for 5,000 years. Americans have had more opportunities than anyone else in the world in the last 200 years, barring their wars. But Piney thought, no one and no system has taught them to work toward and anticipate a long and happy old age. Rather, it seems a lot of the ones approaching being &ldquo;aged&rdquo; made preparations for demise, not a happy and glorious planning for the last period of your life.
 The kingposts of a long happy life were simple: seek good health, avoid controversy, pay no attention to government idiocy and its adversities, live as close to the land as you can, relax, look to your kids, grandkids and friends, and above all, look about you. Don&rsquo;t you see that our country can be a happy place, all the way to age 100, if you want it to be and plan it to be? Nuff said!

A writer, Bill Cobbs divides his time between Florida and Southwest Virginia.