Old folks and ants

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

You’ll have a deep, and maybe unwanted, insight into the odd workings of my mind knowing that the two most vivid memories of my boyhood home four decades ago are the insects and the elderly.

When I was 12, we lived in an upstairs two-bedroom flat in the Towne Apartments, a complex of sixty rental units on Adams Avenue in Ogden, Utah. Our neighbors were diverse, but because of reasonable rent and close proximity to downtown, many of them were older retired folks. 

I was the only kid around, however, and thus was an object of both great anxiety and curiosity for these senior citizens. I encountered many of them when I delivered the afternoon newspaper, skipped through the outdoor corridors to get our mail, or played made-up games alone on the long rectangular lawn in the center of the three tenement buildings.

One such neighbor was 82-year old Fred Naisbitt. I met him when I was hitting a tennis ball against the front rock wall of the apartment complex. He did not complain about the annoying thuds. Instead, he sat nearby and talked while I imagined I was Jimmy Connors v. Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon.

From time to time after that introduction, when he saw me he’d come out and chat. He told me about his life, including how he had enjoyed owning the Hermitage, a resort in nearby Ogden Canyon. President William Howard Taft visited there in about 1909. 

The original building burned down 20 years later. I knew the replacement building Mr. Naisbitt owned, a large carousel log cabin bar and grill that we drove past every week on the way to visit our friends at the Trappist monastery in Huntsville.

During one conversation, he told me that he liked how I pronounced his name “Naysbitt” instead of saying “Nezbit” like everyone else did. It was the last time we talked. A few days later, he blacked out while driving his car and crashed off an embankment of the Ogden River. He died just down the road from his beloved Hermitage.

One of my other newspaper route customers, an old married couple, lived downstairs from us, just across the lawn from Mr. Naisbitt. In warm weather, they’d sit together on lawn chairs outside their front door and wait for me to deliver the Ogden Standard-Examiner. The older woman was nice, but fretted if I did not deliver the newspaper on time.

One night there was lots of commotion from their apartment. Police and paramedics arrived. We rushed downstairs to see if we could help. The older woman was standing outside while medics hovered over her husband, who had collapsed on the apartment floor inside. 

My mother walked over and hugged her. I blurted out, “He’ll be OK!” She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and said, “He really will, Mike, right?” He wasn’t OK. He passed away that same night. I felt really bad about the false hope I had delivered to her. She did not sit outside on her lawn chair much after that night.

Way at the other end of the apartment complex, I also delivered newspapers to Mrs. Josephine Hayes. To my untrained eye, she seemed about 90. She never came outside either. She also took a really long time to answer her doorbell when I stopped by to collect the monthly payment for the newspaper. 

One day, during a collection visit, she asked me to take out her trash. I did and she gave me a quarter. Thereafter, she asked me to do other little odd jobs. I tried to help her, but sort of dreaded it too. 

She was never able to fully zip up the back of her dress, her hair was ratty, and her apartment smelled bad. Almost always, I had to clean up some bit of spilled food on her kitchen floor. Usually, a line of small black ants traveled to and from this pungent cache.

I told my mother about her. Mrs. Hayes was gone a short time later. I do not know exactly what happened. She may have passed away, but I suspect Mom told someone else about her situation, and friends or family found a place that provided Mrs. Hayes with better care than mine.

It seemed like a perfect solution at the time, but back then I did not understand the connection between self-esteem and the ability to care for one’s self. Mom explained the situation this way: “No one should have to live with ants swarming all around!” 

Despite the undisputed wisdom of my mother, I don’t think Mrs. Hayes was all that upset about the ants. I think she wanted to be an ant, and hoped I would be one too.

Each year my wife, a preschool teacher, buys an ant colony so her three-year old students can learn how these insects live. The kids watch the ants work hard. and in concert, to meet their common individual needs. The preschoolers sing “The ants go marching one by one” while they observe subtle forms of communication, mentoring, and cooperation.

Ants engage in collective decision making because two hundred heads can be better than one. Sometimes they rescue each other from dangerous situations. Ants cannot survive separated from the colony. They need to be together. They want to be together.

Some ants live in anthills. Other ants like to chat, sit on lawn chairs, have ratty gray hair, and live in apartment complexes. As a boy, I never fully appreciated this truth. I wish I knew then what I know now about old folks and ants.

*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.