Another resident here who still has most of his marbles but is slightly deaf is one of the few residents I chat with regularly. He's significantly older than me in his late 70s I think, but like me patrols the facility on an electric wheelchair. He's actually more social than I am, he spends around 1 hour a day at each of the 6 "courts" which have 17 rooms around a common area, then the 6 courts themselves surround an even larger common are where the main desk is situated by the front entrance. He also parks there for a while each day. I tend to spend most of my day the same as I always have, in front of my computer in my room.
He is here because he lived out in the bush here after serving in Vietnam where he was one of the victims of the Agent Orange fiasco, which the military paid off dishing out big settlements to the victims. According to him, he got nearly $1M, which he parlayed over the years to about $3M flipping houses and buying at auctions stuff like 4 wheelers from oil companies that went bust in the 80s, then reselling them individually from his front lawn. I take this with a grain of salt because old folks here will claim to be rich, but why stay here if you could afford a private 24/7 CNA?
His explanation is that besides the big settlement, it's the VA not Medicaid paying his bills here, and his monthly retirement check is from the military not SS, which Medicade would garnish all but $200, as they are now doing to me. So, why should he spend money for private help, when he gets this for free? Gotta agree with that reasoning.
Anyhow, what landed him here was that one day he was out behind his doomstead fixing the fence I think, when he slipped and broke both legs sliding down the embankment. Worse yet, it was 30 below, and before he was lucky to be found, he froze and lost all his fingers and half of each foot, so he's actually in worse shape than me not being able to hold utensils to eat with.
Accidents can happen at any age to Doomers and Mountain Men, but of course the longer you are out there and the older you get, it's only a matter of time before statistics catch up with you. Thus, even though H-Gs had generally healthier diets than their Ag competitors,, their average lifespans were shorter, around age 45 was doing good for an H-G.
However, buying your ticket to the Great Beyond like Hatchet Jack and leaving your .50 cal Hawkins rifle to whoever thar finds you lord hopes its a white man s about as good a way to go out as any, right? 3 minutes into this clip from Jeremiah Johnson.
RE