So we planted and raised trees. 65 years old turned into 70. I was doing a lot of grass cutting. My wife and I talked about it and we decided that it was time to your read of one of the places.

So we put the choice to our kids: which one did they want?

They opted for the vineyard. We moved into that small house that measured only 30ft. by 30ft. or about 900 square feet. We enlarged hit by adding two more rooms and a couple of bathrooms.

We traveled a lot; my wife and I like to travel. Her initial objective was to see the whole country. After I retired from the telephone company I got a job as a consultant with a company that had a contract with Puerto Rico.

The Puerto Rican telephone company was run by IT&T. The commonwealth of Puerto Rico Bought a company from IT&T. They borrowed money from a New York bank, and one of the terms of the loan was to have independent auditors once a year.

One guy in the consulting firm had been in AT&T headquarters when I worked there. The second guy who had been my boss at one time and he asked me to work with him and Puerto Rico.

So every year we went to Puerto Rico for the month of January or February. It was a great time to get out of New England winters. That job when on for five or six years.

While we were down there we heard about eastern airlines offering a flat – rate air pass. For $1,000.00 you could fly anywhere that eastern flew for one year. There were very few strings attached other than you had to spend a weekend and you couldn’t make your reservation home until you got to your destination, which turned a lot of people off.

We were planning a trip across country by car when we changed our plans and decided to buy one of these air passes instead. We could fly to North Carolina and visit our friends for a weak or two, fly home and do laundry, then fly to Texas.

Then one day said that she wanted to see every single state so we checked to find the cheapest car rentals. We started in El Paso Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

She indeed got to every state except for North Dakota.

The North Dakota story is funny because it’s another bit of serendipity. We like elder hostels and we did about 25 of them. We did them in China and Cuba and Mexico.

Oh yes, I had a heart attack in Mexico!

I was playing tennis in Guadalajara Mexico which is very high altitude. Then we went down to Ixtapa, and the next morning I had a heart attack.

Well this was no good place to have a heart attack. Andree got on the phone and got them to open the hospital which was closed at night. We had to send out to the drugstore to get any drugs.

Fortunately they had a doctor at the Sheraton hotel in Ixtapa. Have the doctor spoke good English. By evening they had me on a private hospital plane to Houston.

After a few weeks in Houston everything was OK. They put me on some drugs and I didn’t need an operation. That was the end of a heart attack episode.

That made us think that we should leave the vineyard, because that’s an isolated location. Andree had macular degeneration and couldn’t drive. If I had another heart attack and she couldn’t drive they would be in bad shape.

So we began to look around for a retirement community. We found one that we like in Shrewsbury Massachusetts. We’ve lived there for fifteen years.

And Andree died last September 30. I had the pleasure of her company for 62 years.

I still live in Shrewsbury and I spend my time with the kids.

When my job in Puerto Rico went the way of all jobs, we bought a timeshare for week three and weak four of every January in saint Maarten’s. I’m still going down there this year. I’m 91 and I’m still playing tennis. I don’t know how long I’ll play but I’ll keep trying. I don’t play very well.

The USTA has all kinds of classifications for everyone from guys like Andre Agassi to old geezers like me. For guys like me who are over 90 there are four tournaments every year.

There’s one tournament in Boston that’s played on grass. There’s one in Palm Springs on hard surface. There’s an indoor tournament in Portland, Oregon And an outdoor clay court tournament in North Carolina.

I’ve played in three out of four of those tournaments. There’s about twenty or 25 guys on the circuit, and that’s all the competition there is. Out of twenty guys I’m a ranked number ten in singles.

In doubles the rankings get a bit crazy. With my partner from Portland we are ranked number four. With another partner I am ranked number ten.

I’ve gotten to trophies. I came in third place in a grass court doubles competition, and second in a competition in Portland, Oregon.