I am sitting in a little coffee shop in the midst of a large nursery in Dorset. Plants and bright flowers abound and to my right is a greenhouse. Why they have a coffee shop is beyond me, but it works out well because it is next door to the man who works on my Saab.

The Saab is old. I almost didn’t buy it years ago because it was old then, and oh by the way, the company did not exist any longer. But in the end, my wife talked me into it and I have been grateful ever since. It’s been the most joyful car I have ever owned.

But it is old and things break and they are generally not inexpensive to fix. Original parts are difficult to find and because it was always kind of a niche car here in the States, not a lot of people make aftermarket parts. The ones who do… well they know they have us, we lovers of old things, and so they are costly.

I am not complaining. I do have a chronic love of old things. I have lived in houses that were built in 1793 and 1800 (my current house). Wonderful places, full of character, old floors, uneven floors, and beautiful woodwork. Also, wonderful places that are old, where things break down and often off-the-counter fixes don’t work. One of the things you learn about old houses is that whatever you want to do, triple your time estimate and double your cost estimate. It’s the nature of the beast.

I love old furniture too. I have Windsor chairs, work at an old plantation desk, sitting in a chair that once sat in the Virginia State Senate in the late 1800s. They need work too. My desk chair was poorly made, beautiful but built in the early years of factory furniture and I have rebuilt the base 3 times already.

It’s just part of the cost of old things. I don’t have payments on any of these things, but there is still a cost. Work. Repairs. They are a constant.

I have hit the age where the same is true of me. Things have been slowly breaking down for some time. I take a fair amount of maintenance. Still, like the car and the old desk chair, I work well and there are some benefits to old things, and of growing old.

First and foremost, old things have stories. They have a history. They have character. Tales are told of old things. They have been through so much. Old furniture has scars and each scar is a story. Point to almost anything in my house and I can regal (or bore you) with a story. The same is true with us older folks.

You don’t get to my age without battles. Won and lost. You don’t get here without scars, physical, emotional, and spiritual. It’s just part of the gig. If you are lucky, you can tell those stories without bitterness or bragging, and people will find them interesting, and at times useful.

In my world, which I fully recognize is not the way most of the world thinks, a few breakdowns and expensive fixes are the cost of surrounding myself with stories. With simplicity and character and the patina of age. It is a cost I have been paying for decades and which I will gladly pay in the years I have left. And with a little luck, some of those stories will carry on after me.

I might even be in some of them.

Be well. Travel wisely.

Tom