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Does your current lady love understand?
"Oh, I make sure she understands," he replies, not unkindly.
"We've been together 20 years. She understands."
Arlene
is a little younger than Les and lives down the street from him. "She
has a home and I have my home and we just see each other," he says.
"Never get married! Never get married. It spoils everything."
He and Arlene like to take motor trips, often spontaneous.
"Once
we drove to the Pennsylvania Amish country. It was a beautiful autumn
day and we stopped to get some food at a store and have a picnic by the
highway." He warms to his story.
You can love music. You know, love is quite a word."
He grows pensive. Is love more valuable as you grow older? I ask.
"Sure,
because you appreciate it more," he replies. "You don't know where
you're going after you die. And I wish some son-of-a-bitch would come
back and tell me!" He laughs. "But nobody comes back, you know." He
wags his head at me.
"Although,"
he adds mischievously, "I beg God, Whoever, to let me come back and
finish my job. You have so much to do and so little time to do it in.
The days aren't long enough! Time seems to pass faster as I get older.
I don't know why, it just does," he says softly.
He's
not afraid of death. "When the time comes, I doubt if we're going to
the pearly gate up there," he says. "I doubt that God's going to be
sitting there, and that I'm going to have to meet some people that I'm
so glad NEVER to see again. I don't think so!
"I do believe in a supreme being or power," he goes on.
"Einstein did. And Edison did. I believe everybody has to say, 'Hey, this much you know for sure: it started with NOTHING.
Who made nothing and then put something in it?" He stares into space and falls quiet.
Les
doesn't go to church, but prays privately and often gives thanks. It's
part of life, he says. "I never ask God for help, but I'm always
thanking Him for what I've got. I don't ask Him to help so the Yankees
will win or something like that," he says quickly. "Although I was at a
Catholic hospital once in Pittsburgh," he chuckles. "And the nuns were
praying for the Pittsburgh Pirates to win. I told them, 'I'm a Yankees
fan and you have the edge on me. I have to go around the hard way, you
know?' But then the Yankees won! That was something."
At 88, he is a pop music icon. Decades ago, Les Paul invented the electric guitar and still plays weekly
to standing-room-only crowds.
"We
saw a young Amish guy, this red-faced, healthy looking young person,
trying to make out with a little Amish girl." He grins. "We saw these
young people all jump into a car. All the rules they make—these kids
were breaking them."
He laughs delightedly.
"Another
time we were on a trip and all of a sudden, I said to her, 'Hey, I need
to get my exercise.' I walk a lot and ride a bike three or four times a
week.
I said, 'I'll tell you what. I'll take my walkie-talkie with me and I'll talk to you.'
"She
let me walk two miles. A trucker came by and said,'Can I help you? You
got a problem?' I said, 'No, I don't have a problem, I'm just out
hiking.' Then another person stopped, because she got the car parked
two miles down the road and she was sitting there. 'Do you need help?'
he asked. 'No, I'm fine, thank you,' she said. That's what we do. We
have a wonderful time.
"If
you're lucky enough to find somebody, you can share and enjoy yourself
and be happy around 'em. You can benefit by your life in the past, too,
and do the things that you didn't do. If you're fortunate enough to
figure that out, you can actually be terribly happy." He leans back and
takes another sip of beer.
So love and sex exist in old age? I ask.
"They're
anything but over. As of last night, anyway," he laughs lightly. "I'll
tell you something about love. My late wife Mary told me once that she
was stunned at how many things came to my mind and were successful,
whether it was writing a song or inventing something. 'Where in the
world do these things come from?' she asked me.
"I
thought about it perhaps two seconds and just blurted out, 'First you
have to be in love. And second, you'd better believe in God.' And
that's the truth," he says firmly.
"Being
in love is a lot more than having someone around to sew a button on
your shirt. I had a girlfriend that I used to hang out with, and we had
two things that she just didn't understand. One was that pride was
almost a disease. It's something that you have to be careful about,
because pride is not always beneficial.
"The other thing was sharing. There's SO much in sharing," he says.
"Yeah,
hang onto love, because love is important. You can love your work and
you can love your partner. You can love your parents. There are SO many
things.
"I
like playing the guitar with the real people, the rock people who have
been loyal fans, the newcomers, and people coming in from different
countries."
Les
has cheated death more than once. "I had a bad car accident back in
1948," he recounts. "My chances of living were nil. Walter Winchell
went on the air, saying I wasn't gonna make it. Others said I wasn't
gonna make it. It didn't look good. At one point, I knew that I had a
choice of letting go. My fingernails were hanging on the outside of the
Empire State Building, and I said, 'All I've got to do is let go—and
it's over.'
"Well, I didn't. I chose to fight." His face assumes a bulldog look.
"It's
terribly important for a person, especially an older person, to want to
live their life the most productive and happy they can. You've GOT to
have a positive attitude. And you've got to be grateful for what you
have, okay?" He raises his eyebrows.
"You've
got to thank God for what you've got and quit complaining about what's
wrong. If you don't believe in God, then thank WHOEVER."
Les
acknowledges his old-age problems. "You live with 'em," he says
briefly. "I have about a million of them! I wear a hearing aid. I take
anti-inflammatory medicine for arthritis. I take a pill for gout, one
for blood pressure, and I take
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