Jim Kershner: If you hit 109, you’d probably be smiling, too

Florence Hart, who turned 109 on Wednesday, was once quoted as saying that the secret to longevity is “a cigar and a shot of whiskey” a day.

Before you fire up a stogie and pound a shot, you need to know something about Florence.

She’s actually a sweet tee-totaling little lady who does not smoke cigars, guzzle whiskey or even stay up late. Yet this is the same woman who, when interviewed early Wednesday morning on local TV, claimed that 6 a.m. was usually when she went to bed.

“Yes, she’s always had a good sense of humor,” said her son, Russ Hart of Chattaroy.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, may well be the true secret to longevity.

This is not garden-variety longevity. This is world-class longevity, especially when you consider that the oldest man in the world is 111 and the oldest woman is 114. Florence may be the oldest woman in Spokane, and she may even be among the oldest in the state or nation. This is harder to sort out than you might think, due to the scarcity of birth certificates in the 19th century. (For the record, Florence has a verified birth certificate from Los Angeles County).

Yet by any measure, she’s way up there. When she was born in 1898, the main streets of Los Angeles were mostly dirt. The horse-and-buggy still held sway. One of her most vivid memories is of the San Francisco earthquake – the one in 1906, not the one in 1989.

Think about this for a moment: In what year will you be 109? If you’re under driving age, that’ll put you into the 22nd Century.

Let me put it another way: If you’re currently 84, you still have another quarter-century to go.

If you make it that far, maybe you’ll learn what Florence has learned.

“It pays to get old,” she said. “That’s the only accomplishment I have.”

Well, not quite. A magazine once ran a spread on her expertise as a doll-maker. Doll-making is a hobby she took up early in life – at age 80.

I also learned plenty about Florence’s sense of humor on Wednesday during her birthday party at the Northpointe Retirement Community in Spokane. I learned that last year, she asked for (and received) a Chippendale-type dancer at her party. (“I’ve never had a stripper before,” she reportedly said).

At this year’s party, attended by more than a hundred, she settled for a barbershop quartet named Inspiration and a non-Chippendale-type newspaper columnist. She asked me to be there because she laughs at my columns. Her favorite?

“I just loved that one about the drunken robins,” she said.

Well, I’ve always believed that ornithological alcoholism was the funniest topic on the planet. Now I’m gratified to learn that a woman with nearly 11 decades of accumulated wisdom agrees.

So the evidence seems clear: A good sense of humor leads to a long life. But as the party went on I began to notice some other possible contributing factors. When she was young, said Russ, she loved to “fish and hike.” She was quite an outdoorswoman, living for many years in Grass Valley, Calif., at the foot of the Sierras. She only recently had to give up walking.

She also believes strongly in “not fussing about things that don’t amount to anything.”

Then I noticed another trend. I saw a picture of Florence with her mother on the occasion of her mother’s 100th birthday. Her mother lived to 102.

Then I began to talk to Russ about his interests. He’s an avid mountain biker and he teaches skiing at Mt. Spokane. Russ is 80.

The lesson here is something that most doctors already know: The real key to long life is good genetics. You’ve either got ‘em or you don’t.

So, maybe a good sense of humor won’t keep you alive to 109. But the example of Florence Hart proves one thing: It can certainly keep you happy to 109.