Where would you go to learn the secrets of living a long life? Many of us would agree that speaking to centenarians is the best way to start. Some of those centenarians talk about eating healthy or exercising daily and others talk about how it is all in your family tree.
There was even one centenarian, Elma Scranton-Schwartz who claims that not joining Bendigo Have Your Say as the reason she is able to live for 125 years. She is currently Bendigo’s oldest person.
Mrs Scranton-Schwartz was born on a farm in 1894 in Wagga Wagga NSW. She had five sisters, three brothers, two parents, a budgie and Maltese Cross-Bulldog named Mr Jefferson. All thirteen of them grew up in a tiny, one-room cottage. They slept together on mattresses stuffed with straw and newspaper head to tail. She was only able to attend school for a short while before she left to work in a farm kitchen. She moved to Bendigo in the ’50s.
When she got older, Mrs Scranton-Schwartz was introduced to Facebook and Bendigo Have Your Say. “One time someone posted a photo of my car accidentally double parked in a handicapped zone for 2 seconds on that page. I got a heap of angry and threatening messages. What they didn’t see was that I was about to straighten my car up. So I unplugged my computer and dropped it off the Rosalind Park poppet-head.”
She also added a dietary component to her secret to long life. “I like my Vegemite sandwiches and my deconstructed avocado. I was eating them before they were popular.”
Her daughter, 107 year old Alice Scranton-Schwartz also said, “Perhaps staying away from men was the proverbial cherry on top that kept her alive.”
The moral of this story is if you eat Vegemite sandwiches with avocado, not follow Bendigo Have Your Say and stay away from men then perhaps you may even be able to live into your hundreds.