“Altadena man's recipe for living to 100 includes golf, bacon and eggs” |
| Altadena man's recipe for living to 100 includes golf, bacon and eggs Posted: 10 Mar 2011 09:19 PM PST  Jon Barry celebrated his 100th birthday Thursday by blowing out candles on his cake at Fox's Dining Room in Altadena. Barry decided that he wanted to celebrate his birthday by doing what he does every day - eat lunch at Fox's Dining Room. He has eaten lunch there every day for the last three years.(SGVN/Staff Photo by Walt Mancini) ALTADENA - Joseph "Joe" Barrie's rules for living 100 years could really catch on: play golf, he said. Eat two eggs, scrambled, two strips of bacon, extra-crispy, and one hotcake, with syrup and butter, for lunch every day. "And don't stop breathing," Barrie advised. "You can quote me on that." On his 100th birthday Thursday, Barrie celebrated by blowing out the candles on his birthday cake - "A lot of hot air," he joked - and enjoying the same lunch he eats six days a week at Fox's Diner. It would be seven, he said, but they close on Mondays. "The food's excellent, and the waitresses are pretty," Barrie said of the Altadena institution, where he's been a regular since the 1950s and a favorite daily customer for several years. Owner Ken Bertonneau, whose parents opened the diner in 1955, said the chef puts on the bacon and eggs as soon as Altadena Dial-a-Ride drops Barrie off around noon. "He just stopped driving in June," his daughter Judie Barrie said of the former textile broker, who "got tired of it" and retired at 85. He doesn't look back a lot, although he goes back to "horse and buggy" days. "Things haven't changed - I have. I've gotten older," he joked. "But I don't have a double chin." The college footballer, who played center for Michigan State, said it was "sunshine" that brought him and his late wife, Julie, to Altadena about 65 years ago. "I came here in 1934, for a game, and I think it was like this," he said of Thursday's blue skies and warm weather. "It was snowing back in Michigan." The couple met in Chicago, when her mom was finishing a master's degree at Northwestern and her dad was working in the hotel business, Judie Barrie said. Her mom was staying at his hotel, she said, and her father overheard her complaining she never got any letters in her mailbox. "So he started stuffing in junk mail, and one day she saw him laughing" when she was taking it out, Judie Barrie said. Her roommate - actor Stacy Keach's mother, Mary - said he still looked like good husband material, Judie Barrie said. "He's amazing," fellow Fox's regular, Dorothy Kolts said Thursday. "He's very old-world in his manners. Hard as it is for him to walk, he still stands back, and opens doors - and he has a great sense of humor." Her dad has a fund of stories, Judie said, but there's always something new. On Thursday, it was a story she'd never heard about him and some teenage buddies driving back from swimming in the lake, racing a streetcar in their Ford. "We tried to beat it," he said. They didn't make it, although no one got hurt. "There were 15 of us in that Ford," he recalled, laughing. "The street was full of guys in their bathing suits, lying in the street." And it wasn't until 20 years ago, she said, that he mentioned his World War II work in the Navy, intercepting and decoding messages in the Pacific Theater. "Well, they told us to keep quiet," he joked. 626-578-6300, ext. 4482 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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