Alvin Rosensweet, one of the best of the Post-Gazette's staff writers for 37 years, died Tuesday at age 99. We reprint in truncated version his column that appeared in the newspaper on his 90th birthday.

I was born on the dining room table of my parents' house in Dayton, Ohio, on Oct. 14, 1910, so it isn't hard to figure out that I'm 90 years old today.

Women of modest means didn't go to a hospital in that era to deliver a baby. But family doctors made house calls using a horse and wagon for transportation in the middle of the night.

Attaining the age of 90 is no great shakes in my family. My oldest brother died at 97, another brother died at 93, and my sister died at 97. My one surviving brother is 97, swims five lengths a day at his Scottsdale, Ariz., condominium and this year observed his 73rd wedding anniversary with his 94-year-old wife.

When I was born, the iceman delivered 50 or 100 pounds of ice every few days. The milkman actually delivered milk to our front door. The milk and half-pints of coffee cream were contained in glass bottles.

Our house was illuminated by gas mantels and kept warm by a coal stove in the kitchen, although some years later we had electricity and a coal-burning furnace in the basement.

We did our food shopping at a corner grocery where the owner waited on us personally and scooted up and down a ladder on wheels to get items from the top shelves. My mother did the laundry on a washboard, made some of the clothes for her five children, and on Fridays scrubbed the kitchen floor and covered the floor with newspapers until it was dry. Newspapers sold for two cents.

Gaslights lit by men who came around early each evening lit up our street. We paid a nickel for a streetcar to get to our destination. We didn't own a car until I was 14 years old. Boys like me wore black cotton stockings that turned green after a couple of washings. Fire engines were pulled by horses.

My earliest memory was of the time when my father took me to a high elevation to watch the big 1913 flood, with dead horses and household goods floating down a street now flooded with rushing water. I remember, too, when my grandmother took me Downtown on Nov. 11, 1918, to take part in the celebration of the Armistice that ended World War I.

As I grew older we listened to crystal sets, which were the forerunner of the radio. Television, of course, was unknown. Vacations were spent mostly with relatives. Going to school, my streetcar passed the bicycle shop owned by the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, who invented the airplane.

A friend of mine once commented to an older man, "The trouble with you is that you have a Depression mentality." I think I do, too. It is hard for me to comprehend that a cleaning woman makes more in one hour than I did for a six- or seven-day week after I had graduated from Ohio State University during the height of the Depression. I recently bought an ice cream cone for $1.95; they were a nickel when I was growing up.

Most of my four years at Ohio State, I hitchhiked from Dayton to Columbus to attend college in order to save the price of a train ride. It was safe then. Who would hitchhike today? Lakeside Park, the Kennywood of Dayton, held a 3-cent day. I usually went to it with a couple of my young friends. Once I rode the roller coaster nine times. Total cost: 27 cents.

There are advantages and disadvantages to becoming a senior citizen .

We have Social Security and Medicare and low-cost prescription programs. At certain hours, we can ride a Port Authority bus for free. Some stores provide senior citizens days with special discounts for people 65 years of age or older.

But there are booby traps, too.

Things happen to your body that never happened in your younger days. Your vision fails and you can stagger without having a drink. Your friends are beset by Alzheimer's, loss of memory, knee and hip replacements, loss of hearing, aneurysms of the heart and brain, leg cramps and other ailments major and minor, but mostly major. Many of my friends are on canes and walkers or in wheelchairs. Many live in nursing homes or in assisted-living facilities.

When the doctor announces that your wife has ovarian cancer you are plunged into depression which ends, but only partially, when he announces that she no longer requires chemotherapy after undergoing 12 treatments.

For the most part, it has been a long and good ride, but with some rough times included. At 90, one can only look forward, not backward, possibly another 10 years, more or less. But having survived two World Wars, a Depression, Korea, Vietnam and other bloody moments in history, optimism has to prevail in order to watch 2010 gaining on you.

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