For Frantz: No computer, no cell phone, no stress

By John Katsilometes

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 | 11:53 a.m.

Frantz Schumacher is a retiring sort. That’s what he was doing this morning -- re-tiring, buying a new set of tires at Discount Tire on Windmill Parkway.

It’s an old joke, but hey, Frantz has probably been laughing at it since he was a kid. In the 1930s.

Frantz is my new hero. He doesn’t own a computer. He doesn’t own a cell phone. For his news, he reads the morning paper. He drinks a light beer each afternoon. He walks about a mile and a half every day. He plays golf at Desert Rose Municipal Golf Course, which charges seniors $9 to walk the course. He plays nine holes, because to play 18 “makes me really tired.”

Frantz is 82 years old. He looks no older than 60. He was ahead of me in line as I checked in to have the tires on my car spin-balanced, rotated and coated with a delicious glaze. We both sat down, and I stretched a power cord across the showroom floor and plugged into an outlet tucked behind a set of Michelin radials.

Frantz looked at the cord and said, “What are you doing," because it looked like I was about to detonate an explosive through the wall separating the showroom from the Discount Tire work bays. So we started talking, Frantz and I, and he told me he doesn’t own a computer. “I have no need!” he said. Frantz is Austrian, and though he’s lived in the U.S. for 55 years, the past 14 in Las Vegas, still has a thick German accent. “My wife and I speak German around the house, that is why,” he says. The couple own three phones at their house but have no contact with each other when Frantz is out running errands, like today’s tire run.

I asked Frantz if any of his friends -- his walking or golfing buddies -- owned computers.

“I have no idea!” he said. I showed him my MacBook Pro, on which I displayed the photo I’d just taken of him reading the Las Vegas Sun (OK, it was sort of staged). He smiled … then went back to the paper.

When the service guy returned his Oldsmobile Intrigue with a fresh set of rubber, Frantz said, “This is good. I’m driving to L.A. next month (he turns 83 on Aug. 14) to see my wife’s family. Lucea and I didn’t get married until I’m 48! I was a single guy forever. Now, I have all this family.”

As he left, we shook hands, and he said, “When I tell this to my wife, she won’t believe me.”

That makes two of us. Hit ’em straight, Frantz.