MCCOOK, NEB. ? Some people become apathetic to the ways of the world as they get older.

Not 99-year-old Esther Wissbaum, of McCook.

Wissbaum keeps busy on her 1977 manual Smith Corona typewriter, pounding out letters to newspapers about a variety of issues, such as the decline of common courtesy (“What’s wrong with saying ‘You’re welcome?’ Nowadays people say ‘No problem.’ What does that mean, exactly?”) to legalizing industrial hemp.

Wissbaums’s last letter about hemp prompted Gov. Dave Heineman, who disagreed with her stance, to write her back.

“I was so mad, I threw the letter away,” Wissbaum said. “He didn’t approve of marijuana being grown — I don’t either — but hemp is different than marijuana, with very little THC in it. Maybe he didn’t understand what I was saying. Hemp would be a great crop for our farmers to grow, don’t you think?”

Nowadays, she lives at Hillcrest Nursing Home and not much gets past this feisty senior. Despite her prolific letter writing, she still has no interest in a computer.

“Where would I put one?” Wissbaum asked, motioning her hand toward the side of her room, already filled with a desk and her trusty typewriter, along with a lamp, magazines and books, a stack of recycled paper to type on and a beefcake calendar.

The calendar is a favorite of Wissbaum’s and her third one. Featuring swimsuit-clad hunks, she received the first calendar as gift and had trouble finding a new one the following year.

So she typed a polite letter to the company, explaining the difficulty and promptly received a couple of free copies. They sent her free copies again this year.

Although she may not be interested in the Internet, there are still some gadgets she’s eternally grateful for, such as toilets and electricity.

She still remembers in the wintertime, sitting on her hands on the outhouse because it was so cold, along with pumping water and heating it up. “I appreciate water from the tap … turning a light on, flushing a toilet,” Wissbaum said, recalling when sewer lines were first set in the alley behind her house.

Through the years, Wissbaum’s wit and curiosity have kept pace with the passing decades and she doesn’t miss much. Just recently, another letter was published in the Gazette, this one about frugal spending at Christmas.

So what’s her secret to staying young?

“You’re never too old to learn,” she quipped.