Last Sunday found me at Cavu Cafe, the finest breakfast joint north of Saratoga’s Triangle Diner (which I consider the finest b’fast joint south of Cavu).

I was with three of my favorite people — Chuck Jessie and Clark Cummings.

We have some interesting semi-connections. I say “semi” because while there are connections, they’re neither clear-cut nor intimate.

We were all in the Navy, but at different times, in different ratings, and on different paths. They were Seal Team Six, E-9 lifers; I was a slick-sleeve E-5 Morse code operator with a 39-month “career.” They had sea duty; I never even saw a Navy ship (and good thing, since I get violently seasick).

But those are minor considerations, since we always find things to talk about. And, blessedly, none of those things are politics and religion.

We were merrily chatting away — about old-time Saranac Lake (Chuck and me); about various Seal Team stuff (Clark and Chuck); and about various people who ignored instruments and instead went by their own intuition … with disastrous results (all of us).

I took a sip of my ice water and saw Clark staring at me.

“Hey,” he said, “I’ve got a question for you.”

Lord spare me, I thought.

The thing with Clark and his questions is he always wants a serious answer, but all too often NO answer can be given.

“Go ahead,” I said, mentally girding my loins.

“How can a guy like you, who pays such close attention to his health, drink ice water before he eats?”

“Huh?” I said.

“Ice water,” he said, pointing at my glass. “Why are you drinking it, and of all times, why are you drinking it now?”

“Well,” I said, taking a huge sip, “for one thing, I like to drink ice water. And for another, I DON’T like to drink water that’s the same temp as body fluids.”

He shook his head, clearly disappointed at my obtuseness.

“OK, Clark,” I said. “WHY shouldn’t I drink ice water?”

“Digestion,” he said.

“Digestion?” I said. “Like one word says it all?”

He sighed heavily, my obvious ignorance wearing on him. Then he launched into an extensive (and to me dubious) explanation. Ice water — at least according to Clark — does something or other to your stomach that buggers up your digestion.

“Sounds perfectly logical to me,” I said, not meaning a word of it.

Then I let it go. After all, this was not my first — or even my thousandth — exposure to gastro-intestinal esoterica.

Stranger in a strange land, I spent the last two-and-a-half years of my Navy hitch in Germany. While it was comfortable duty, it was also isolated, in that I had no idea of the changes taking place back home. And the changes — they done took place!

In the time I was overseas so much had changed that when I got discharged and came home, I had no idea what I was looking at. Boys added pony tails; girls subtracted bras. The draft was over, and so was the revolution. There were communes, gurus, yoga instructors and tarot readers. The Lizard King said West is best, and there had been a young person exodus to John Denver and Janis Joplin country. Interest in crafts resurged, as evidenced by tie-dyed every damned thing, to huge and hideous macrame plant hangers.

Beyond that, there was a keen focus on improving one’s health, especially through diet. Former hardcore carnivores became vegetarians; former junk food junkies became macrobiotics. And completely spaceshot souls became Breatharians. One of the leaders of this Alternative Ailementary Army was a man named JJ Rodale.

Rodale was a self-proclaimed health expert who published and edited the food faddist’s bible — Prevention magazine. In its pages, he made a lot of good points, such as trying to avoid pesticide-grown food, avoiding refined sugar and processed flour, cutting out junk foods, and a bunch of other things that made perfect sense.

But he also made claims that ranged from the mildly bizarre to the downright lunatic. For example, he said sugar created criminals, pneumonia and bronchitis were caused by eating bread, and cola drinks, he said, caused sterility. And, finally, that happy people didn’t get cancer.

While I got swept up in the tsunami of alternative lifestyles and read all the literature (including Prevention, for a while), I never became so obsessed that I tried to sharpen my razor blades with a pyramid or tore off to India with a pack of starry-eyed Rajneeshees. But I did change my diet — I gave up meat, cut back on refined sugar and increased my consumption of fresh fruit and veggies. In an attempt to become mellow, or something, I actually quit drinking coffee. Thankfully, my senses returned after one very long week, as did my javaholism.

So the fact is by the time Brother Clark laid his Ice Water Dictum on me, I’d had a half-century of reading, hearing, and sometimes following every kind of health advice known to man. Thus I believe I’ve a pretty good ability to evaluate new information from The Great World of Alternatives. And when I heard Clark’s shtick, my first reaction was it was doo-doo.

It was also my second reaction, but I didn’t just leave it at that. Instead, I went to the Electronic Library of Alexandria — the internet — and looked up as many references as I could find. There were a bunch. Almost all of them came from sites with names like astralcuisine.com, happyhealth.org, immortality.com, and they all said that not only does drinking ice water screw up your digestion, but a bunch of other things as well.

Reputable medical sites all agreed there was no scientific evidence that ice water did anything harmful, and in fact it appears to aid in rehydration after serious exercise.

So I sided with thems what favor science over anecdote and will continue to merrily slurp my ice water before I eat, when I eat and after I eat too.

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Dead TV

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By the way, when I think of JJ Rodale, one thing sticks out above all others.

He was a creature of certainty and loved to say he knew he’d live to be 100. I found that type of smugness as repulsive as the people who, with smarmy smiles plastered across their mugs, delight in telling everyone they know they’ll go to heaven.

Anyhow, while JJ’s life fell short of his prediction, he shuffled off this mortal coil in spectacular fashion. He was on the Dick Cavett show, had just laid his standard raps on Cavett about how he’d “never felt better in his life,” “I’m in such good health that I fell down a long flight of stairs yesterday and laughed all the way,” and of course “I’ve decided to live to be a hundred.”

And then, as Cavett turned to another guest, JJ appeared to fall asleep. But as we all know, appearances can be deceiving. And they sure were in this case, because Rodale had had a heart attack and died, then and there. The segment was cut from the show, of course, but once the word of how he died got out, it became a legend.

Most people I heard talk about it, spun it as a spectacular failure on JJ’s behalf — that one minute he’s boasting about becoming a centenarian … and the next he’s dead. And dead, 28 years short of his goal.

But I don’t look at it like that at all. To me, he was a resounding success.

After all, he died quickly, happily, almost painlessly. And, maybe best of all, he never knew he DIDN’T hit the century mark.