At 70, Walter Carpenter juggles two physically taxing jobs. In the winter, he works at a ski resort restaurant in Vermont, lugging heavy loads. In the summer, he is an attendant at a state park with a swimming beach, a job that has him trudging through sand and heat. Both are tough on his arthritic knees, which he has put off replacing.
His bills won’t let him retire anytime soon, even as working becomes increasingly difficult for him. Carpenter knows that if he pushes himself too hard, the results “could be disastrous or fatal,” he said. He worries: “Will my body hold up? Will my heart hold up?”
