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Saturday, March 10, 2012 – Daily News 7A Glory Days & maturity MCT photo Bartender Fernando Gomez, right, and servers Jose Fragoso and Bernard Inchauspe, left. LOS ANGELES (MCT) — With its dim warren of din- ing rooms and hearty menu of ratatouille, filet mignon and duck, Taix feels more Old World than Echo Park. The tables are stretched with white linen, and the soup is served family style, from a big bowl with a ladle. In the main dining room with its gold-plated mirrors, Edith Piaf songs are hummed by a debonair waiter. That's Bernard Inchauspe, a 77-year-old Basque Country emigre with a velvety accent who for half a century has greeted diners with: "Hello, lovely people!" Inchauspe is one of three men who are this year cele- brating 50 years of employment at Taix, the storied restau- rant on Sunset Boulevard that was built to look like a French country villa. The others are Jose Fragoso, who works private ban- quets, and Fernando Gomez, the bespectacled bartender who will pour you your favorite drink before you've even had a chance to order. All three are serious about service, with an attention to detail that can at times seem almost somber. But they love the job, which Inchauspe says brings him both pride and pleasure. He and the others work a little less these days than they once did, but none has plans to retire. Something about Taix keeps both waiters and patrons coming back. Steve Cooley has been dining there since he was a boy. He and his family lived in nearby Silver Lake, and the restaurant was where they marked birthdays and other spe- cial occasions. In 1964, at age 16, he won a Lion's Club speech contest there with a talk titled "Maturity — Its Priv- ileges and Responsibilities." Cooley, who grew up to become the Los Angeles Coun- ty district attorney, is now 64. Some years he returns to judge the annual speech contest — still held at Taix. Weekdays at lunch, you might spot him there, or maybe Police Chief Charlie Beck, or Sheriff Lee Baca. The restau- rant has long been popular with the law-and-order crowd, as well as employees from City Hall and clergy from the Catholic diocese downtown. Nobody comes to eat light — not when there's lamb shank, frog legs and French onion soup to be had. If diners want to be seen, they head to the lively main room, where the booths are ample and chandeliers hang from the ornate, pressed tin ceilings. Waiters in white shirts and black bow ties waltz from table to table, starting off each meal with the careful presentation of fresh bread and a platter of chopped vegetables. Every now and then the cast of waiters brings out a cup of mousse with a candle and gives a booming rendition of "Happy Birthday." Inchauspe has been doing this since Sam Yorty was mayor. He started at Taix in 1962 about a month after he and his wife arrived in California from France. They had planned to work on a relative's farm outside Los Angeles, but both thirsted for something more urbane. He learned to speak English on the job, sometimes in exchange for French lessons for patrons. (The restaurant's name, for the record, is pronounced like "tex" as opposed to "tay.") Inchauspe also likes to dish out compliments. Women of all ages may be targeted. And those unable to finish their meals can expect a light-hearted scolding. When, over the years, competing restaurateurs quietly offered jobs elsewhere, he always declined. Taix is his sec- ond home, he says. And its staff and customers are his sec- ond family. By that logic, longtime regular Hayward "Kelly" Fong, 87, would be something like a brother. For years, when Fong and his wife, Dorothy, came to Taix for a romantic dinner, they always requested Bernard. "How is my beautiful?" the waiter would welcome Dorothy. "And how is everything?" he'd ask Kelly. "Everything's fine," Kelly would joke. "Except for the service." On other nights, when the Fongs had a Shrine Club meeting or another banquet to attend, they would dine in one of the restaurant's private rooms. That was where they got to know Fragoso, the 70-year-old Mexican-born ban- quet server who helps put on 2,000 private events at Taix each year. He always remembered Dorothy's unusual drink request: 7-Up and a splash of orange juice. He would top it with a cherry. Dorothy is ill now, and homebound. So these days Kelly mostly goes to Taix alone. When he sits down at the bar, there is always a tall vodka soda with a lemon twist waiting. Gomez, the bartender, has a special ability to remember what customers like. "I don't ask," explains Gomez, who came here from Argentina at age 23. "I know." GRAND OPENING 60 minute with massage $25~$55 per hour Elite Skin Care & Spa Facials~ Waxing~and more Eyebrows $5 Gift Certificates Available Owners, Mike & Trisa Waelty 741 Main St., Suite #14 526-8713 MINNEAPOLIS (MCT) — Dick Anderson reached the pinnacle of his rock-climbing endeav- ors — literally as well as figuratively — 10 years ago when, after 3{ exhausting days of cling- ing to the side of a sheer cliff, he reached the top of El Capitan, a majestic granite monolith in Yosemite Park that rises nearly three-fourths of a mile straight up. Shortly after finishing that climb, Anderson, then 52, dislocated his right shoulder. Two years later, while trying to come back from surgery on that shoulder, he blew out the left one. The Minneapolis man's climbing days were over, and the prospect of being relegated to an overstuffed chair in front of a TV pained him as much as his injured shoul- ders. "I found that I needed to be active to feel com- plete as a person," he said. But he also found that being active on the other side of 50 often involves embracing new approach- es and techniques. And if you're a lifelong athlete, it can mean coming to grips with the fact that you're not going to be able to run as fast, hit a golf ball as far or climb rock walls the way you once did. Main- taining fitness as we age takes extra diligence, including more emphasis on stretching, monitoring hydration, focusing on form and strengthening core muscles. Yes, these are the same things we were told to do in our 20s and 30s, but now the trainers really mean it. A 50-year-old body isn't nearly as forgiving about us ignoring these things as a 20-something body. Anderson decided to appreciate what he still could do rather than mourn the loss of what he couldn't. "I'm so thrilled to be able to do what I'm doing at my age that I just let (the disappointment) go," he said. "For some reason, my shoulders are OK with the motion for cross- country skiing and kayak- ing, so I do a lot of that." Keeping physically fit as we age isn't a pipe dream. A study conducted at the University of Pitts- burgh Medical Center and published in January in the professional journal Physician and Sportsmed- icine found that loss of muscle mass isn't an inevitable byproduct of aging. "This study contra- dicts the common obser- vation that muscle mass and strength decline as a function of aging alone," it says, putting the blame on inactivity. But just keeping active isn't enough either, experts say. The key is keeping active in ways that help your body han- dle the activity. Mia Bre- mer, fitness manager at the retirement community MCT photo Like many people growing older, Jill Lile, left, Dick Anderson and Rick Goullaud have found they need to limit or change some of their athletic activities. However, the three remain active. Friendship Village of Bloomington, Minn., has seen this from both per- spectives. "We have clients in their 70s who wouldn't be having (physical) prob- lems now" if they had done what they were sup- posed to when they were in their 50s, she said. And at the same time, "We have clients in their 80s who did it right and are in excellent shape." Jill Lile was teaching dance at Creighton Uni- versity when she was sidelined by a toe injury that often afflicts ballet dancers. She not only was forced to redefine her dancing — "I started perfecting my flat-foot technique," she said — but she segued into a new career as a chiropractor. "I could see the writ- ing on the wall" as far as dancing, said Lile, 54. "I wanted to keep exercis- ing because I like the way I feel when I exer- cise. I like the benefits of exercising, and I wasn't ready to pack it up. I realized that there was so much else available. There's yoga and Pilates and Zumba." There's even still dance, including teach- ing classes at Minnesota Dance Theatre. It's just not at the same intensity. "After I got surgery on my foot, I tried to work with it the best I could," she said. "I can do ballet flat-footed. I just can't do it all the way. I've modi- fied it as best I could. I can still get out and move to the music." Lile combines her injury experience with her technical knowledge as a chiropractor, although not all of her clients at the Hippocrates Center for Holistic Heal- ing in Minneapolis like Rent Special $ March Madness fir500 OFF st month rent! 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If you injure, say, a knee, use the other knee to estab- lish "a baseline physio- logical status," he said, and don't return to action until the injured joint has the same strength and range of motion as the healthy one. Otherwise, "you're an injury waiting to happen," he warned. Rick Goullaud knows how hard it can be force yourself to abstain. When he broke his foot in October, the pain was worsened by the disap- pointment of it happen- ing the weekend before he was going to compete in a triathlon for which he'd spent months train- ing. "It was hard to stop training when you'd been looking forward to some- thing that long," said Goullaud, 67, of Ply- mouth, Mich. "There were 10 of us who train together who were going to Las Vegas for the Monster Dash triathlon. We work pretty hard when we train, so it was disappointing. But I'm back at it now. I train at least five days a week, sometimes seven." The triathlon's format forces him to cross-train, rotating among biking, swimming and running. Experts say that mixing activities is a key to exer- cising as we age. One of the main causes of repet- itive stress injuries — as the name indicates — is repetition. "Keep your body guessing," said Sarah Hankel, a personal train- er at the Lifetime Fitness club in St. Louis Park, Minn. "Stop running every day and bike some days. Or swim. Take yoga. There are lots of alternatives. Injuries tend to occur when monotony sets in." The important thing, everyone agreed, is to not give up. "There's no age limit" at which a body quits responding to exercise, Richards said. "When it comes to a wide range of health issues, exercise is the magic bullet. It's that powerful with respect to its benefits. If exercise were a pill, everyone would take it." 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