Paul Vickers (“Vick”) Ridley-Tree was born in Spokane, Washington, on September 15, 1940. He is the son of the aircraft spare parts entrepreneur Paul Herbert Ridley-Tree and the professional actress and concert violinist Roberta Liming Ridley. Vickers came to California when he was just eighteen months of age. He was raised in Southern California and in and near Mexico City.
It was also his job to get up very early every morning, fetch the family’s goat, milk her, turn her loose in the goat pen, and then go to school. He also saw and at times took part in the amazing and one-of-a-kind way in which his father started and built his business.
After graduating from Rexford College Preparatory School in June of 1959, Vickers went on to earn a BA at UCLA and an MA at San Francisco State University in anthropology.
His master’s degree thesis is a modern-day ethnography about the Colla tribe of Bolivia and a commentary on Central Andean rural community development. It is based on his work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia in the mid-1960s.
Vickers has been a real estate investor since 1970. This has involved restoring old Victorian and Edwardian houses in San Francisco, California and in Davenport, Iowa. He also milled lumber for and built a house on his forest land in Big Basin, Santa Cruz County, California. He now spends most of his time in San Francisco and in Big Basin. He is the father of three great daughters and three lovely grandchildren.
My doctors have told me that I am a wonder–a miracle. I am the only patient they have that at my age (eighty-four years) is so healthy and active. Most folks guess my age to be between sixty and sixty-five years. Many people have asked me what my ways are for achieving this milestone. What follows is the list of those ways.
1. Just about everyone tells me that avoiding stress is the hardest thing to do, but I have little or no stress. I have quit everything that I have ever tried that was stressful for me, and I have gone on to aught which is more pleasant and peaceful.
2. Get about eight hours of sleep every night.
3. Have a good–a positive–outlook or attitude on life. Having a bad or negative outlook can have a bad effect on one’s health.
4. For the sake of good and whole nutrition, eat whole and natural foods, and stick to unrefined or to minimally refined foods. Just eat everything in moderation, and do not overeat. In the case of grains, this means whole grains and whole grain flour. Once, when I was four or five years of age, my mother asked me: “Would you like white bread or brown bread, Vicky?” I then asked her: “Which is better for me, mommy?” “Brown bread is better for you”, she answered. I thereupon told her: “I like white bread better, but if brown bread is better for me, I’ll have the brown bread, mommy.” I have been like that ever since.
5. Eat many fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
6. Eat some red meat, but mostly stick to fish, shellfish, fowl, and eggs.
7. Drink milk and eat milch products such as cheese, yoghurt, kefir, and butter.
8. Use no sweetener, or use it sparingly. If you use a sweetener, use molasses or a whole sweetener like honey
or like sugar cane syrup or sugar beet syrup. The syrup has the vitamin-and-mineral containing molasses in it.
9. Get some physical exercise every day. If you do not get it as part of your work or play, then get it by walking, or jogging, or doing gymnastic exercises.
10. Keep your mind active.
11. Do not smoke.
12. Do not indulge in harmful recreational drugs.
13. If you drink alcohol, only do it socially, and limit yourself to one or two drinks at a time. (That should hopefully be enough to loosen you up enough to be a good dancer!) Drinking in order to cover up one’s woes–one’s woebegone feelings–can lead to bodily damage and even to death by body organ failure. (When my maternal grandparents went to social functions, if alcohol was served, they would carry their drinking glasses around, unemptied.)
14. You can boost your happiness by making a habit of looking forward every day to doing something special. This could be aught such as having a cup of tea (or two, or three…!) every day at tea time (four o’ clock in the afternoon). You could also look forward to eating a special meal, maybe once a week. This meal might bring back happy memories by being a kind of food that your parents or your grandparents fed to you, when you were a child. It could hopefully take the place of harmful habits like alcohol abuse.
15. It may be that one’s gene alleles influence the propensity for a longer or a shorter life, but this propensity can be helped or hindered by a healthy or an unhealthy lifestyle. One’s lifestyle and one’s genes (or, to use the common expression: one’s blood) may also influence one’s physiology, and also whether or not one looks to be younger or older than he or she is.
16. As for psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs: some people use them recreationally, and so be it, but doing so makes one not fully aware of the surroundings and of what is going on–of what is happening. With reason, this mental state is called being “spaced out”, and psychologists call it being “depersonalized”. As for me, I prefer to be fully aware. As an example: when the occasion arises, I want to be fully aware of what I am a-doing to her, and of what she is a-doing to me!
The lifestyle guide given above is working for me. Your nutritional needs may be different, due to your medical condition or to your genetic inheritance. There are no guarantees, and every one is different. I can still hike up and down the mountains, and I can still high-step across the dance floor with pretty women. Ah, the good life! Or as it is often said in Italian: “La dolce vita!” I wish, dear reader, a long, healthy, agile, and active life for thee–for you.
Vick Ridley-Tree
February 17, 2025
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