CENTER - How great to be alive on a May morning when trees are bursting green and blooming chokecherries sweeten the air.

Four guys - a fifth unable to show this year - with nothing more in common than that they were born that day had birthday cake in Center Tuesday.

The oldest, Art Benjamin, turned 95. The youngest, Rich Schmidt, turned 36.

The two middle guys - Gordy Miller turned 63, and Wyman Scheetz turned 62.

They're all from the Stanton and Center area, and besides being born May 16, they're casual acquaintances at best.

If Louis Moorman, who turned 61, had made it, they would have been 317 years old all together at the table.

For three years now, they've taken the time and opportunity to acknowledge their accidental occasion. Life is short, after all.

At the Center cafe Der Imbiss, they're the only customers, after two others, enjoying a late leisurely breakfast, depart.

They chit chat about manly stuff, rib each other a bit and eat the pretty vanilla and chocolate cake Schmidt's wife baked and frosted for the occasion.

It was kind of a guy thing.

Women would have dressed up more and brought each other small gifts of lotion, or perhaps a small potted plant from the greenhouse, fussed and laughed a lot.

But for guys, it's just enough to take a few minutes to talk about jobs, life in general and retirement, which in Benjamin's case has stretched on for 33 years now, most of Schmidt's lifetime.

Benjamin is mostly blind and still lives by himself on the farm north of Hannover. He's lived longer than any of his relatives. He doesn't know why, unless its moderation in alcohol and never having smoked cigarettes.

When talk turns to a mutual acquaintance that's in his 60s, Benjamin wants to know who the man's father would have been.

The men relate to three, or four different generations, and from Benjamin's perspective, the rest are all pretty darned young.

Still, it was a mutual birthday morning, and it was better for having spent an hour of it together. They'd go home or back to work after the gathering, glad that Miller called them all together one more year.

Scheetz, who has an insurance office in Center, planned to do some fishing and await his country neighbors who would arrive for more birthday cake in the evening.

He told the story of the same group having stopped at another neighbor's for birthday cake awhile back. The neighbor was gone, so they had cake anyway and left the dishes as a calling card.

Schmidt was headed back to his work as the Oliver County extension agent. Miller would drop Benjamin off at the farm en route to Stanton, where he planned to crank up the lawn mower in the afternoon.

Wherever they would be, the air would be fragrant and soft, like only the air on a May day can be.

"This is cool," Scheetz said. "I said a few days ago that (Miller) would call soon, and we'd have cake."

After all, life is short, but it can be sweet.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 1-888-303-5511, or lauren@;westriv.com.)