If you folks around Whistler, Ala., should happen by a coffin-shaped hole in the side of a hill, tell old Professor Enoch Caverhill to come out for a spell; I’d like to talk to him.

Enoch would be around 175 years old now, which means his time is about up. His biblical namesake, in the seventh generation from Adam and Eve, lived to be 365 before he was taken from the land of the living, but I doubt that this Enoch slept underground, though he might well have lived outdoors.

Back in January 1912, Mr. Caverhill figured a person could match the biblical Enoch’s longevity by following the Caverhill guidelines for living.

I learned about Enoch Caverhill from reading an item lifted from a Mobile newspaper of Jan. 21, 1912. It read:

“In a hole burrowed under the side of a hill, resembling in shape a huge coffin, Enoch Caverhill, 75 years old, scientist and nature lover, lives on the outskirts of Whistler. He claims to have discovered the way man’s lifetime can be lengthened to 150 years. He sees no reason why a person should not live to be even 175 years old if they follow his direction.”

If you’re wondering where the outskirts of Whistler are, try wandering around the city of Prichard, a suburb of Mobile that has been enduring economic hard times for a couple of decades now. During the 1950s, Prichard, then a middle-class city, annexed Whistler. The old name has survived until today, as I hope Professor Caverhill has.

Whistler was an unincorporated community that grew up around the shops of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. It was named after a railroad construction engineer, George Washington Whistler, a West Point graduate and father of a man named James McNeill Whistler. James did a portrait of his mother, George Whistler’s wife, and called it “Arrangement in Grey and Black.” Since it was the son, rather than the father, who painted the portrait, it became better known as “Whistler’s Mother,” and not “Whistler’s Wife.” As a consolation prize, the father got the town named after him.

But I’ve wandered far off the path to Enoch Caverhill’s underground sleeping quarters and his quest for longevity.

The professor’s research led to these recommendations for long life:

•Live out of doors, near nature.

•Sleep underground.

•Get plenty of exercise.

•Eat moderately, and do not drink to excess.

Fast-forward to 2012 and you’ve got to figure that the person most likely to live to 150 or 175 would be a New York City panhandler who spends his days in Central Park dining off popcorn and peanuts tossed to the pigeons, who chases down joggers in quest of handouts to buy small bottles of cheap vodka, and who sleeps in the subway.

But I can’t imagine Enoch Caverhill abandoning the balmy shores of Mobile Bay in favor of the frostbitten environs of New York City. Surely, he has found a way to extend his life south of the frost line,which follows the course of I-20 from Florence, S.C.to Vicksburg, Miss.

Since I moved, nearly a decade ago, from the balmy Gulf Coast to the frostbitten foothills of the Appalachians, I have been wondering how to extend my life span, which has already exceeded my allotted threescore and 10.

I already eat moderately, in deference to my type 2 diabetes, drink no vodka, and get plenty of exercise pounding the keyboard of my desktop computer.

But I do not sleep outdoors. When I was younger, I enjoyed camping in the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains that frame it. When I was courting the widow Peggy Conner Bates, she told me she had gone camping when she was seven months pregnant. That sounded idyllic to me, but when I invited her to go camping with me after the honeymoon, she demurred: “I didn’t say I liked it,” she said. And she wasn’t even pregnant.

So I’ve been spending my vacations in places with indoor pools and outdoor decks. I doubt that these digs are what Professor Caverhill had in mind when he specified living outdoors.

Even when I was camping, I avoided sleeping underground. My kids loved to visit a wild cave in the Alleghenies, but we always emerged to sleep in a tent, lest the bats in the cave sprinkle us with their nocturnal droppings.

So here I am, approaching my 75th birthday and wondering how I can extend my life span another 75 or 100 years.

My back yard currently ends in a steep bank that drops into my neighbor’s yard. It’s too steep for a lawn mower and too much for a weed-eater. I offered to deed it to my neighbor, but he won’t accept my generosity.

I’ve been thinking of digging a cave into the bank big enough for a queen-sized bed and a 52-inch TV. AT&T U-Verse should have no problem running cables into it, and I imagine you could run heating and air-conditioning ducts through the ground to keep the place comfortable. After all, the earth makes good insulation.

But Miss Peggy refuses to go along.

“I like sleeping on the green side of the grass,” she told me. “And besides, I don’t want to know what you’d look like when you turned 175.”

But Honey, think of the savings on funeral expenses. Just say “good night,” remove the TV, and bolt the door on the way out.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 104 Belspring Lane, Anderson SC 29621 or email him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.