Everybody who meets 104-year-old Yardley Chittick wants to know his secrets to long life.

Well, let's think about this for a minute. Chittick is the oldest living patent attorney in the country. He received his law degree before the invention of shopping carts, ballpoint pens, hairspray and M&Ms. If there were a secret formula for longevity, don't you think Chittick would have had it patented it by now?

The fact is, Chittick simply doesn't know how he's managed to slip past the century mark and earn the distinction for which he received an honorary degree from Franklin Pierce Law Center yesterday. "I'm afraid I don't have much of an explanation," the nattily dressed centenarian-and-then-some admitted in an interview at the Pleasant View Retirement Community in Concord, where he lives.

He does, however, have a few theories. "I was a runner from my very beginning," Chittick said, recalling the "Italian boys" who hung out on a corner he had to pass on his way to grade school in Newark, N.J. "I was always afraid of those boys, so I ran to school," he said. "When I got to high school, I kept on running."

An outstanding athlete in his younger days, Chittick still swings a golf club with ease and participates in Pleasant View's exercise classes. He's never smoked, and he's always drunk in moderation. "I have a screwdriver every night," he said. "It's a pleasant drink, which I enjoy - but I never get drunk."

Nearing 105, Chittick still has drive, too. "Get up, Chittick," he barks as he pushes himself out of his recliner. And as he tells stories, he fishes hard for names and facts, relenting on himself only when he gets them just right.

Chittick attributes his tenacity to his father, who steered the family through hard financial times and constantly kept his brain engaged, citing all manner of facts and statistics at the dinner table each night.

Blessed with his father's sharp mind, Chittick attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering.

At Phillips Academy, Chittick roomed across the hall from a flippant, flirtatious young man named Humphrey Bogart. "He didn't like me, and I didn't like him," Chittick recalls.

In fact, "oldest living patent attorney" isn't Chittick's only unusual distinction. In a new Bo-gart biography, Bogart is said to have called Chittick a nerd (though Chittick claims the author manufactured a lot of his "facts" and can prove he got game scores wrong by referencing his yearbook).

After graduating from MIT, Chittick interviewed with Thomas Edison and took a grueling 18-page test designed to test his command of facts and his curiosity. Chittick recently became curious about the test and had a local librarian contact the Thomas Edison museum. A librarian there found the actual test Chittick took, filled out in his handwriting and scrawled with a note from Edison himself. Chittick was quizzed on everything from the Roman Empire to poker strategy to crop rotation - and did so well Edison offered him a job.

Chittick politely turned him down in favor of a job with a golf club manufacturer - a career move he doesn't regret. At the golf club company, Chittick helped the plant workers secure patents for improvements they made to the clubs, working with a patent lawyer in New York. When the Depression hit, Chittick despairingly watched all the layoffs and began to think about that patent lawyer, working for himself and untouched by the threat of layoffs.

"I decided I'd like to work for myself," Chittick said.

Chittick visited the patent lawyer to learn about his profession. Then, with the help of a wealthy uncle, he went back to school. He passed the patent bar in 1934 and accepted a position with the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., earning $1,900 a year. Later he opened his own practice in Boston. He and his wife moved to Wakefield (just east of Wolfeboro) to retire in 1975, but he continued to practice law for another decade.

Chittick estimates he helped about 100 inventors secure patents during his career. He remembers one notable invention, a whistling signal used in oil tanks, which enabled oil deliverymen to double the amount of fuel they could deliver in a day. "It was very successful. They're still used today," Chittick said.

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