Man of the Century : In his 112 years, Chris Mortensen has seen a lot of change. But only one thing really : interests him: Cigars.

It’s a sunny Thursday afternoon when an aide wheels Chris Mortensen into the sitting room of his Northern California retirement home. As soon as the wheelchair comes to a halt, Mortensen--looking sharp in a white dress shirt, bright blue cardigan, brown plaid pants and black loafers--makes an announcement.

“I’ve got a new rule,” he blurts out in a gravelly voice. “From here on, it’s required that I have a cigar for every interview. No cigar, no interview.”

Mortensen knows he’s not going to get too far with his demand. He’s well aware that it’s not his day to smoke--that’s Monday--and he’s not allowed to puff on a stogie indoors, anyway.

Mortensen is just trying to make the most of his celebrity. He figures he’s entitled to some extra privileges, considering he’s 112. In fact, Chris Mortensen, who will turn 113 on Aug. 16, just might be the oldest man alive.

“He’s the oldest man whose age has been fairly reliably verified,” says John Wilmoth, an assistant professor of demography at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging. “We’re more than 99% certain that he truly is 112 years old.”

With the help of colleagues abroad, Wilmoth has located Mortensen’s birth certificate and baptism records in Denmark, where he was born in 1882. Wilmoth also has confirmed, through the Danish population registry, that Mortensen immigrated to the United States around 1903, as Mortensen claims. Once Wilmoth locates Mortensen’s U.S. immigration record through the National Archives, “That’s what’ll clinch it,” he says.

Mortensen isn’t even close to being the oldest person alive--that distinction goes to 120-year-old Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France. But on June 7, he may well become the oldest man who ever lived, beating out an Englishman who died in 1990 at 112 years, 9 months and 22 days.

(Experts note that more and more people are claiming to be older than they actually are because of the celebrity status that centenarianhood confers, but their claims are subject to verification.)

Mortensen isn’t too worried about setting records, though. He’s far more concerned with cigars. He smokes once a week when a volunteer comes to visit him at the Aldersly Retirement Community, and he gets annoyed if she has to cancel.

“I like to smoke cigars,” he says. “For the average cigar, it takes an hour to smoke it. But I have one cigar that takes an hour and a quarter.”

Mortensen has been blind for a few years and is quite hard of hearing, but he keeps a radio by his bed so he can listen to baseball. He enjoys eating dessert, belting out old Danish songs and talking about his younger days, although sometimes his speech is difficult to understand.

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Born in a small town in Denmark, Mortensen says he came to the United States to see the world. He lived in several states, including Illinois, Texas, Utah and Missouri.

“I was a tailor by trade,” he says. “I followed tailoring for some years. Then I became a milkman.” Mortensen says he began his milk route at 1:30 a.m., making deliveries by horse-drawn wagon. “We had to have fresh milk at your front door every morning by 5 o’clock. Pretty much the reason for that was there weren’t very many refrigerators. You had to have fresh milk.”

Mortensen has no children and was married once--for somewhere between four and nine years. (Some things he remembers more clearly than others.) “It was a terrible marriage,” he says. “I never married again. Once was enough after that experience.”

Over his lifetime, Mortensen has witnessed the remarkable explosion of technology. “I’ve seen the automobile come up from scratch. There weren’t very many of them. Now every woman has one.”

Mortensen, who didn’t require full-time nursing care until age 110, has no doubts about why he has survived for so long.

“I’ve lived a good, clean life--a healthy life,” he says. “And I have a good heart. I like to eat vegetarian, and I don’t drink.” He says he has no bad habits other than smoking. “It’s not a real bad habit--it takes a lot of money,” he says.

His skin is remarkably smooth--he doesn’t even have crow’s feet or wrinkles on his forehead--and he’s proud of it. “I have lived a different life from most people, so I have no wrinkles,” he says. “Some people have wrinkles when they’re 20.”

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He dabs a washcloth lightly on his face to wash it, says his aide, Jackie Mangahas. “He says it causes wrinkles if you rub too hard.”

Mortensen, she adds, is very particular about his appearance. He insists on keeping his hair long in the back and having it brushed forward to cover his balding pate. If Mangahas doesn’t brush it properly Mortensen puts up a fuss. “He says, ‘You know how I like it.’ ”

He is so protective of his narrow mustache, Mangahas says, that he covers it when she shaves him. During his weekly bath, Mangahas says, “he washes in between his toes. He can’t see, but he can feel. He likes to dry his toes one by one.”

Although he knows about Madame Calment in France, Mortensen doesn’t plan to live to 120. He predicts he will make it to 115 and not beyond. “That’s long enough,” he says.

Like any savvy celebrity, Mortensen has a knack for controlling an interview, for turning every line of questioning back to the subject of his choice--in his case, cigars. “I want a mild cigar,” he says, after about an hour. “I don’t want a strong cigar. A mild one is easier to smoke. Where’s the cigar?”