It was the ‘best of times’ to grow up……

So, I’m a baby boomer…..I was born on a dark and stormy night in December 1952….in the old days, I’d have been right at the end of the baby boomers – but now they’ve sort of extended it and there are more baby boomers than there used to be. Of course, the folks who are runnin’ the world these days – mostly young folks – absolutely can’t leave anything alone. Like I think they’ve dumped DayLight Savings Time when I wasn’t looking….or maybe they dumped the other one – anyway, we don’t have to change our clocks anymore….and I hated changing my clocks, but it was just something you always did…..why change it?

Of course, from the perspective of an old guy – a gnarly old codger – most everything on the planet seems to be in a bit of a mess these days……yea, we’re overpopulated and overpolluted and over this and over that…but we’re strugglin’ along, careening from crisis to crisis in the same way we always have since the beginning of recorded history….we’re not good at long range planning….we just sort of fumble along, sometimes staggering remarkably close to the edge, but always never quite toppling over.

Yea, I was born and raised in the small town of Hanover and still have the fondest regards for that community. Growing up in Hanover back in the really old days was sort of like growing up in Mayberry…..you know where Andy Griffith and Don Knotts were the police department, every boy in town owned a BB gun and there was roller skating in the summer and ice skating in the winter….we watched John Wayne and Audie Murphy save the free world at the Paramount Theatre every Saturday afternoon…it surely seemed like a simpler time when things were more cut and dried.

You know, we spent most of our time as young people growing up in Hanover complaining about how bored we were….only now, as I watch today’s young people on their devices, do I realize what a richness of activity I grew up in the middle of….we had our ice and roller skating, there was the bowling alley, the pool room, the show, a couple of restaurants to act as after school hangouts…..the churches in town ran “coffee houses” for teens and there were dances going on all the time…..I played in a band when I was a young guy – and, actually, still do – and we were busy all the time because there were always dances and parties and stuff…..

We sort of grew up in a golden period to be a young person….my parents never really got to be teenagers because they grew up during the Great Depression and the war….my Dad always thought he was extremely lucky because he was just too young to actually be in the war, but was old enough to share in the prosperity that came after the war. Our generation not only didn’t have to endure a depression or a war, but really also got to share in the prosperity of the 1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s, when the world seemed filled with hope and anything seemed possible.

These days, the world seems enormously complicated and difficult to navigate in. But I’m kinda thinkin’ that just might be me getting to be an old guy. I suppose it’s only natural to feel that your generation grew up in the best of times – had the best music, movies, TV shows, books and cars and everything else. I think each generation sort of feels like that about the times they grow up and come of age in.

But that won’t stop me thinking that my generation was the one that had the absolute best of everything as we passed along through life. I’ve had a great run through life and have somehow ended up with some really old children and a whole passle of not-so-old grandchildren…not really sure how it happened, but extremely glad it did. It is, however, exceptionally strange to be the same age as old people….

Anyway…..be well and stay safe out there…..or as the guy on Hill Street Blues used to say, “be careful out there”….because life can throw some really challenging curves at you…I sometimes say, “be good….and if you can’t be good, then be careful…..” 

“ Hew to the line; let the chips fall where they may…..”