Sixty-four

 

I just had another birthday. It was an almost big one. Sixty-four.  This means one more year until the really big one: Sixty-five.

When I was younger, I thought sixty-four was old.  I don't believe that now.

Oh sure, the culture is like the scene in "Monty Python And The Holy Grail" where time is yelling, "bring out yer dead," and people are trying to put me in the wheelbarrow.

But I'm still a young, whippersnappering spring chicken.  I still get pimples, for heaven's sake.

I must acknowledge there have been a lot of changes in the past sixty-four years.

In 1959, my home town,  Marietta, Georgia, was a one-horse town. That horse was named Lockheed.  Back then, Marietta was a "long ways" from Atlanta.  Now, it is hard to tell where Marietta ends and Atlanta starts.

There wasn't even a Big Chicken when I was born in Marietta. That's how old I am.

I was the third son born in four years. We lived in a two-bedroom house on Meadowbrook Drive.  My Grandmother would spend half the year with us and my parents turned a "den" into a bedroom. So, we upgraded to a three-bedroom house.

We had a TV in the living room. There were four channels. 2 (NBC), 5 (CBS), 11 (ABC), and 8 (Educational).

It was in that living room my mother and grandmother were watching their "stories" when they heard Walter Cronkite announce that shots were fired at  The President in Dallas. 

As Cedric The Entertainer, once said, "You can't smoke on Earth no more."  It wasn't like that back then.  

It is hard to comprehend now, but people could smoke anywhere back then, including doctors during surgery.

Cigarettes were almost like medicine. You smoked to calm your nerves or stay thin.

Old Man Manis smoked Winstons, which tasted good like a cigarette should. Or Viceroy. I don't remember which. There were a million brands with a million TV commercials with neat slogans and jingles. 

By the time I could read and write, cigarettes were found to have caused cancer and COPD. Old Man Manis died of COPD,

So I never had an interest in taking up smoking. 

Entertainment is different too. People cuss like sailors in the movies now. Back then, you might have heard "heck" on TV.  Married couples slept in twin beds.  I don't know how there were so many baby boomers.

I must admit to a prejudice in our music. Our music was better than our parents' music. Our music is way better than today's music which scientists have concluded: "really suck."  You can't argue with science.

But as I look back, I am grateful to have lived in the best country on the planet at the best time in history.

We can take pictures with our phones. And like our kids, our phones are smart. 

Sure, our leaders have gone from Eisenhower and Kennedy to Trump and Biden. But we haven't been in a major World War in my lifetime, and I didn't even have to register for the draft. 

I promise to try and not to act like Abe Simpson, yelling at a cloud.  It is challenging for people my age and older because the old days seem better. I was there, and in a lot of ways, they were. 

But in a lot of ways, they were not.

As Tom Petty once said, "I'm just happy to be here, happy to be alive."

Me too, Tom.  Me too.