Bye, Bye Miss American Pie…..

So, what’s it like to be 62 years old in 2009?

Old enough to remember the feeling of a “lab rat” in the early administrations of the now famous, then hoped for, polio cure…shots and “boosters”; and the relief of not having to watch any of our classmates strapped into the previously all too common polio braces.

We were invincible!

So our eyes turned naturally to the stars…and the latest Russian threat…SPUTNIK.

C’mon Telstar.  Tell us it isn’t so.

The young, handsome and doomed president promising to take us to the moon, and back, before the decade was finished…and the heart wrenching sight of John Junior saluting his fallen father.

Elvis… JohnPaulGeorgeRingo…George Wallace…Rosa Parks…much more than historical footprints, for us.  We lived with these people daily; and found ourselves aligned somewhere along the spectrum they represented.

We gained the moon; and lost John and John, Bobby, and Martin.

Thousands of us lost it all in Southeast Asia, Viet Nam, ‘Nam, “in country”. There’s a WALL now in Washington, DC that is the experience for most of America. We who built that wall had a different experience. Nearly forty years later, we’re still sending our best to do our worst.

Have you thanked a soldier lately?

We are the generation that has gone from “a chicken in every pot” to “a damned computer on every desk”.

We remember the days when “pot”, “coke”, and “mouse” were independent of context.

We’ve known the days when 99% of the cars on the road could drive back to the place of their assembly.

Y2K.  Enough said?

And now we’re being told that if we can just tough it out a bit longer, we’ll get to see it all end.

Got plans for December 21st, 2012?  Rest assured, it will be a day to humble all of our previous Winter solstices.

Back to the opening question…If you are 62 today, you will be 65 on THE DAY. Time to retire; but did you ever dream that the universe had plans for your retirment party?

Stay tuned as we explore some of the possible scenarios.

Till next time,

Fred

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

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