Archives for June 2018

How did it come to this? The term “baby boomer” is considered by some, if not many, to be a toxic phrase. Are we really synonymous with greed and selfishness? When did our cohort go from being groundbreakers to saboteurs? Anthropologist Helen Fisher describes the postwar baby boom, or bulge if you will, as “like a pig moving through a python.”

Yikes! That does not sound good, nor does it reflect well on us as a generation. For a long time being a boomer felt like it was a badge of honor. We were part of this unprecedentedly large generation that made its mark on culture, from music and entertainment to literature and language. We were a potent force in changing the way our society looked at war, sex and civil rights. It almost makes you want to hum Let the Sunshine In from the musical Hair.

Then somewhere around the time of the last economic downturn there began to emerge a chorus of naysayers who pointed the finger at boomers. “Look what you’ve done! You really have effed things up royally!” Really? They want to blame an entire generation for the failures of our governments and our leaders. I guess the flipside of taking credit for much of the cultural innovation of our era is that we also get saddled with the blame. It makes you want to go down the road of revisionist history. Were the generations that preceded us really that exemplary or did they have some serious faults as well. Our parents were part of the so called “greatest generation” because they met and beat back the bad guys in World War II. Should they get all the credit for the postwar boom that lit the fuse for an age of American prosperity? They also gave us the cold war, McCarthyism and a horrible record on civil rights.

The bad rap on baby boomers is just as much a generalization as the rap on millennials. They are not all selfie-taking, soft-in-the-middle, whiners still living with their parents. Like generations before them, they are a product of their place in time. In their case, that’s a post-9/11 America that seems to be at war all the time and ignoring climate change.

Let’s hope that the generations can move beyond the stereotyping, because one way or another we are going to be very dependent upon each other and it will benefit us all to give up this senseless blame game.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

My son bought tickets for my wife and me to see Tony Bennett. Listening to the 90 year old icon sing and watching him drift effortlessly across the stage that night made me think of the ice house.

Growing up in the 1950’s, I remember how these antiquated structures were on the verge of extinction, but still eking out a living, even if households no longer relied on a block of ice to keep their food from spoiling.

My great uncles owned an ice house on Telford Street in Newark, New Jersey. I remember people pulling up to the yard on a hot summer day on their way to a picnic or similar event, then retrieving an ice chest or tub from the trunk of their car. They would haul it up on the platform. A worker would retrieve a six foot high, rectangular piece of ice and, turning it on its side, chip off a quarter or so breaking it into chunks into the open containers.

A hot summer day usually found my cousins and me looking to snag ice cubes that missed their mark from a large machine next to the platform. It was the perfect way to cool off after a sand lot baseball game or a few rounds of Kick the Can.

As I look back on it now, this procession in and out of the ice house represented a significant transition taking place in our country from the stabilizing role the ice house had played in our lives to a future without it. The people I observed, while enjoying my melting ice cube, were struggling to find a place in this new order. The soundtrack of this struggle was provided by Tony Bennett. That’s what I heard that night as Tony exhorted us to go from rags to riches, pursue the good life we deserved and find love in the shadow of a smile.

All these years later, I know it didn’t go as smoothly or as optimistically as Tony’s music made it sound that night. But what struck me were his unifying themes of love and hope and how each generation is about rallying together to pick up the pieces and move on.

I can still hear their car tires rumbling on the uneven Belgian block parking lot and see their arms wrapped around the chunks piled high in their containers, the ice as solid as a past they thought would never change. Yet destined to disappear before the day ended.

Joe Cappello writes essays, short stories and plays about the workplace and families from his retirement home in Galisteo, New Mexico.

The writer Morgan Jerkins recently posed this question via Twitter: What was a part of your childhood that you now recognize was a privilege to have or experience? Essentially, what experiences are today’s kids never going to know.

You could answer the question with things such as 8-track tapes, rotary dial telephones, VHS tapes and dial-up modems, but most respondents were more nostalgic for experiences rather than things. And the experiences fell into four broad categories: taking risks, family time, reading books and a screen-free existence.

For risks, people cited being able to ride a bike all over the neighborhood and playing outside all day. I know that I left the house on Saturday morning and played with friends until it was time for dinner. We were free range kids and there was no inkling that play dates were in the future. Helicopter parenting has definitely changed child rearing and the lack of independence is most likely the source of considerable anxiety for today’s youth.

When it comes to family time, respondents talked about grandparents that were close or living under the same roof. You heard the family stories and lore directly from the source and mom and dad were not so harried with work that they did not have time to interact with us. The stress of the modern world and the likelihood that relatives are far away has greatly reduced time kids get with family.

Reading was a mainstay activity growing up. It started with Dick and Jane and then moved on to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, but the point is that we were readers. We could find entertainment in a world of books with stories that peaked our imagination. Now, 27% of 17-year-olds say they never or hardly ever read for pleasure.

Which segues perfectly with the reason they are not reading books. We had a screen-free childhood. No social media pressures, no smart phones, no tablets. We did watch TV but we also played Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, and a whole bunch of goofy spelling games (Perquackey anyone?). Compared with today’s penchant for being online all the time, we spent much more time creating our own entertainment and it did not involve any electronic devices (unless your want to count a Texas Instrument calculator that we thought was some amazing invention, right up there with the transistor radio!).

The point of this exercise is not to denigrate the way kids are growing up now. Every generation must feel nostalgia for the way they grew up and today’s kids may wax poetic about their childhood in another 30 years (when people are flying around in personal autonomous airplanes operated by Amazon). So it goes.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

We lived in Alabama in the late 1980s. My sister-in-law came down from Maine to visit us. She had never been anywhere exciting, so we hopped in the car and drove to New Orleans for a weekend. We stayed in a room with two double beds.

I discovered she has no filter — she says whatever she thinks.

It had been a long day, and we were chilling, getting ready to go out for dinner. My husband was in the bathtub. He often used to hang out in the tub and read. We called him Marat, after Jean-Paul, a notable of the French Revolution who had a skin disease and frequently soaked in medicinal baths. He was ultimately murdered in his bathtub. This fact will become relevant as the story unfolds.

The door to the bathroom was propped slightly open to let out some of the steam. My sister-in-law and I were trying to get dressed before Marat got out of the tub to avoid the awkward scene with his sister and his wife partially clothed.

I was naked, looking for underwear, when my sister-in-law popped her head up and said, “You know, Donna. I am amazed with all the walking and exercise you do, you still have so much cellulite on your butt.”

Marat’s ears perked up, and he realized no good could come of this. The tub was conveniently right next to the bathroom door, and he was facing the door, faucet down by his feet. He put the book down on the bathmat outside the tub. He s-l-o-w-l-y slunk down as low into the water as he could, and then s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d his left leg until he touched doorknob. Marat successfully barricaded himself from whatever was about to take place in the bedroom. This could get ugly.

Here’s the thing. I was pissed, and even though I remember the scene vividly many years later, sometimes my reactions in real time are almost stunted. I tell this story occasionally and everyone wants to know … what did you say? What did you say when she said you were packing a lot of cottage cheese for a so-called athlete?

I said, “I know. Go figure.”

And The Cellulite Wars were over. Marat was not murdered in the tub, but interestingly, he doesn’t take baths anymore. My sister-in-law and I went on to become good friends. She is a delightful person but still has no filter. I still walk and exercise, and I still have cellulite.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

The bathing cap from childhood was the bane of my swimming life. Smelling of rubber and hard to handle, it was the last thing to grapple with before demurely emerging from the locker room, a pinhead perched above a polka-dotted one-piece.

Donning a bathing cap required technique. It consisted of choosing a spot mid-forehead to anchor the front of the cap while stretching the contraption to the back of the head, tucking in stray hairs along the way. Pony tails could be roped in at the end of the operation, creating their own special Bump at the Back.

Capping oneself was an act of tension, even suspense, but once firmly capped, a person was contained and confined, her hearing muted as if apprehending the world from a faraway place…the bottom of a well or the inside of a tunnel.

Removal of the thing was an exercise in release, exposing wet hair plastered to the skull and a deeply-lined imprint dug into the forehead, usually dissipating within an hour or so.

Cap liberation did eventually come about when boys’ crew cuts were supplanted by longer locks. The argument for girls to wear caps was no longer tenable. So, instead of “caps all around,” standards were relaxed. Drains were clogged and pool water polluted, but my hair could at last swish and swirl, my inner mermaid performing in Disneyesque style.

That was long ago and times have changed once again. Cap technology has improved. Materials are stretchy and light-weight. If I don’t put my head in the water, my back suffers. Chlorine-soaked hair goes green. Hairdresser budgets hit a high.

“You should try mine!” my sister exclaimed, having discovered this “new” kind of cap. “You can actually swim without a wall of hair coating your face every three strokes.”

Thus, with updated awareness, I’ve become cap-conscious. I have my eye out. Just the other day, I saw a woman sporting a flowered cap. Violet, yellow and orange flowers enveloped her head in three-dimensional glory, the plastic flowers wafting in the wind like a field of poppies and Scotch broom. As she floated ever-closer, her paddle board skimming over the turquoise surface, I bobbed on over.

“That’s a cute cap,” I said. She smiled pleasantly enough, but failed to further the conversation. I forgive her though. She probably just needs to upgrade her skills in the fine art of lip-reading.

Meredith Escudier enjoys writing about the little moments in life. She has written three books drawn from her many years of living in France: Scene in France, Frenchisms for Francophiles and most recently, The Taste of Forever, a food memoir, all available on Amazon.