Archives for March 2026

We Can Do This

March 28, 2026 By admin

knowledge and skills balance OK, I’ll grant that boomers are slowly losing it when it comes to the most current technology, but we still have the edge when it comes to some old-school skills.

Like what you ask? Or I’ll do the asking, thank you.

Bear in mind that younger generations could most likely master some of these skills (if they so desired) and some are just not going to happen – ever. And some are useless amid today’s technology, so why would they care?

Basic plumbing fixes. Call a boomer when the float valve doesn’t work any longer because we don’t mind sticking our hands in there. Replacing the float and drain flap are elementary skills but Gen Zers have neither the time nor inclination.

I know I’ve jump started a car many times in my 20’s, but no one has a standard transmission anymore, so the skill is useless. Still (and this is a long, long shot) if the occasion presented itself, look for a boomer to get the car running again.

Cooking full meals from scratch is something most boomers can do thanks to not growing up with a ton of convenience foods or a raft of food delivery services. There was no Dominoes, DoorDash, Uber Eats, so we ate homecooked meals at home. The whole family going out to dinner was a very big deal. Granted, we had more time and less pressure. And just maybe – more motivation.

Growing our own food was really all the rage when we were in full-blown hippy mode. Some of us had greener thumbs than others, but there was a back-to-the-land movement that put food gardening front and center. Younger generations are starting to pick it up now and CSA’s are supported by many generations, so that’s hopeful.

Apple Maps and Google Maps are great tools and we have come to depend on them – with our lives sometimes. However, boomers may be the only generation left to navigate somewhere with only a paper map. Will it matter in the grand scheme of things? Probably not, but if your hiking group is lost, you could do worse than ask the oldest guy for directions.

Is there any other way to get information besides going online? The corollary question is will we need libraries any longer? We are so reliant on “Google it” for every question, even boomers are forgetting some of the skills required to use reference books. And does anyone think ChatGPT will make the loss any better?

Just remember, there’s no point in lording these skills over the youngsters, because they and the robots will likely have to change our underwear. Enough said.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Toot Toot – Bugles!

March 28, 2026 By admin

In the Chips & Crackers aisle of the grocery store the other day I came across a shelf of Bugles, a snack I hadn’t seen since childhood. I had assumed they were no longer sold. Maybe I’d just outgrown them somewhere along the line, dropping them like a crumpled bag from my consciousness as I became a responsible adult eater. But who doesn’t remember wearing a Bugle on each fingertip like a set of claws before gobbling them one by one?

Looking up some info later, I discovered that Bugles are officially sixty years old this year. Happy Birthday, Bugles! Sold regionally for a year or two, they made their national debut in 1966. So did several companion snacks, like Whistles, Daisies, Buttons, and Bows, all of those long gone and none of which I remember. But what other products had I waltzed by in the store that day, unaware of their respective sixtieth anniversaries?

Well, as long as we’re crunching: Doritos. In the soft drink section, there’s Fresca. For the healthier, Quaker Instant Oatmeal. (Throw all of ‘em into the shopping cart. Now there’s a feast!) If still hungry, we could grab a pack of Razzles ((“First it’s a candy, then it’s a gum!”), another 1966 arrival on the market, though I recall seeing them only at movie theater concession stands. (I might’ve been there buying a ticket for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or Born Free. Both top-ten at the box office in 1966, two more antithetical films I’d be hard-pressed to think of. Yet most of us boomers could name their iconic theme music in three notes. Maybe just two.)

Cruising past the school and office supplies next time, I’ll grab a little bottle of Wite-Out, yet another celebrant at 60, to assist my correcting and editing as I scribble away. I’m not sure many people use it anymore, unless to sniff it like the proverbial glue—perhaps the rationale behind the one-item-per-customer rule I was apprised of at check-out. Of course, this magic liquid comes in all sorts of colors by now, whatever the ink I happen to put on paper amenable and emendable to its ministrations. I won’t have to apply it to my next shopping list, though. I know exactly what to buy.

James Scruton writes, shops, and keeps track of time in Brookville, Ohio.

Hotel Humanity

March 28, 2026 By admin

It has long been a secret desire of mine to spend my life living in a hotel. It doesn’t matter where, although the larger the city, the more appealing that life becomes. If money were no object, if family could re-adjust the values I planted in them about hearth and home, kith and kin, yeah, I could live indefinitely in a hotel. Sure, having your room cleaned, your laundry washed, and your bed made by someone else every day, not to mention the convenience of hotel restaurants, room service, reduced long-term rates and all that, makes it a sweet trade off for utility bills and fees we pay to “sit tight,” but there’s more to it than that. Hotel life isn’t for people with children, dependent elderly parents, or collectors of Hummel figurines, but it works for some people.

It doesn’t matter in what city I’ve stayed, or what hotel. As long as they have a bar the clientele never changes. There’s the woman in the slinky dress sitting on the corner of the bar sipping a split of champagne. Is she a hooker? Hard to tell. There’s the older businessman, distracted, but eyeing the women from either the end of the bar or from a table while he tries to look important as he makes text after text. There’s the loudmouth who bellows about his room, the service, the price of the drinks, anything he can think of. Anything to be noticed by everyone else, who largely ignores him. He’s the one who pisses off the bartender, who angrily throws the empty beer bottles in the trash with a deafening clang while she impatiently watches the last fifteen minutes of her shift tick by on the clock. There’s the couple, usually sitting at a corner table kissing and nuzzling, preparing to go upstairs to their room for a night of wild monkey love. There’s the dad who slipped down to the bar for a beer (no glass) after his wife and kids finally fell alseep in their room. There’s the group of conventioneers complaining about the traffic and sweating themselves through glasses of Jim Beam and gobbling the overpriced burger plate while trying to outdo each with how early their wake up calls are going to come in. And then there’s me, sitting at the bar, largely invisible, listening to the conversations and studying the human condition.

Yeah. That’s what I love about hotel life. It’s not about the room or the service or the little soaps, it’s about the people. Forget the gym, forget the pool, forget the spa. The bar is the only place you’ll encounter hotel humanity.

(Best of Boomspeak, February 2017)

Steph Waller is an author and composer. Books One and Two (With A Dream and With A Bullet) of her rock and roll series, Beyond The Bridge, takes places in late 70s London.

Where Was I?

March 14, 2026 By admin

There’s a new radio show going on in my head. It’s called “Where Was I?” and it is growing in popularity. Not only is it trending with me, but millions of baby boomers have picked up this habit and tuned into the same station.

I’m not talking only about losing your train of thought. No, that would not be so bad. I am talking about losing the entire train, as in you don’t know where the hell you are or where you thought you were going with a specific thought.

If you’re worried that this is a sign of early dementia, I would ease up on that idea. There’s heading into the kitchen and forgetting why you wanted to go there, and then there’s going into the kitchen to make a meal and forgetting the basic steps to sandwich making. I still know how to make tuna salad or a salami sandwich and I’m damn sure you shouldn’t put those two things together between slices of bread.

I prefer to think that we just have input overload and that our brains just can’t process that much information as rapidly as we once did. If that’s the case, then as much as I sometimes despair that AI will rot everyone’s brains (never mind replace millions of jobs and plagiarize art), then maybe AI will be useful after all.

Alexa, Siri and ChatGPT cannot make a sandwich but if we tell them what we have in the pantry and refrigerator, they can come up with reasonable options for a tasty meal.

The key takeaway here is that memory lapses are normal and are not the same as dementia. Putting your car keys in the oven? That’s a problem. Driving for hours with no destination. Problem. Missing appointments that are on your calendar. Problem. Using the wrong words and wrong names for friends/family. Problem. Feeling lost or overwhelmed doing things you used to do with ease. Big problem.

Where was I? That’s just a hiccup in my train of thought and I’m sticking with the theory that we have just too much stimulation in the form of things that appear on a screen – large or small. My guess is that we had less memory lapse when we had a lot less media directed at us.

Since it’s too late to reduce our digital consumption, we will just have to trust our instincts that occasional bouts of “where was I” are not the endgame. The robots taking care of us will see to that.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His latest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Listing

March 14, 2026 By admin

The word, sanguine, is weirdly overused in my loop of political podcasts. I don’t hate it. I have my own idiolectal extremes. Given that everything mediaeval is new again, the junk science of it all, makes sense.

The humours, now that takes me back. as a university student, I found the concept impenetrable. It was like interpreting constellations from those scattershot pinpricks in the night sky. I could never connect the dots. Likewise, no haruspex could demystify the arcane combination of bloos, phlegm and bile turned up like medical tarot cards for a suggestible citizenry. It proved too esoteric for me. When we were in our 20s, esoteric, was the mot du jour. My husband addressed our collective verbal tic to my dad. He did however stumble in the telling, “according to your daughter, she is obsessed with the erotic.” Oh, the stink-eye that lasers your face, like the super-powered rays directed so easily by the genetically engineered miscreants of “the boys”. Even when I am pissed at him, that anecdote brings me joy. Everyone should love someone that much because of, not despite, such an error. That this tale is top of his story/anecdote list is a balm for me.

We share a preoccupation with mental and literal lists. I scribble mine on bits of scrap paper: old envelopes and fast-food menus. He keeps a mental tally of his lists. The pie list is his magnum opus. My mother loved his explications of the pie list. Her sour cream raisin pie was a lock for first place. Pumpkin pie never cracked the top 25, although it proved a combative subject. The famous blueberry pie recipe containing two cups of fresh blueberries, rated second. It is singular, appearing in only one “Fannie Farmer Boston School Cookbook” dating from the late 1800s. Frequently, I would call my mom for the recipe, but really just to talk.

The pie list annoyed our eldest daughter as a teen. My mother never ceased to find it funny. Food and politics remained her favourite dinner discussion topics.

Upon her death, Mom left me grandmother’s edition of “Fanny Farmer’s Boston School Cookbook”, and her own coverless edition. Inside Grandmere’s copy, I found an October 1944 signed Dorothy. It brought war and family news, also a doughnut recipe. She concluded, “there are so many courageous mothers these days.” Its inclusion seems intentional.

Catherine Dean lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario

Not So Easy Rider

March 14, 2026 By admin

It’s 1969. Lots of baby boomers are in rebellion: burning flags and bras, escaping to communes, ingesting everything, dressing like hippie freaks, blowing out their eardrums on rock n’ roll and making free love. Easy Rider roars across the pop culture screen.

It was an “easy,” if painful, experience for boomers but a hard one for their parents. Henry Fonda, the venerable father of the film’s co-star, couldn’t even find a plot. “What does the movie mean?” he asked in bewilderment.

There was a plot of sorts: two biker hippie drug dealers make a big score and travel south to retire in Florida. Along the way, the movie tag says “…they went looking for America. And they couldn’t find it.” What they do find is a dysfunctional mixture of hippie communes, small town bigotry, and drugs.

New York Times critic Vincent Canby didn’t like the tone: “Right away, you know that something superior is up, that somebody is making a statement…that it’s going to put down the whole rotten scene. What scene?…Man, I can’t tell you if you don’t know. What I mean to say is, if you don’t groove, you don’t groove.” Canby describes Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as “vacuous, romantic symbols.”

Old Hollywood that produced the 1950s classics was giving way to young avant guard film makers free from censorship codes and traditional ideas. This was a boomer counterculture critique that reflected growing disillusionment with the Establishment, however defined. From the rebellion of Bonnie & Clyde to the detached stupor of The Graduate, from the gritty sex in Midnight Cowboy to the malaise of The Big Chill, here were the themes, dreams and nightmares of the boomer generation. The finale of Easy Rider is a nightmare, both bikers gunned down on the road by “rednecks.”

While the quality of the film may be argued, few deny it was a pop culture landmark. “We blew it,” the most memorable line, is an amorphous sigh of futility—they didn’t find what they were looking for, whatever that was: a place to fit it, acceptance, a meaning in life. The dark, brooding story foretells the “end of innocence” of the hippie era. The 1970s had arrived.

Trivia Factoids

Jack Nicholson was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his role an alcoholic Southern ACLU lawyer who springs the boys from jail and then joins the journey. He meets a violent end, as well.
Co-star and co-writer Dennis Hooper picked up the Cannes Festival First Film Award.
The sound track was hip, hip, hip—The Band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf.
According to many sources, the drug scenes used the real stuff.

(from the Best of BoomSpeak circa 2010)

Terry Hamburg wrote the Boomer to You blog about the exciting and revolutionary baby boomer years.