BoomSpeak

  • ESSAY
  • FICTION
  • TRAVEL
  • ARTS
  • About Us

Another Day, Another List

April 5, 2025 By admin

older man writing down a listThere are people who just sit around making lists to put online. If you don’t already know it, the point of the posts is to get you to click on as many pages as possible, thereby exposing you to a ton of ads. You knew that right? I mean you knew it after the fifth time you got suckered into going through all those pages for nothing.

Just recently, the list that caught my attention was a list of concepts that baby boomers believed in, but subsequent generations will never understand. Intrigued, I went through the list (so that you would not have to…you’re welcome).

Numero uno on the list was Having loyalty to one employer. Not I, but many boomers took a job right out of college and retired from the same company. Gen Z job hoppers give it 2 years and move on.

Number two. Owning a home. Sadly, only 21% of millennials polled believe that will ever happen for them.

Number three. Phone calls vs texting. Girlfriends and boyfriends talked on the phone for hours. You had a sore ear when you finally hung up…no speaker phone button then. A quarter of 18 to 34 year olds say they never answer the phone. They are all Gen-Text.

Number four. Hard work? Or Work-Life balance. Boomers chose the former and younger generations, particularly Gen Z are not buying into it. If their employer doesn’t allow for a balanced lifestyle, they move on.

Number five. Marriage as a life goal. Boomers paired up early and often. In many cases, too early and too often. Younger generations may be okay with being with someone for life, but marriage – not so much.

Number six. Owning a car(s) was a big deal for boomers. It was our ticket to freedom and the ability to roam. Younger gens user ride-sharing apps and many have not bothered to get a license.

Number seven. Privacy versus sharing. Boomers are rather circumspect about their private lives while later generations find it totally normal to share their innermost life details to the point where we think they are oversharing. That’s not stopping them.

But that’s not all. Buying used instead of new. Respecting authority without question. Using television as their news source. Paying with cash. You can guess which side younger gens came down on without my dissection.

No, don’t thank me for saving you the trouble of reading another list. It was my pleasure.

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.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Neighborhood Water Project

April 5, 2025 By admin

Close-up of a water fountain valve with flowing water outdoorsClose-up of a water fountain valve with flowing water outdoorsClose-up of a water fountain valve with flowing water outdoorsbubbling fountainIn the early sixties, getting off the bus every day, the neighborhood kids changed out of school clothes to head up to the park where we worked on our water project. We propped open the bubbler water fountain with a forked stick. The water flowed down into lakes and canals behind dams of bricks, stones, and clay. We built, dug, rebuilt, and re-dug to expand the project down into the gulley. We got muddy and happy every day after school. One late spring day, two men drove up in a red panel truck with Municipal Utilities printed on the door. The driver, in khaki pants and gray jacket, put the propping stick in his pocket. The younger guy, in blue jeans and plaid shirt, pulled out a wrench and removed the fountain bubbler, then screwed a silver cap onto the pipe. They drove off without a word to us silently watching and some were crying. In those days, children didn’t challenge adults; the adults didn’t think they needed to explain themselves to kids.
Close-up of a water fountain valve with flowing water outdoors

Most families in the neighborhood lived paycheck to paycheck and some feared eviction. A mother left one night for her shift at the Rawlings plant and never returned; her daughter designed the layout of the water project and each expansion. A father laid off from the iron mines got drunk every night and would beat his wife; his son dug the canals deeper than anybody. One boy lost family members in a collision with a delivery truck on the highway; he figured out how to make a lock and dam work for toy boats. The kid next door could not play sports because he had heart problems from rheumatic fever; he monitored water flow and pulled leaves from the canals.

With all that going on in the neighborhood and more, the water project in the park had been our refuge, the one thing we constantly talked about and looked forward to doing every day, more so than anything else like riding bikes or playing football.

I drove by the old neighborhood after my mom’s funeral 60 years later. That water pipe is standing there at the top of the park and silver-capped just as it was that late spring day. Of course, all the kids are gone from that time, grown and moved away. Some did become civil engineers and construction managers; I became a psychologist.

Michael C. Roberts is a mostly retired pediatric psychologist. He now hikes in the Sonoran Desert with his dog, cleverly named “Buddy.” He tried painting inspirational rocks during the pandemic, but he cannot paint with any artistry, so maybe they were not very inspirational. He returned to photography. Several of his photographs have been published in literary magazines and on journal covers. A book is available on Amazon: “Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga.”

 

Filed Under: ESSAY

Here’s Looking at You Kid

March 23, 2025 By admin

Someone called me a whiz kid because I knew how to record a voice memo on an iPhone. He’s a few years older than me, but it got me thinking that if I qualify as a kid, maybe it was time to start to giving the “Kid” moniker to anyone younger than me.

The server at the Indian restaurant will be Kid Curry, the UPS driver will be Kid Brown, which means the other delivery guy will be Kid Fed. My coffee will be expertly brewed by Kid Barista and I’ll purchase my jeans from Kid Levi. Movie tickets will be purchased from Kid Flic and burgers from Kid Mac. Kid Firestone will rotate my tires and Kid Kroger will bag my groceries. Kid Cable will keep my TV going and with any luck, I’ll never have to watch any of the shameless shenanigans of Kid Kardashian.

When you’re a kid, you don’t want be called kid. As in, “Scram kid.” Or W. C. Field’s line, “Go away kid, ya bother me.” And being someone’s kid brother or kid sister isn’t exactly the description a young person wishes to be called.

But attitudes change and the years have mellowed my opinion about being “the kid.” Being the youngest carries no stigma anymore. On the contrary, when you put a bunch of boomers in a room, it’s quite the honor to be considered the kid.

It’s a storied tradition when you think about it. The Cisco Kid, Billy the Kid, Kid Shane, Karate Kid, Cudi the Kid, Kaitou Kid, Heartbreak Kid, Ringo Kid, Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and who could forget the Sundance Kid. In the movie Casablanca, Rick toasts Ilsa with “Here’s looking at you kid.” That line is one of moviedom’s most famous.

A kid is young. A kid can get away with stuff. A kid has a certain joi de vivre, and who doesn’t want that? Yep, I’m liking this “kid” thing. I like being called kid, and I think I’m really going to enjoy calling younger people “kid.”

It’s a lot better than whippersnapper.

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.

Filed Under: ESSAY

His Father’s Oldsmobile

March 23, 2025 By admin

1938 OldsmobileFat cars, skinny cars, cars are up on blocks, tough cars, sissy cars, even cars with rusty pox. We have a gathering of Oldsmobiles from all over the country at our convention center.

Oldsmobiles run in my family. My dad’s first car was a 1938 Oldsmobile coupe. (Back then in cou-pay.) He won it in a contest! I have the letter from the general manager of the Oldsmobile division announcing him as the winner. He picked the car up at a local dealership and I have a picture of that too.

From then on he bought only Oldsmobiles, a total of twelve. There was only one time he didn’t and that’s the year we took a camping trip from Michigan to the left coast. He wanted a station wagon, and Oldsmobile didn’t make a station wagon, so he bought a Dodge. As soon as that had the required mileage he traded and we were back on the Oldsmobile bandwagon.

I almost killed myself in an Oldsmobile. When I was in high school, Dad bought a sleeper. A sleeper is a car that looks mild on the outside, but runs wild. It was a 1963 Oldsmobile, two door hardtop, with a 394 cubic inch engine, but it only had a two barrel carburator. The result was great low end torque to get the car moving quickly. It didn’t have positraction rear end so only one rear wheel put the power to the ground.

On a hot day on asphalt, it would make a black line a 100 yards long. I would drag race it on Saturday night at Milan, MI. In those days the class to compete in was horsepower to weight ratio. I raced I/Stock Automatic. I won a very nice trophy one on of my trips. There are a few more stories connected with that I will save for later. The first is the hiding of the trophy and the second is getting busted by my dad for racing.

Back to almost getting killed. I wasn’t racing, I probably wasn’t even speeding because I was on my way to work. I probably was screwing around, because I smashed into a tree on a clear, dry afternoon. The left side of the car was mangled from front to my door. It crushed my left leg and cracked my noggin. I spent three months in the hospital in traction for the leg. Ninety days without getting out of bed!

Dad continued to buy Oldsmobiles until he died. He took great care of them, the last two or three had well over 150,000 miles. The last car he owned had over 150,000 miles and we donated it to a grandmother raising her grandchildren. Up in recently, I’ve seen it tooling around.

When I got married, our first car was an 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass Convertible. Nice gift from my parents. Some idiot ran a stop sign and I broadsided him. The car never was the same. I wish I had it now.

They stopped making Oldsmobiles in 2004, but I won’t miss them, I have my memories.

Mark Van Patten wrote a blog called Going Like Sixty and has been married to the same woman since 1968. We’re trying to get him to write for us again by publishing his old essays. This one is from 2009 or 10 or who knows?

Filed Under: ESSAY

In Sight/Insight

March 23, 2025 By admin

chained to computer keyboardA Facebook friend recently suffered an unspeakable family tragedy. Just as today’s news travels, news of that event was posted instantly, then rehashed and commented upon for days. Although I didn’t post any comments myself, I was drawn like a moth to flame to the online comments. Each poster professed “insight.” It became insidious, this “insight” offered. Then there was the one-upmanship played as commenters tried to establish themselves as owning superior knowledge regarding this tragic event.

Soon, as I scrolled and devoured, I began to feel something akin to voyeurism, peeking shamelessly into this family’s darkest nightmare and unspeakable grief. And, soon after, I began to feel something more profound: a deep sadness that our society has devolved into one in which every emotion and every action is fodder for the gristmill known as social media. I recognized that valuing privacy has been replaced by coveting notoriety as an admirable quality.

I took stock of my motivation for participating in social media platforms (keeping up with my grandkids’ activities, living vicariously through friend’s travels and adventures, researching what is “best” for my dog, knowing where/when my pickleball buddies were playing, and maintaining connections with distant friends and relatives). I was forced to acknowledge that my rationalization was failing miserably, ultimately admitting that I really didn’t need social media. In a moment of clarity, I closed my social media accounts and removed myself from the endless chatter and blather that I thought I needed.

According to a June 2024 article in Psychology Today, there are pros and cons of exiting the world of social media. Psychologists cited in the article state there are immediate benefits which include a newfound “sense of freedom” from constant monitoring. Further, they posit, mental health improves as anxiety and depression associated with online competition and comparison diminishes.

It’s been seven months, and I don’t miss social media at all! Instead of endless scrolling through misinformation, mean-spirited gossip and outright bullying, I FaceTime and talk more frequently with my children and grandchildren, our conversations closing the miles between us. I read more, including local online content that keeps me informed about what’s happening in my community. I personally connect with my friends through shared experiences. I sleep better and I feel more empowered and less at the mercy of forces beyond my control. Life free of social media is a full life for me.

LuAnn Winkle lives in Hilton Head, NC

Filed Under: ESSAY

Driving Nowhere

March 9, 2025 By admin

gas station in the 1960'sWhen we were really desperate to drive somewhere, anywhere, we would pry out the back seat of the Mercury to look for loose change. In the bowels of the strange brown matting beneath the seat we would find nickels, dimes, pennies, and every now and then, a precious quarter. It may not sound like much now, but gas was 32 cents a gallon in those days, so 50 cents bought us some quality time on the back roads of New England.

We could take the MGA out by the reservoir and watch the beams of light from the headlights bounce off the rows and rows of pine trees that made up the watershed. After midnight, with the top down, all we could hear was the roar of the wind and the purr of the motor. Long straight roads were our late night entertainment as we pushed the MG to see just how fast it could go. The speedometer hit sixty, seventy, eighty, and sometimes ninety before the lights of an oncoming car would force us to click off the high-beams and ease off the accelerator.

Other teenagers parked at “the plaza” and went from car to car, making up lies about who was having sex and who wasn’t, which “good girls” really weren’t good girls, and countless other topics of absolutely no importance that whiled away their time. We, on the other hand, had to be on the move. The whole point of having a car was to be in it, to be one with it, and to always, always keep moving. Could we make it to the border of the next state and back on less than half a tank of gas? It’s not as hard as it sounds in a region of small states, but it was about the adventure. We tested our driving skill and teenage luck.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see how invulnerable we thought we were. It never occurred to us that you might lose control of an Oldsmobile Starfire doing 110 m.p.h. out on the interstate. All we knew back then was that our instincts were telling us to get out on the highway and drive (Steppenwolf “Looking for Adventure” anyone?).

Whatever happened to driving nowhere? Four dollar per gallon gas in the 70s and three dollar gas today would be answers, but maybe computers and video games provide a vicarious (and safer) sense of escapism. Besides, cars have become so complex that we no longer understand how they operate, and where’s the romance in that?

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.

Filed Under: ESSAY

  • Newer Posts
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • …
  • 73
  • Older Posts

Recent Posts

  • Cereal Killers
  • TGIF Now IFIF
  • Love Is…
  • Cash Money
  • Google as Side Show

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016

Older Archives

ESSAYS
FICTION
ARTS
TRAVEL
Pre-2014

Keep up with BoomSpeak!

Sign up for BoomSpeak Email blasts!

Select list(s) to subscribe to


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact
boom_blog-icon        facebkicon_boomspk        dc06_favicon

Copyright ©2016 · DesignConcept