The Candles on the Cake Set Off the Smoke Alarm

Sunday was my 57th birthday. You might have seen the pony ride droppings around this blog and wondered as to their cause or simply mistaken them for the usual random words. As Paul Simon sings, "I hung one more year on the line. I should be depressed-my life is a mess, but I'm having a good time."

Actually, I'm more nervous than anything else. My father, whom I've devoted decades to being nothing like (and failing as sons so often do), never lived to see his 58th birthday so I'm looking up 'precedence' and exploring all of its meanings. If I've learned to acknowledge anything in recent years when peering into the mirror on workday mornings it's that, we two, do (indeed) bear a resemblance to one another.

I look at my life in terms of what I've seen change (not always for the better) and realize for my children, much of the world in which I grew up doesn't exist and they would never know of it if they didn't have a nattering and doddering ninny for a father who reminds them of it unceasingly.

I was born in the spring we elected Dwight Eisenhower to the Presidency. We were still in a shooting war in Korea and the Domino Theory was the State Department's mantra for how the world was choosing sides and was applied to all points east and west but mostly east, as in Southeast Asia, for decades, as it turned out.

I can recall John Kennedy's election to the White House, as I was in St Peter's (sic) School in New Brunswick, NJ, and his being a Roman Catholic made more of an impression than his political party. His murder always shifts me to a black and white state of mind as we mourned for three days and those of us who watched television will always remember John-John's salute.

All the radio, and my children seem to think I'm making this up, we had back then was AM and the big deal was getting a small transistor receiver as a birthday present. It would have a thin, white wire and a plastic ear piece so you could listen at night, especially Thursday nights when Bruce Morrow, "Cousin Brucie", unveiled the new Seventy-Seven WABC hit countdown. With The Beatles and all the other UK acts that crossed the ocean on the bridge they built, it was living large and the good times rolled.

For a skinny white kid in the Jersey 'burbs, historical events like Vietnam, Civil Rights and other front-burner issues were whatever was on the Huntley-Brinkley Report. "Good night, Chet. Good night, David and good night for NBC News." It seems so quaint today that we would actually gather in the living room, face the electric fire in the corner, and watch The News, always with capital letters. There were three television networks and most cities and towns had at least two daily newspapers, one in the morning and one in the evening and large format magazines like Life and Look. And what young man's fantasies weren't fructified by surreptitious glances at the pages of National Geographic Magazine? Talk about 'inquiring minds want to know'.....hubba-hubba.

When I describe the America of my youth to my children I suspect they wonder where the dinosaurs were because it really does seem that long ago to them (and to me as well, truth to tell). I can still remember we had one telephone in the house, in the kitchen, and the number was CHarter 6-1826. That's memory that could be put to better use, I know, but that's what I hang on to-and stuff like my Rutgers College student number was 601333. As if thirty-five years after graduation that might be of some use.

The later decades (the "later decades"! I could have never imagined using a phrase like that and now, seems as normal as breathing out and breathing in) rush together--being stationed in Greenland, arriving in Germany, meeting and marrying my wife, having and helping raise (by staying out of my wife's way) our children, winning the Cold War/cutting the overhead/being a Poster Child for the Peace Dividend, returning to the Land of the Round Doorknobs and everything to this very moment. It just gets going faster and faster, practically becoming one continuous memory. Still savoring all the way. Keep the pony; my ride's here.

"So God bless the goods we was given. And God bless the U. S. of A.
And God bless our standard of livin'. Lets keep it that way.
And we'll all have a good time."
-bill kenny