A quarter of a century ago, Bob Seger wrote a wonderful song about getting older. In it he noted that – back when he was young (18) – he “Felt like a million, felt like number one” … and that “I was lean and solid everywhere” … and that “My walk had purpose, my steps were quick and light” … And then, near the end, he bemoaned; “Twenty years now, where’d they go … Twenty years, I don’t know … I sit and I wonder sometimes, where they’ve gone." At that time, many of us embraced the sentiment (After all, he’s almost exactly our age = only three years older than us) = “Twenty years, where’d they go?" And now, strangely enough, for the song to ring true it would have to read, “Fifty years now … where’d they go?" (I’m sorry … 50 YEARS? What’s that you’re saying? “50 years in serving the community” is something about which a business brags! A building has had a pretty good life if it lasts for 50 years!)

It seems now – a generation-and-a-half later – after experiencing the trials and tribulation of love and loss, marriage and divorce, elation and despair, parenthood and grandparenthood, war and peace, death and birth – that the song might be our anthem of sorts. But while our minds know this, our hearts, to some extent, are finding it difficult to embrace. It seems that it just cannot be that we have lived through almost 70 years on the planet (Recall that The Beatles once sang to us that when we would be 64 we would be “loosing our heads!") and a full 50 years since our CVHS days! That time – OUR time as teenagers – is ancient history! Why, from the perspective of today’s high schoolers, our time at CVHS is as far back in history as World War I was to us! (Now just how can that be? Ugh!)

We had the same growing pains that have visited other generations; losing a couple of friends in their teens and still others in their 20s … turning from girls and boys into women and men, expanding our responsibility for our own financial situations by getting our first jobs (Though working for $.50 an hour is hardly considered to be a “job” in today’s world … in fact, along with mentioning things such as the fact that gas cost $.19 cents a gallon back then, it dates us horribly just to mention what little money we made at those jobs), learning about the world in ways that were sometimes not positive (For example, that there were poor people in America), increasing our sexual vistas (WOW, were we naive … compared to today’s kids), learning to drive, playing sports in front of crowds (Instead of the friends and relatives that watched us in middle school and elementary school), and so on.

But some things were genuinely unique about our high school time. During our years in school, the War came along - “Our War” - and it was one that would find several of our friends make the ultimate sacrifice … giving the “last, full measure of devotion," as Lincoln said it. But, at the same time, The War was unique because it found others amongst us protesting its prosecution. It wasn’t a WWII type experience … that brought the country together. It divided the nation and, even, our group. The music changed completely (The “British Invasion” happened), and suddenly listening to the radio became an international experience. We lost President Kennedy (We all remember that day, and exactly where we were when we heard), thus finding out for ourselves how life sometimes lives on a razor’s edge. Standards for dress and behavior began to vary, leading us into a sort of “whatever” age of diversity – some of which was good and some of which was bad. All sorts of personal rights expanded and contracted.

Then, when we went into the world, we lived through a time of extraordinary, rapid change – the type that the world had never seen before. For thousands of years people’s lives had changed only incrementally … the difference between one generation’s life journey and that of the next was minor. But, again, ours was unique and, in some ways, both frightening and exciting at the same time due to the rapidity of change. We were visited by the tragedies of the late ‘60s (The losses of Robert Kennedy and King and Malcom X and others) while, at the same time, we experienced the exhilaration of watching Neil Armstrong land on the moon. THE MOON!!!!!!! (When our grandparents were young, people hadn’t even flown in airplanes … and there, in our (young) lives, the moon had been conquered.) The hippie era came along, and sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll became contemporary topics … not things about which we only whispered in the dark. Politics, religion, and social norms and values all were in flux in a way that was unprecedented. “The rules” were changing, and it made our heads spin at times. Some of it was exciting and some of it was frightening!

In recent years, we have found ourselves “becoming our parents” (In the sense that we talk so very often about our latest surgeries … or our grandchildren … or who has died …). It has been more than a little bit sobering to realize that this change has come to our lives (After all, didn’t our parents just bore us to tears with their talk about this stuff?). Of course, not all of our contemporary experience is about loss and growing old – we are not completely defined by our aches and pains and losses (Of hair, for one thing). Those of us who have “made it through” to the 50th Reunion have, many of us anyway, enjoyed the exhilaration of parenthood and, now, grandparenthood. We have grown professionally and spiritually. We have embraced a time of change in ways that have opened up doors never before available to many. The women and gays amongst us in particular have been able to enjoy rights and careers and lifestyles that have been expansive and exciting … devoid of the “hiding” that so many before had to experience.

Upon reflection, we – our generation – have become a powerful force … making up a quarter of the economy, and driving politics, etc. (Now that it’s “our turn”). Here’s hoping that rather than just reminiscing and reflecting upon the past, our Reunion (And the years in the near future) can be about where we go from here. Let’s make a pact to discuss our new hobbies and, even, careers and the bright vistas that are coming up on the horizon … the chance of having great great grandchildren (Which some of us already do!) and the new challenges that we plan to/hope to embrace. Let’s make some “new, old friends” right here and now! Let’s all hope that those of us who are alone now, and who are prone to want companionship, will find “new love(s)" … either right now, or at some future point. Let us have joy and love in our hearts – for each other, and for the world in which we live. Let us not make the 50th Reunion any sort of “end game” experience … but, rather, let us vow to get together once again five (or ten) years from now, and to share still more experiences and to celebrate life’s magical mystery tour then - again!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reunions

While this 50th Reunion promises to be fun and, even, exciting in a way that we have never visited before, it is true that we have experienced many of them … every 5 years along the way … that were different and, in some ways, that morphed from one type of get-together into another and, then, into still another. They grew, these Reunions, and morphed and expanded and contracted in ways that paralleled our travels through the America of the ‘60s and ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s and, even the 21st Century. (Remember the TV program from long ago – and I’m having a senior moment here, and cannot for the life of me remember which one it was – that, at the end each week, stated, “This program is dedicated to you … the leaders of the 21st Century!"?)

Our Reunions matured as did we – like fine wine, we, of course hope.

The 5th and 10th Year Reunions were, upon reflection, kind of odd in a way. At that point, moving through our 20s, there was a sort of “competition” to be seen at those meetings. Many people came dressed to the nines (some of us “hunting," if you know what I mean!), and many of us were moved to share our (limited at that time) achievements and successes as “badges” of sorts. Much of the talk centered around our incomes … what brand of new cars and houses we had accumulated … our clothes and how good we looked … our college or military experiences … where we had been and what we had seen … and so on. And it seemed that much of the discussion was being delivered in a kind of braggartly way. I have heard this said of other reunions, by other people, and it seems that at 23 and 28 this is pretty standard fare. Not surprising that we would be a bit competitive, to some extent, as we are quintessentially Americans … and were born, raised, and matured in a society that sometimes values money and accrued “stuff” (as George Carlin would put it) very highly!

Then, 15 and 20 years out, things changed. People had kids and solid careers and were, to some extent, more contented and satisfied with their lives in a very different way. Not everybody had a great house or a great car or an impressive degree or some such thing of course, but it didn’t seem to matter as much (though we were already fighting that “midriff bulge," and, even, growing gray!). We were becoming “ourselves” in a way, and prone to be more interested in what others had to say. We began to have the sense to want to hear about the many, diversified, exciting, and expanding directions and destinations of others from our past years, and to embrace with a mature fascination each and every story. Dress-up events began to give way to the more casual, picnic-type of get-together … which often included the kids. And we moved on …

As we moved through the Reunions of the 20th – 35th years out from CVHS, we became even more comfortable with our own lives and even less prone to be comparative in our focus … but, then, another reality “reared its ugly head” = It was beginning to be more than a little vexing that we couldn’t even recognize each other! Trying not to be too rude, we had to squint (either at the person with whom we were talking or at their name tag) in order to ascertain who they were. (Of course, and I speak for myself on this one, we didn’t expect that others would have any trouble knowing/recognizing who WE were!!!!!!!) With graying hair, thinning hair (and no hair for some of us), wrinkles in evidence, and limps and waddles of different sorts … we also – most of us – had embraced the experience of dealing with even more, ever expanding waistlines. (There’s a great line in the movie “Grosse Point Blank," where Joan Cussack says that she went to her high school reunion … and that, “It was liked everybody swelled!")

Finally, these past several gatherings have been visited with quite a relaxed dynamic … which is both more realistic and more “cute” in some sense; Now, people at contemporary Reunions walk right up to each other saying something along the lines of; “Hi, I’m so-and-so, who are you?" It sounds silly, but this has been quite heart-warming in a way. We tend now to be engaged by, rather than put off by, such openness and honesty. It has made us want to work our way around the room and to find out about each and every person from 50 years ago … and to quiz them not only on the specifics of their journeys, but on the more esoteric and philosophical realizations to which they have come!

And so it goes. The years go by, and the Reunions go by, and – in some ways – we find our own lives enhanced and our paths made easier by hearing from the people of our lives in the ’66s. What will the 55th and the 60th be like? Who can tell? But, given the progress through which we have traveled, it seems as if they might be even more relaxing … that they might be even more prone to make us feel centered by interacting with the “kids” from our past … and, if we are lucky, that they include even more of those with whom we have traveled, albeit in parallel, along life’s crazy journey!

Kids Today: At CVHS and Elsewhere

Many of you have experienced a discussion that visited me a few years back (Actually, it’s been more than ten years now … how does that happen = “a couple of years” morphing into a dozen years?!!!!!!!! Sheesh, I am old …). I was discussing/debating something with my teenaged daughter (Now 28 and a Mother herself … again, how did that happen?!!!!!!). I said something like, “When I was your age …” and she cut me off and responded, without a moment’s hesitation … “Dad, you were never my age." And it gave me pause to realize that she was correct = I had never been 16 in the 21st Century. When I was 16 (When we – members of the Class of ’66 - were 16) in 1964, life in America was nothing at all like what she was experiencing.

Today’s 16 year olds were born in the year 2000. Think about that! Think about the great events of our lives, or contemporary American history, that they have not experienced in their lifetimes. 9/11 happened when they were babes in arms. They can barely remember a time when Barack Obama was not President. The Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended almost a dozen years before they were born. Something called “the Soviet Union” – such a dark, brooding, omnipresent threat to us all for much of our lives (“Those commie bastards!") – is a phrase from a history book. In fact, The Great Depression was as far back in time for us as the existence of the Soviet Union is for them. Vietnam ended 25 years before they were born, thus making it as far back in history for them as The Roaring ‘20s was for us (And they have just about as much of a clue about Vietnam as we did about the ‘20s)! To make matters seem even stranger, the Spanish American War was closer to the time frame of our lives than World War II is to theirs! And finally, just to rub salt into our wounds (Why am I doing this … to all of us?!!!!!), it might be noted that 85 years before they were born, Woodrow Wilson was President, and the U.S. had not even entered World War I … whereas 85 years before we were born, Abraham Lincoln was President and America was fighting the Civil War!!!!!!!

But there’s a lot more than “the history that they don’t know” involved in attempting to make sense of their young lives … and the experiential/understanding gap between us. All sorts of social dynamics, technological wonders, and – even – day-to-day gadgets and appliances are a part of their lives that never were even invented until we were on our way to maturity. So much of the world that we knew in our young lives is so far gone into the past that they cannot comprehend what we are talking about when we suggest … oh … for example … that there used to be things called “clothespins and clotheslines” (What were they for? Did dryers used to break down all the time?), “milk bottles," “typewriters” (You mean, like, keyboards? Not attached to computers? Why would you have a keyboard not attached to a computer?), “rotary phones” (What? You’re saying that phones were black … all hooked into the wall with wires … and that the Phone Company owned them all … even the ones in your home?), and so on.

When we were kids, only “Dick Tracy” in the comics had the ability to communicate with people while walking down the street – using his trusty wrist radio (Remember?). When the transistor radio was invented (Remember that – when we first could listen to music while holding a “Japanese transistor radio” in our hands, not plugged into the wall?), Al Capp (Who penned “Dick Tracy”) had to invent the wrist television for his character … and, today, even that exists – every kid has one. Trash compactors, automatic garage door openers, dishwashers, power windows, central heating, personal computers, smart phones, and air conditioning (Remember the summer heat in Concord … before your folks got that air conditioner … the box that sat in the window sill … and made ONE room comfortable during July and August?) are all “necessities” in their world. Almost half of them have their own TVs in their bedrooms – all color, of course (Wait … you’re saying that television used to be in black-and-white? Why?) – and there’s no longer any problem with making the colors look realistic (Remember somebody – usually Dad – fooling with the color dials when we first obtained color TVs?). They have 500 channel cable (Or satellite-generated) television … and “rabbit ears” (Recall using tin foil to make the reception better?) have passed into history … along with the fact that there used to be only three channels = ABC, NBC, and CBS. “If you don’t like what’s on … go to your room and read a book!"

Online music has replaced CDs … which, in turn, had replaced tapes (First 8 tracks, then cassettes) … which, in turn, had replaced records (Now called “vinyl” – oddly enough, this generation actually knows what that is, as it is now oh so cool – no, make that “chic” – to have vinyl … but there’s an entire generation in there, sandwiched between us and these younger kids, who do not know what records were …). And we date ourselves now when we try to explain that we used to sing … together … in groups … out loud … not choirs, but just people … singing (Remember “hootenannies” … when a couple of us would bring out guitars, tune them, and then play … and everybody would sing along?) … out loud. These kids are so used to listening to professional voices, that they are too shy to sing out loud (Something that, in our estimation I think, takes away a part of “community” that used to color life). Why listen to each other, when you can listen to the pros?

And the music played has morphed … through disco and rap and grunge and steam punk and so on. And they haven’t the slightest clue why some of us still revere Elvis – not merely because we like his music, but because he brought “rhythm and blues” to us white kids – or, even, the Beatles (A while back, some 12 year old disc jockey was heard to announce “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” as being an oldie that was sung by “Paul McCartney and the Beatles” … I am not making this up!). Let’s face it, “oldies” for them come from the ‘90s … and they think that it’s cute that a band made up of old farts called “Green Day” sings the theme song for “The Big Bang Theory," today’s number one sit-com.

And speaking of television, our “Mom-and-Pop” shows about suburban life = “Ozzie and Harriet” (The Nelsons), Rob and Laura Petry (From “The Dick Van Dyke Show” … just in case you are having a senior moment, and cannot remember …), Donna Stone (“The Donna Reed Show”), and, Jim Anderson (“Father Knows Best”) = have morphed into shows so overtly about sex and other racy issues that they would make our parents cringe. Of course, we might very well have loved to be able to watch such shows in our quiet, conservative time, but it just wasn’t in the cards. We watched the Nelsons and the Petrys and the Stones and the Andersons deal with such complex issues as mowing the lawn, having two dates for the Prom, not having any date for a Friday (Which brings up another point – whatever happened to the simple days of actually asking a gal out for a date, rather than texting her for a “hookup?"), and so on … earth shattering stuff! But it entertained us and, to some extent, made us feel rather safe in the Concord of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

They all have not merely cell phones, but personal computers, lap tops, ear pods, all of the android accessories and – the video camera having gone off into history – the ability to make videos and/or take pictures with their smart phones and to send them into space, up to a satellite, and back to anybody on the planet. Even beepers and flip phones and CD players are gone from their lives – “ancient technologies” all. They eat 50 percent of their meals out at of the home (As do all of us now), many of them shop for food (Paying outrageous prices) at convenience stores … because … well … they are convenient! They live in three or four car families (A huge percentage of them having their own cars – remember when that was such an oddity … when three or four gals/guys would get together on a Friday night, “cruise Creek” on North Main, and fawn over the guy/gal who had their very own car?), and there are now more registered vehicles in the State of California than there are human beings. Mom is not at home for most of them (As she was for most of us), not just because two incomes are necessary to make ends meet but also because women have careers! Statistically speaking, only one or two meals per week are attended by everyone in the family in today’s America – something that we experienced every, single night.

They hear more about sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll in any given week (Just on the TV and online) than we heard in our entire pre-graduation lives. Of course, that isn’t necessarily a good thing – being an old fart, I sometimes wish that they could experience more years of the “innocence” that we engaged … before we learned about such things. (In what ways are their lives enhanced by knowing so much before they are even in their teens?) In some ways, they know much more about “the world out there” than we did, given the proliferation of television and the web in their lives – in the barber shop, at the hospital, in the airport, on the train, on a plane – and, yet, they are not as prepared for the challenges of being adults as we were.

Somehow they have missed something. Over 10% of them graduate from high school not knowing how to read … or how to balance a check-book … or how to change a flat tire. They don’t read newspapers, and – as a retired political scientist I can tell you for certain – they know far less than we did (or do) about important issues and current events in America and the world. Some of them go into the work-a-day world (And into the voting booth) now holding impossibly naïve and simplistic (Not to mention unfounded) ideas about life in America and the world in general. (Here’s a serious question: Should we envy them their smart phones and personal computers and cars and clothes … or should we be very, very happy that we had to wait for, and work for, such things?)

While much of this is funny and some of it is merely interesting, we older folks tend to wonder if it is really true that these kids have it easy. Perhaps, we were much luckier than they. In our innocence, somehow, we had a brighter outlook before we became adults … and in our expectations we had an easier road to hoe. To find “fulfillment” was, perhaps, far simpler for us to accomplish … given that we didn’t expect so much.

Sixteen. Wow! What a glorious time for them. Yet, aren’t we, in some ways, pretty glad that we aren’t dealing with it anymore?!!!!!!!!!

Today’s Concord: Another Planet(?)!

Where is the Concord of our youth? We expected change – after all, change is the central, ongoing, running reality of the lives of all of us in our generation (As noted elsewhere) – but we thought that Concord itself, being a suburb and all, would remain pretty constant. We thought that those of us who left to go off into the outer world (Which is a majority of us from the Class of ’66), would be able to “come home” and to find the same, logically organized (around the major roads upon which we learned to drive = Clayton Road, Concord Boulevard, Willow Pass, and so forth), well-known “town” in which we grew up. We expected (As kids probably always do, to some extent) that the same calm and quiet, the same lack of traffic, the same gentle lanes and tree covered neighborhoods (and so forth) would last forever. Wow, were we wrong! Concord is a “city” now – has been for quite some time – with some of the problems and dynamics associated with such entities … and, unfortunately, at a loss to provide some of the “small town charm” which graced our youth.

To begin with, all of the roads flowing into the CVHS area (Aside from coming over from Railroad Avenue in Pittsburg on Kirker Pass – which remains pretty much the same), are completely different. Highway 4 (Which we called Willow Pass Road … because it was just a “road” …) is now a four lane freeway. This has been built to allow the four billion people who now live out East of Antioch to drive in to work each day. Remember Brentwood? No? Don’t remember it as a separate place? That’s probably because in our day the population there was about 12 or so. Now, there are so many people living there that they have enough kids to populate two, complete high schools, they have a bunch of middle/elementary schools, and they have malls, malls, malls. Brentwood is as big as Chicago! (Make no mistake, it’s a wonderful place to live and to raise children … just like Concord was/is … but its size is just breathtaking!) If you get off of the freeway from 80 onto either Willow Pass or Concord Blvd., and drive East, you pass under another, entirely different freeway (Hwy. 242)!!!!? Coming in from Ignacio Valley Road, which used to have a large break in it - between Concord and Pleasant Hill … where nobody lived but crows and mice - you pass endless housing and (again) strip mall after strip mall adjacent to a three-wide, major artery. And, finally, coming in on Treat Lane “the back way” (You know … “out in the country” – where there used to be enough walnut trees to explain why the next city is called “Walnut Creek”) finds you on still another three-wide artery. Looking up “lane” in the dictionary, you find; “A narrow road … especially in a rural area." NOT!!!!!!!!!!!

Way, way back – in the ‘70s – downtown Concord morphed into a place that looks like a major city, with towering professional buildings that make it impossible to see the mountain … which we used to be able to see from just about anywhere in the town (“TOWN!"). And numerous landmarks – they are landmarks to us, at any rate – are gone or have evolved into something different. The Enean Theater, where we saw “Old Yeller” and “Davy Crockett," has changed into first an X-rated theater, and now, into a church (Now there’s some irony for you!). Hilson’s - where we bought Senior jackets and letter sweaters and cheerleading outfits and so forth – is now a bookstore! Shakey’s Pizza Parlor is a massage parlor. And A & W is a Chinese restaurant. Driving down Clayton Road, it’s hard not to stop and ask directions, as nothing seems quite right …

And speaking of Clayton Road - so named a century ago because it was the road that one used to get from Concord to a separate place called Clayton – there used to be several large breaks in it. For one thing, there was a break between Concord and still another separate place called “El Monte." Remember when people gave El Monte as a separate destination … where you might meet (Perhaps at the still existing “No Tell Motel” … LOL), get some food (At Barney’s Hickory Pit, for example) and, even, live (As in, “I live in El Monte”)? Where El Monte’s small group of buildings ended, you drove out into “the country." After a while, you drove past CVHS, which was located in the middle of a huge field, with nothing around it. And then, finally, you approached a small village called Clayton (now an incorporated city, with its own police force and all) … comprised of The Clayton Club, the Post Office, the Pioneer Inn, and … and … well … that was pretty much it. Today, there’s just no break at all – not between Concord and El Monte, not between El Monte and CVHS, and not between CVHS and Clayton. It’s all one big mass … and people don’t even know what you mean when you say “El Monte” (Try it – try asking a teenager anywhere in the area today … where El Monte is!).

Driving East from Walnut Creek, you used to see a huge smoke stack on the North side of the road (Ignacio Valley Road), with a small cropping of identical houses … older houses … that constituted the “company town” that surrounded the Cowell Cement Factory there. I remember that Norm Van Brocklin lived there, and when you went to see him you were struck by the numerous squares in the “town’s” sidewalk that would celebrate safe working months for the company. As if to underwrite how dangerous a cement factory could be (Deadly explosions – caused by the ignition of cement dust in the air – happened regularly), these squares would say things like, “No Deaths … November, 1943." Gone is the stack, gone are the houses, and everything has been replaced by the ever-present “housing development” that now comprises pretty much all of the “used-to-be-vacant” areas within the city.

Further East on Clayton Road (Close to it, at any rate) was the school. CVHS, when we were freshmen, stood alone in a field on the South side of Clayton Road. There was a path to the school in that field, worn down by hundreds of kids walking kiddie-corner … from Ayers Road to CVHS. On Alberta Way, there was only one other building – the sleezy bar at the corner of Clayton Road. Today, of course, you cannot see the school from Clayton Road. Not only have houses been built all along Alberta Way on either side, but there’s a huge shopping center blocking the view. It’s now possible to drive down Clayton Road and completely miss CVHS! When one reaches Clayton – the town – one finds a “downtown” area (not just The Clayton Club), including numerous restaurants and shopping areas, surrounded by miles and miles of housing. The population of Clayton is 11,500, half of what Concord sported as a population when we were kids. It’s possible to get “lost in Clayton” today, a positively preposterous idea way back when …

The good news – no, really it’s the great news – about today’s Concord is that two things have remained pretty much constant in the half century since we went to school. First, unless you lived in Cowell back then, and your house has now vanished, you can pretty much go to your old neighborhood and find your old house … and the houses of your friends. “Going back” to find your old house can be just an excellent thing to do. The experience puts you into a mood replete with fondness and comfort and calm, and swimming in revere … thinking about learning to ride a bike on this street, about walking to school on that street, and/or about how your first boyfriend or girlfriend or close pal lived in that house over there. It’s kind of a magical experience, one that is particularly engaging to the “romantic” type.

The second consistency from that era is the school itself. A few years back, it was possible to go to CVHS and be more than a little depressed by its look. That is, the grass was gone from everywhere, there was trash in evidence here and there, and you got a “run down” feeling about the place. Now, things have changed completely. A few years back there, “The Senior Lawn” degenerated into being just a piece of dirt under and old oak tree. Now, that dirt has been replaced by cement, a smaller lawn, and a cool combination seating place and (short) granite wall. Everything has been painted and new, colorful (red, white, and blue of course) tables and chairs dot the Quad. The gym has all sorts of “Championship Season” banners and on its walls, and celebrations of “The Best” (kid) at this or that sport that go back forever. Looking up at them, one sees the names of numerous old pals (All boys, of course, as the girls “best” banner remembrances only go back a couple of decades). The football field has lights, it has an artificial turf and a state-of-the-art track around it, there are separate training facilities here and there (Three classrooms in F Building have been combined into a large weight room), there’s a softball stadium for the girls (A couple of them, actually), there are soccer fields, and there’s just generally a more history-conscious mood in the air. Adding just an extraordinary flair to it all, there are several building-sized murals of Eagles!

CVHS has been “resurrected” to some extent, and makes you feel good to embrace it. It appears that it is still a fine place to go to school … a fine environment within which kids might mature and move from being girls and boys into being women and men.

In a sense, we have lived through the most ever-changing, dynamic (the good news), and unsettling (the bad news) of lives in American history. We began together in the early ‘60s – not the time of change and revolution and yes, even, violence that it would become in the later years of the decade – living a pretty simple and easy life. There was little crime, no gangs, very few degenerating neighborhoods (What passed for “run down” in the Concord of our youth was pretty tame, upon reflection), and little in the way of the type of stress that either kids or parents now experience (Like the ‘old farts’ that we now have become, our kids have sometimes found us noting that, “We didn’t have something called ‘stress’ in our day!"). We were able to grow up in elementary and intermediate schools (When did they become “middle schools” anyway … why does everything have to change?) without worrying about the walk or ride to school or, even, about going out on the street in the darkness of a summer’s evening. We didn’t know it then, but we would look back upon those days many, many times and find them to be perfectly “charmed” … as were our lives, pretty much. (Of course, we weren’t dancing in the streets every day then … but, as we look back, things did seem to be quite a bit more straight-forward … our roles – everybody’s roles – in life seemed more well defined and consistent.)

Once we were “out” in the world, what we embraced was “something completely different” (as Monte Python might say) from Concord, from CVHS, and from what we expected. The late ‘60s, now something that kids only read about in books, became a tumultuous era … that is still echoing in the American psyche. Boys (and men) grew their hair longer and longer, until any male sporting the crew cut of the 60’s was either a police officer or just back from The War! Facial hair, gone from the American experience for several generations (Recall that in our time men sporting full beards were only seen in decades old photos … from the Spanish-American and Civil War eras!), came back with a vengeance. Women’s skirts were hiked up and, then, hiked up again, making the eyebrows of our elders raise and the pulse of the young boys and men quicken. Remember the “Skirt Length Rule” at CVHS? When questioned by a teacher about the length of your skirt, you had to get down on your knees … in order to see if, in that position, it touched the ground … which it had to? (Can you just imagine that type of requirement being implemented today?) And from the teased, bee hive hairdo, came the Joan Baez-like long, straight hair look.

The beginnings of “Women’s Liberation” movement began (Not that feminism was new … it was several centuries old by that time … but it wasn’t at all main stream until our era) and girls and women burned their bras in protest of their treatment as second class citizens. We boys/men learned that women were paid less – far, far less – than their male counterparts for doing the same jobs in America, that our Mothers could be 60 years old and still not have any “credit history," because everything was held in the names of our Dads, and that while there had been some girls at CVHS (A very small number) who participated in sports, the whole thing had been rigged in the favor of the boys. Furthermore, and I remember Margaret Eseltine being the first girl (at 17) to point this out to me, at CVHS there had been a “Senior Men’s Honor Society” and a “Senior GIRLS Honor Society." How strange … that such differential treatment was allowed and, to some extent, not even noticed! It gave us on the male side a gazillion new things to think about; how were we “supposed to behave” toward girls and women? What were “the new rules?"

There was a lot of negativity bombarding us at that time. There were more political assassinations, protests about all kinds of issues, and major cities burned, beginning with L.A. Having been pretty sheltered in our Concord upbringings, we learned how America had been taken from the indigenous population, how our human experience was polluting the environment, how farm workers drew no benefits of any kind while working in the heat to pick our fruits and vegetable, and a host of other issues. (We thought that we had received an excellent education at CVHS … so how was it that we had missed all of this?) Poverty, ignorance, disease, racism, war, pestilence, and ecological issues surfaced – and we middle class, suburban kids had to try to make sense of it all. Some of these late ‘60s issues rang true, and made us think … but some of them seemed to be exaggerated to some extent. The pattern of our lives, it appeared, was going to be an ever-changing confrontation with the past, and different, alternative futures.

Of course, the late ‘60s weren’t all tinted by such issues, some of heavy moment and others rather frivolous. It wasn’t all dark and foreboding. A man walked on the moon. The music got even better. We became far, far freer to express ourselves in terms of dress and grooming standards. Color entered into our clothing choices (Looking back at pictures of us on campus in ’66, it appeared that we were all dressed the same – as if we went to some prep school of sorts), we no longer had to wear coats and ties and skirts and blouses to go on a plane trip (Remember that? Remember “dressing” for an airplane ride?), and we entered an era wherein to buy a small, German or Japanese car (Remember when “Made in Japan” was a joke?) was not only acceptable, but the right choice for something called “the environment” (Still another word/concept that was new!).

Then, the ‘70s came along, and the clothes got even crazier/sillier/more fun/more strange (Depending upon one’s point of view). Men wore silk shirts and bell bottoms (What the hell? Were we all joining a British rock band?) and women’s skirts got still shorter … and revealing … yet, at the same time, women were freed to wear pants (Couldn’t wear anything but dresses, blouses, and skirts at CVHS) and unisex attire came into vogue. High heels were no longer “mandatory," and women could, equally, wear sandals or flats or athletic shoes, even to semi-formal events. Disco entered into the culture, and the strobe light (Later to be found bad for us … along with eggs, milk, and red meat) became a staple. By the end of that decade, we were already saying that music had “degenerated” and that there was “nothing like what we had in the ‘60s!" On the back of the pill, the sexual revolution expanded even further, with the old fashioned norms against pre-marital sex going by the wayside (For many … but not for everyone, of course).

All of this was either exciting or scary … but it colored our lives with what would be a long-standing theme; change, change, change … in every direction, all of the time. (Again, some good/very good, some bad/very bad, and some just plain strange …) In the ‘70s we also had the gas crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, Watergate, and, after ten years, the end of the Vietnam War. And there was cool stuff too = Several contemporary American “institutions” began … Saturday Night Live and Monday night football. It was, to be sure, a mixed bag of an era. And at its end, we were left wondering, what next!

In the ‘80s, the negative ideas about the military and police officers had largely changed direction … and the “Reagan Revolution” came along. (There was good news and bad news there too.) The Challenger crashed, we had still another major, U.S. President-driven scandal (Iran-Contra), and the “progress” that had been brought about with respect to sexual liberation (Again, not everybody saw it that way) ran into the new era of worrying about STDs. Gay rights, something opposed by a huge majority of Americans in our youth, began to be “no big deal” to millions. The old Vermont saying, “I don’t care what people do in the privacy of their own homes … just as long as they don’t do it out in the street and scare the horses” became the perspective of a majority of Americans on “the gay question!"

In the ‘90s, we experienced an era of bi-polar politics and a scary engagement with the beginnings of the degeneration of the middle class. Our parental formula found us with (almost all of) our Moms at home, being “housewives," and – yet – the family was able to make it on one (Dad’s) income. As housing prices soared, and income stagnated, we found that “the American Dream” wasn’t necessarily going to take care of us (Still another “changing of the rules” was that there now had to be two incomes in a family in order to afford a house … or, we had to borrow money from Mom and Dad to get a down payment – were we still “under their wings?"). But, as with other eras, there was the positive, bright side of things. There was the acceptance of the post-60s hair/dress ideas (Now long hair, short hair, dressing to the nines, dressing down whenever you wanted to and other things allowed us more freedom). While there had to be two incomes to afford what our parents had afforded on just one, it meant that women were more and more accepted in the work force, and given – finally – the chance to have their own careers, credit lines, control over their personal lives, and so forth (Something that made our Mothers jealous … HA!!!!!!!!). A concern for the environment became mainstream, along with other, formerly “racy” or “revolutionary” ideas. All of these concerns began to take more of a backseat, however, as our kids grew up and we became focused upon our own families. The pace of change seemed to slow a bit (Thank heaven – after losing our tethers to some extent for several decades there).

Since the turn of the century (Now doesn’t that sound odd? – for all of our lives, “the turn of the century” referred to the turn into a different century!), change has come more rapidly again … and the “tumultuous ‘60s” have seemed to be revisited. We experienced 9/11 (After thinking that the most powerful, change-in-perspectives event of our lives had occurred on November 22nd, in 1963, along came perhaps something of even greater moment), and that made the entire world appear differently. Iraq became America’s longest War – replacing Vietnam - and, depending upon how you count the length of its prosecution, Afghanistan surpassed that!

We have a Black President, a new health care system (Championed by some, troublesome to others), women in combat in the military, much more diversity in evidence pretty much everywhere (Just take a look at a few minutes of TV commercials, and reflect upon the different faces and cultures in evidence … which were not in evidence in our youth), women in powerful political roles, openly gay people in politics, and a host of other conscious-expanding, ‘60s-like changes. As ever, not all of this is embraced by everybody … but it’s today’s America – far, far, far different from that of Concord in the ‘60s.

Whatever the future brings, we seem to be destined to be the generation that has had to grapple – and may have to in the future - with the greatest set of changes and morphing and evolving of any in history!