Boomer Journey…

This is a subject burning a hole in what’s left of my brain.

The E-Zombie Apocalypse…

You heard right – or did you even hear me?

We’ve turned away from each other in great numbers, deeply in love with our cell phones – which has become a global obsession. The forgotten human race. This social phenomenon has invaded our homes, offices, shopping malls, movie theatres, county fairs, road trips, airliners, car shows, public parks, afternoon tea schedules, soccer games, and anywhere else humans gather.

You don’t see dogs, cats and other pets mindlessly staring at cell phones. They greet each other, sniff each other’s posteriors for identification, and hang together without much conversation. They share in a bone, chase cats (or mice), engage in mental telepathy, make eye contact, and chase one another across the yard. They do what human beings long did until the invention of the Smart Phone. And we refer to them as dumb animals. I am beginning to think we are the dumb animals.

I had a flip phone until 2012 when a business associate saw me holding one in my hand. He asked me when I was going to get a Smart Phone. “A what?” I asked. He hauled out his Smart Phone and strongly suggested I get with the times. I felt like a cave man. A non-conformist. I immediately went out and bought one from Verizon.

Fourteen years later, I have to wonder what the hell what I was thinking. Did I invest in a Smart Phone to fit in, or did I do it to fend off boredom on the toilet? The purchase of a Smart Phone was probably one of the most foolish things I’ve ever done because I am caught up in the E-Zombie Apocalypse. I am now a member of the completely clueless, mindless, personal, isolating, narcissistic form of entertainment. I think Smart Phone is a way to avoid people and those things we just don’t want to do – like housecleaning, paying bills, and engaging in conversation.

For such a connected society – we’re so very disconnected.

Whether I am sitting on a sofa in my family room or at lunch with a friend – I am always staring at a the back of a cell phone. Chatting via an electronic device isn’t socializing. It is a system of avoidance. Words on a screen or perhaps a video call where you’re not even breathing the same air.

What the hell is that?

Some will text us and say, “Call Me…” and I get my kickers in a wad. “Call You?!?!” I think to myself in a rage. But seriously, texting is one-sided conversation – rarely two-way – because our thoughts change with fluid precision. It is a form of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) where you will say something completely missed by your chat mate. They’re thinking, “Did you even read what I just said?”

This is boned, folks…

We’re big on the word “disconnect” these days. It is in our subconscious all the time because we are disconnected – lost in an empty world of cell phone and laptop chatter. When I fly across this country, it’s hard to miss the E-Obsession. People sit anxiously with laptops and cell phones in their laps, “We’ve just passed through 10,000 feet – it is safe to use your electronic devices at this time…”

Are you kidding me? By the time flight attendants have been seated and engines have spooled to takeoff rated thrust, tray tables are down and laptops are already open. Wheels are up and we’re still stuck in this sea level obsession. Given an in-flight emergency and evacuation, people would be going out the emergency exits texting friends about the plane crash and, “Hold it, Debbie, gotta grab a selfie with the smoldering wreckage. Will send you a text!”

This is how sick we have become. You cannot go anywhere without stepping around some idiot grabbing a selfie before stepping into a fountain or in front of a bus. This sure beats the pants off of One Hour Photo Finishing. Grab it and text it – yesterday.

The late comedian and philosopher, George Carlin, commented about this phenomenon when we had one hour photo finishing – or a clunky VHS video camera on our shoulder. Gotta grab the family at Disney World, beginning with boarding the plane and getting seated. Carlin punctuated why would you want to a memory that just happened a minute ago?! You just saw it!!! Are we really THAT narcissistic that we need images of ourselves – now?

Praying to the Great God Verizon…

As much as I want to be optimistic about our future, I stand challenged. I can sit here at a PC observing human behavior, wondering how we got here. However, the masses have to believe there’s a problem in the first place.

Empty Promise – “Honey, I will do better…”

Few airports across the United States can claim operation longer than Southern California’s Hollywood Burbank Airport. What’s more – few others can claim as many different names as this suburban Los Angeles airport, located in the East end of the San Fernando Valley in the heart of the neighboring motion picture industry.

Hollywood Burbank Airport, a favorite mode of transportation with the studios, is Burbank convenient, with its share of limos and celebrities boarding private high speed business jets across the field from the passenger terminal every day. Those of us north of the Hollywood hills love this airport for its convenience.

When it opened in 1930, “BUR” was known as United Airport and held the name until 1934 when it was renamed the Union Air Terminal. At the onset of World War II, the name was again changed – this time to the Lockheed Air Terminal, with the huge presence of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s manufacturing facility on the site. The name was retained until 1967 when the airport was officially renamed Hollywood-Burbank Airport.

Not short for new ideas, Burbank Airport experienced another identity crisis – renamed Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport in 1978. If you think this was the end of the name game, you’re naive. In 2003, the powers that be changed the name again to Bob Hope Airport after the well-known actor and comedian. It kept the name legally though the name changed back to Hollywood-Burbank Airport in 2017. To date – this name remains.

When Burbank Airport opened in 1930, aviation was in its infancy – with Boeing and United Air Lines working together to get this airport off the ground. It took the collective efforts of business and government to get a site selected that was optimum for flying, with predictable winds, and a convenient location. In those days, Burbank Airport was out in the country among citrus groves and rich farmland. Movie studios were also in their infancy, ready to take advantage of the growing aviation industry.

Burbank Airport opened as United Airport on Memorial Day Weekend in 1930 amid much fanfare that included an air show, with dope and fabric biplanes and a handsome new terminal in Spanish Revival architecture. The original terminal’s footprint remains today – with a convenient wraparound entrance for easy access. At the time, flying was a luxury and for those who dared to leave the ground.

Burbank’s airport in the 1930s. This footprint remains today.

By 1939, United Air Lines, Western Airlines, and Trans World served BUR with sixteen daily departures – with Lockheed banging out aeronautical machines for the war effect in the 1940s. As the war wound down, Lockheed continued to produce commercial aircraft for the airlines – including the Constellation and Electra.

As flying became more doable for the masses, this humble little airport began to hum to where more and more travelers looked to the airlines instead of the railroads. The roar of radial piston engines rattled the windows of neighboring residents.

Jet travel came to Burbank in the late 1960s with Boeing 727 and 737, and Douglas DC-9 service to points in the West, with even greater distances as technology advanced and the world grew smaller. United Air Lines began serving Burbank with wide-body Boeing 767 jets to Chicago.

Burbank’s reach became unlimited.

I flew out of Burbank for the first time in 1990. A buddy was dropping me off for a Christmas flight to Tennessee when I noticed a familiarity about the Burbank terminal. “Isn’t this where Steve Douglas of My Three Sons worked?” I thought to myself. With Lockheed’s presence at Burbank in those days, it all made sense.

I’ve been flying in and out of Burbank for 36 years. The coming changes to Burbank stir a lot of emotions considering this century-old terminal building has been greeting me for the better part of four decades. Hollywood Burbank Airport is century-old inner-city airport with short runways and hair-raising approaches with intense thrust reverse and hot brakes. You land to the East and pilots jump on the binders – turning directly into the gate.

A new state-of-the-art Hollywood Burbank Airport terminal is coming fast, well away from the runways that make people nervous. The new terminal has been a long time coming – with endless disputes between governmental bodies on how to grow the airport. Although I will miss the existing terminal – the new terminal is an important advance in terms of safety and convenience. Travelers will love this new facility.

To the existing Burbank terminal – I bid you farewell – you will be missed.

The new Hollywood Burbank Airport terminal will be state-of-the-art – yet with old fashioned airstairs and ramps that enable you see the aircraft you are boarding. Because Southern California enjoys sunshine most of the time, a little occasional rain won’t hurt anyone. I will miss the nostalgic terminal.

After much debate between the Airport Authority, the city of Burbank, the Transportation Security Administration, and Burbank residents, in November 2007 it was decided that construction of a new $8 million to $10 million baggage screening facility for Terminal B is legal, considering the anti-growth limitations placed on the airport. The facility will house a $2.5-million explosive detection system, used for the automatic detection of explosives within checked luggage.^[22]

In June 2014, a $112 million Regional Transportation Center opened. The 520,000-square-foot (48,310-square-meter) center at Hollywood Way and Empire Avenue was also built to withstand a major earthquake while serving as an emergency “nerve center.” The industrial-looking hub with a red steel roof will be adorned by 16, three-story art panels. Solar panels generating 1.5 megawatts of electricity will also be added to its roof. A nearby parking garage was built to handle more than 1,000 cars, while traffic lights have been reworked around the airport.^[23]

Time is the darnedest element.

I mean – does it really exist?

As mankind has evolved, we’ve found there is this 365-day journey we take around the sun, which is identified as one year. Every four years, we add a day to February to get 366 days in that year. Our months are broken up into 30 or 31 days…

Except February…

Sure…

Why February I ask? And who decided?

We have a 24-hour clock, with the extra added attraction of Daylight Savings Time (DST) to add to the confusion. People are worn out with the time change every spring and fall. One little old hour. It screws us up, especially if we forget to change the clock. In the spring, we lose an hour. In the fall – we get it back.

WTH?

For one thing, Daylight Savings Time is but an illusion. We’re not saving daylight – we’re relocating it. Light at Dusk. Dark at Dawn.

Well, what the hell is that? So, farmers can have one additional hour of soil tilling, planting, and harvesting? Works for them. It ain’t working for the rest of us. Makes more sense for them to rise at dawn before the weather gets hot. Because these folks enable us to eat, we’ve no right to complain.

Splain Daylight Savings to me. What are we really saving here? Children head to school in the dark – but get to play longer when school lets out. That’s of little comfort when they get hit by a car enroute to school or the bus stop in the darkness of dawn by someone late for work.

“Oh, sorry kid….didn’t see you…”

It is true no one invented time. Time is an element of the universe. Earth rounds the sun. Our sun rounds the galaxy. Our galaxy cruises the cosmos. Call this a vast cosmos metropolis. Consider this over your morning coffee – we’re never in the same place from moment to moment. Does anyone really know how fast we are moving through the solar system and the cosmos?

We’re always in motion at dizzying speed.

Mankind has developed a system of keeping time in order to chart a schedule for each day, month, and year. It is surely true man created a system of timekeeping in order to keep track of this thing called time. It can be traced back to the Sumerians and Egyptians who brought us the 24-hour day some 3,000 years ago. These folks were pretty smart people void of computers and the internet.

Now stay with me on this.

Sundials were a clever means of tracking daylight via the sun’s shadow, which makes you wonder how that worked with the changing seasons. Another system of time keeping was the Water Clock, which was a means of tracking time when the sun went down. And yeah – I don’t get it. Mechanical “tick-tock” clocks came along in the 14th century in order to give us more precision timekeeping around the clock.

The swinging pendulum showed up in the 1600s for an even more precision approach to measure time. It becomes even more complex when you consider the 24 time zones, which were conceived to chart time across the globe. Where I am completely lost is the International Date Line, which makes me want to ask friends in Australia and New Zealand what time it is there, to which they answer, “You bloody bloke, it’s 3 am!!!”

With all this time chatter out of the way, boomers are more interested in the “how did we get here so quickly?” part. Time is a physical fact. Our perception of time is as unique as we are. When you were a kid in school, time moved at a snail’s pace. We watched the clock, waiting for recess. When we were entering junior high, didn’t graduation from high school seem an eternity away? How about sitting in Social Studies or Math, watching the clock, waiting for the bell?

Bowie, Maryland’s Somerset Elementary School – circa 1962. The future was ours, with the promise of future. We really have changed the world around us.

We graduated from high school and college with feelings of sadness – and promise. The future was ours to have and to hold. We had not yet been adults; with the responsibilities our parents had. For most of us, our parents had been through The Great Depression and a world war. We didn’t know the world was going around.

So, here we are, with most of our parents gone, wondering what happened to time. The eldest of us are pushing 80, with those of us to follow cresting 70. Boomers have little reason to lament. For those of us still here, we’ve been handed Life – the precious air we breathe, the sunlight, a rumble of thunder, the sound of kids playing in the street, the rustle of fall leaves soon upon us.

Grateful for the life we’ve been handed – always hoping for a better tomorrow.

When you’ve been walking this apple for as long as most of us, you’ve witnessed a lot of change and growth in a lifetime. Good constructive growth is a wonderful thing when it is for good. Suburban sprawl was a good idea in the wake of World War II, when returning Veterans needed home and hearth for their families. They also needed safe and stable communities to raise children.

Responsible developers planned and built well thought out communities that have prospered and remained nice places to live. Others haven’t fared so well. Success or failure has depended largely upon local government as well as community standards and responsible homeowners. Despite the best intentions of developers, some communities have turned into suburban slums while others have experienced uncontrolled growth to where they’re no longer tolerable places to live.

I cannot think of a better example of runaway growth than Arlington, Virginia across the Potomac River from Washington where growth has turned a once “small town” suburb into a congested metropolis within a metropolis. The treelined streets I grew up with more than 60 years ago have become concrete and glass walls beginning at Rosslyn stretching for miles out to Clarendon and Ballston.

I remember a different post-war Arlington.

Close into Washington in the heart of Arlington, my grandfather took me to the Royal Lee Delicatessen for a burger, then a root beer float at the soda bar in Drug Fair. I was introduced to the English Muffin by my grandfather at the Arva Motel restaurant long before it became a Day’s Inn.

My little hand was placed in his as we walked the streets of Arlington. We took long walks to nearly everywhere in Arlington from Courthouse out to Ballston. Being a man of faith, he’d take me to a number of churches along the way. My grandmother would take us to the Safeway and the Lee Super Market. Grocery boys bagged our purchases and would even bring them to the apartment.

Bergman’s Laundry would roll up in front of our apartment building to deliver dry cleaning. Whenever I see a classic Checker Marathon taxicab, I think of Arlington and our rides to the doctor’s office or Kann’s Department Store in Clarendon. J.C. Penney’s was but a store front in the heart of Clarendon along Wilson Boulevard.

My how times have changed.

In those days, you could walk the streets and visit with local merchants. There was room to breathe, and it seemed everyone knew my grandparents. My grandfather, retired police Lieutenant Paul W. Proctor, who spent a career with the Metropolitan Washington Police Department, and later White House Police (now Secret Service). He served under several administrations, wrapping up with Harry Truman in 1947 when a heart attack ended his career. My grandparents retired to Arlington to a two-bedroom apartment made possible by the Federal Housing program enacted at the cusp of the 1940s. This program created housing for the growing federal workforce.

In those days, Arlington was still a small town cradled against the Arlington National Cemetery and Fort Myer. The first sign of urban growth in 1955 was the River Place high-rise apartments overlooking the Potomac and Washington. I the years to follow, high-rise apartment buildings started popping up all over Arlington County.

Rosslyn was still a small town as was Clarendon and Ballston, which were more inner-city neighborhoods than suburban communities. Because the Rosslyn-Clarendon-Ballston corridor along Wilson Boulevard was prime real estate adjacent to Washington, growth was inevitable, with developers lining up to cop the spoils.

Rosslyn, Clarendon and Ballston were streetcar stops along Wilson prior to the 1960s. As the Metro transit system took hold, growth became a runaway – exploding into high-rises and office complexes. Quiet residential neighborhoods and store fronts were transformed into miles of glass and concrete. The buildings and storefronts I knew as a child are gone today. Ironically, some remain, including a Little Tavern Hamburgers building turned pizza joint on Wilson Boulevard.

Of course, the area’s chamber of commerce will sing praises over the Wilson corridor’s growth. However, I suspect local residents who’ve been there a lifetime will tell you a different story. I live in Los Angeles. Washington, D.C. traffic prompts me to kiss the LA. concrete when I return home from Washington. The difference is – Los Angeles is vast where you can drive 100 miles and still be in L.A. Washington gets mighty tight in all directions.

The U.S. Marine Corps Iwo Jima Memorial erected in 1954, with River Place rising in the background overlooking the Potomac and Washington. The Rosslyn skyline today dwarfs the once dominate River Place.

I suspect most of you have watched your communities evolve from rural to metropolitan since the 1950s. The mid-20th century was a period of unprecedented growth as the demand for housing and commercial space grew. Every metropolitan area will have a similar story.

I grew up in Bowie, Maryland, some 26 miles from downtown Washington. The Bowie area was very remote in the late 1950s when home builder William J. Levitt got word the Belair Estate was up for sale between Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis – with a vast amount of acreage prime for home building. In the wake of a fierce bidding frenzy with other developers and a lawsuit, Levitt motored from New York to rural Maryland and handed the Woodward family the cash. The “Belair at Bowie” community was the result, breaking ground in 1959, with model homes opening in October of 1960.

The four-bedroom Levitt colonial – circa 1961 – under construction in the Somerset neighborhood of Belair At Bowie. Levitt completed an average of 30 homes a day, with more than 9,000 homes built from 1960-70.

In the decade to follow, Levitt erected some 9,000-10,000 homes between Bowie/Huntington proper and the intersection of US Route 50 and Route 3/301 and the grand opening of the John Hanson Highway between Annapolis and Washington. He could not have chosen a better place to build his Belair At Bowie. As you might have suspected, Bowie evolved from a very isolated rural community to a bustling suburbia in the decades to follow.

What about the community where you grew up?

My apologies for my absence this summer – a busy one. My son, Jake, age 18, graduated from high school and is headed to college this month. You could call this Boomer Journey 2.0. I have three grown kids and six grandkids two thirds of a continent away. Parenthood began all over again at 52 in 2008.

As long as we’re on the subject of parenthood, can anyone explain the obsession boomers have with “The Brady Bunch” television series that aired from 1969-74 on ABC, with a succession of “Brady” sequels, including a movie, in the decades to follow? The Brady phenomenon just won’t go away and that’s okay with us. It makes us feel warm in our childhood memories – rich with Friday night recollections.

I recall a chilly September evening in 1969 when “The Brady Bunch” debuted on ABC. We were at Walter Reed Army Hospital visiting my stepbrother, Ken, who had been seriously wounded in Vietnam. We were on our way home from Walter Reed in the Maryland darkness, ready to stretch out for an evening watching mindless sitcoms.

We had a mid-century modern Philco black and white console television watching Episode 1 of “The Brady Bunch” – which didn’t leave much of an impression. Seemed decidedly silly to me. Sherwood Schwartz style chaos on a par with “Gilligan’s Island” – along with another Schwartz bizarre – and short lived “It’s About Time,” made us laugh. However, “The Brady Bunch” became an addiction every Friday night.

We couldn’t get enough of it.

For five years, we tuned in. And, for five seasons, we watched the Brady kids come of age along with Robert Reed’s (Mike Brady) evolving perm’. Reed, a Shakespearian actor turned suburban dad. Florence Henderson, an unknown, became America’s new pop-culture TV mom.

Seems a lot of us wanted to be a Brady kid, and no wonder. They were the “perfect” blended family despite fights over the telephone and “Marcia-Marcia-Marcia…” Most of us with blended families will admit “blended” is rarely a picnic.

Because I am into classic cars, I noticed the transition from Chrysler products to Chevrolet in the Brady’s last season. To this day, I remember the Brady’s most for the family’s Plymouth station wagons and Mike Brady’s Fury III convertible.

If you think the Brady obsession is a boomer only thing, think again. The generations following us can’t get enough Brady either. The Bradys were a portrait of Americana at the cusp of the 1970s. Blended families had become more a way of life instead of the Nelsons (Ozzie & Harriet) and the Andersons (Father Knows Best), both of which were lost in the 1950s when divorce was never mentioned.

Those of us who watched the Brady’s a half century ago remember it on network television – with minimal commercial interruption. Two commercials in a 30-minute slot. Today on TVLand, it is 50/50 Brady/Commercials. And because boomers are the target demographic, at least half the commercials are pharmaceutical peppered with “See Your Doctor…” In 1970, I didn’t need Viagra, I needed Marcia.

When the Brady’s were in prime time, I had it bad for Maureen McCormick (Marcia). These days, it would be Eve Plum (Jan) for her intelligence and her sweet gentle demeanor. My God…I really am 70!

The human mind is a supercomputer. It stores a lifetime of memories, feelings, scents, sounds, songs we’ve heard, pain we have felt – and more. You can forget about something for decades – a lifetime – and there will be sound, a smell, music, a nerve twitch, an itch, phantom pain, or a sunrise that ignites a memory.

Why does a song suddenly pop into your head – known as an “ear worm” – you haven’t heard in years – and then you cannot get it out of your head? Or, what about a childhood memory? I was sitting here at the PC the other morning, listening to the din of power lawnmowers when I picked up the scent of fresh cut grass and the feeling of humidity in the air and I was suddenly five years-old again.

How does an experience from 65 years ago suddenly emerge with the sound of lawnmowers, an aroma, and a feeling in the air? And – from a place so unlike California? This experience drifted through an open window, jolting me from the focus of writing an automotive technical article.

It hit me like a thunder clap.

My dad pushing a budget-priced, hardware store power mower in the spring of 1967. When I was old enough, the job became mine along with the memories.

I’ve been living in the California desert for 32 years. I grew up in the Mid-Atlantic where those first days of spring were euphoric – that annual arrival of mild weather and an unmatched feeling of liberation from the sound of a furnace and the haunting wanderlust desire known as cabin fever.

You cannot wait to get outside and take in the spring.

It just isn’t that way in California. California’s desert climate is cyclic year-round due to the influence of the vast Pacific. It can be chilly one day and 100+ the next. Springtime here is so vastly different than the East Coast.

I think of the sound of Blue Jays, crickets, the hammer of woodpeckers, the harmony of honeybees, the hoot of an owl, the rumble of distant thunder, and the dead silence of a heavy snow and I think of those long-forgotten childhood memories. In the latter of my life, these memories remain fresh.

Before this age of affordable high-altitude 600 mph transportation – there was “the bus…” I imagine most of you remember the era. Flying was for those who could afford it. Before airline deregulation in the late 1970s, air travel was expensive and exclusively for the affluent and business travelers. We’ve all witnessed the business traveler clad in a suit and tie running through an airport to an awaiting gate or families all dressed up with somewhere to go.

I don’t think the humble bus gets enough credit for getting us around. When we were kids, school busses in all their forms grabbed us from the corner bus stop and hauled us to school a short distance away. When we came of age and couldn’t afford a car, city and regional busses got us around the metropolis. These are the busses we remember most because they were everywhere.

If you were traveling hundreds of miles away to see the aunt you never wanted to see in the first place, you hopped on one of those road-going coaches – Greyhound or Trailways – and dozed through the ride for hours to see Aunt Milred. Wally and the Beave’ would catch the bus from Mayfield to spend time with Aunt Martha, who was annoying by nature for a kid, in Belport.

GMC’s “New Look” (known as the “Fishbowl”) was the most common transit bus introduced in 1959 and produced in both the U.S. and Canada with more than 44,000 of them built. Well known for its curved six-piece windshield and twin-set headlights, it became an iconic workhorse in cities all across North America for decades before they began to fade away in the 1970s.

The most oft seen transit bus has been GMC’s “New Look” bus built in all its forms beginning in 1959. It was seen and heard for decades in every metropolitan area in the nation. Those classic “bread loaf” Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) busses GMC called the “Old Look” busses introduced in 1940 delivered the same screaming, smoky Detroit 6-71 two-stroke diesel roar every time they left a bus stop. That same sound was carried over to the “New Look” busses that arrived with the 1960s.

They were gross polluters.

These smoky beasts gave everyone a headache wherever they traveled. If you were behind one in traffic, it became unbearable. I recall being car sick in the back seat and throwing up to both the sound and the aroma of diesel fumes along with my mother’s sickening Wing Song perfume.

I find it ironic these New Look busses were so aerodynamic yet never traveled any faster than 30 mph throughout the city. The same can be said for the “Old Look” bread loafs. Most of these GMCs had Allison automatic transmissions designed specifically for busses. Cruising around the city, with the driver on and off the throttle while their automatics struggled to navigate the gears.

Those first “New Look” busses were delivered to my hometown bus line – D.C. Transit – which later became WMATA – today Metrobus. I remember when my mother used to catch D.C. Transit daily from Arlington to downtown Washington for work as a bank teller before returning home in the evening. Tough times and utter exhaustion for my mother in those days. We didn’t have a car.

The GMC “New Look” became a celebrity in the 1994 action/adventure movie “Speed” where a bomb was placed on a Santa Monica Transit bus and the passengers were held for ransom. The bus had to stay above 50 mph to prevent the bomb from detonating. The trick was keeping this bus above 50 within the city. Not sure how many New Look busses were destroyed during the filming. However, this flick made the New Look famous. I didn’t know these busses could reach 50.

GMC produced its last New Look bus in 1977 when production changed to the RTS series. As federal emissions standards have gotten tougher, these Detroit Diesel powered busses have slipped away in favor or CNG and electrics.

I place the more luxurious motor coaches in higher esteem for long distance travel because they deliver a way smoother quieter ride than their ancestors. When you’re sitting in a Boeing 737 with your knees up against the seat in front of you, the appeal of a bus side becomes greater because, for one thing, legroom is better. What’s more, you arrive at a bus terminal closer to Aunt Milred’s than the airport.

Thought I would take this Boomer Journey to something a little more personal – friendships lost… When you reach our ages, you’ve had your share of personal losses. Friends grow ill and pass. They move away. We drift apart.

Sometimes, it’s as fundamental as a difference of opinion – the deal breaker.

In more recent times, in a politically inflammatory environment, I’ve lost friends over political differences – the inability to respect one another’s differences and the being able to agree to disagree. I’ve learned – the hard way – there are some who cannot live with a difference of opinion to where they go away overnight. Their political beliefs eclipsed a lifetime friendship and enduring brotherhood.

A friendship gone…

I enjoy a wealth of great friends all over the country – just not many locally. We are friends long distance. We stay in touch via the email, texting, and the phone. Due to the very nature of living in Los Angeles, we find the place really is a great big freeway. If you have a buddy or a date two hours away, you are “geographically undesirable…” because no one wants to sit in traffic for two hours just to see you.

I live on Southern California’s high desert near Edwards Air Force Base, three miles from Palmdale Air Force Plant 42 – which is a defense factory and home to Boeing, Northrup, and Lockheed some 62 miles, or two hours, north of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is a most unusual metropolis. The city limits within the County of Los Angeles run vast – from the huge L.A. basin into the San Fernando Valley on the other side of the mountains. It extends East to San Bernardino and on out into the low desert and Palm Springs. You can drive 100 miles and still be in Los Angeles.

I have ADHD so bear with me. I’ve found friendship can be enduring where friends become extended family, and there are acquaintances who come and go. There are people we work with for decades who fade away upon retirement or a job change. There are also neighbors who come and go – the traditional block parties, sharing growing families, and the enduring friendships like the Ricardos and the Mertz’s.

Wouldn’t it be nice if life was like the Ricardos and the Mertz’s? Though fictional, this tenant/landlord relationship that became extended family felt so good despite their occasional dustups. They always found a way to make peace and go on.

In truth, this rarely happens in real life, especially these days. Once close-knit communities have been replaced by suburbia, jet travel, the interstate highway system, and careers that have taken people far from where they grew up. We stay in touch via email and text messaging. We jet out to see childhood friends and family, and before you know it, it is time to fly home. I am a continent away from where I grew up, with a career that took me to Los Angeles a lifetime ago.

I remain in touch with childhood friends and those I served with in the military – enduring friendships that have lasted a lifetime. We’re all a little grayer with turkey necks and character lines. However, our connections have never wavered. There are those we go for years and never hear from – and reconnect and pick up where we left off – true friendships.

When I think of friendships lost, I think of the greatest friendship I’ve ever had – my friend and brother in arms. I will call him Karl. We were the very best of friends and for 45 years, that is until the current toxic political environment tore us apart.

I can tell you I am a centrist – liberal about some things and largely conservative about others. I believe in toting your own weight and finding your own way. I also believe in helping others – those who cannot fend for themselves. I also understand right from wrong. That said, I ask – when did right become wrong and wrong become right? At what point did we lose our way?

I’d like to hear your stories…

It was a steamy late summer afternoon in the mid-Atlantic when the family crowded around my grandmother’s 1950s vintage RCA black and white console television for a surreal look at the Moon like we’d never seen it before. A youthful Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin of Apollo 11 (Apollo’s fifth mission) descended to the surface and – in a dusty white powdery blast – landed and shut down while Command Module pilot Mike Collins and some 600 million of us looked on.

The Eagle had landed.

We held our breath and sighed with relief with Armstrong’s words. Like most Americans, our next thoughts were “what’s next?” Armstrong would take bold yet cautious steps down the ladder, sinking his feet into the powdered sugar texture lunar soil, describing what it was like to do that as the first human being to ever take steps on another celestial body outside of Earth’s gravitational pull. Aldrin would take those next steps, knowing he and Armstrong were etching their names into both the lunar firmament and Earth history books.

These courageous gentlemen were on their second and final journey into space, knowing they would never travel outside of Earth again. We didn’t completely understand it then – but our technology was primitive at the time, yet advanced for its day. It took raw guts and real tenacity to strap your backside to the top of the most power rocket booster of its time – the Saturn V – and get ride in mankind’s greatest hot rod.

The Saturn V consisted of several parts – the command module on top (the cockpit), the service module, which provided propulsion , electricity, oxygen for breathing, and water for the command module; the lunar module with two stages – the descent stage with an engine for landing on the surface – and a smaller engine for the return to the command module above and a return to lunar orbit. This does not include the powerhouse stages that got them into space.

The Apollo 11 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific for a “welcome home” like they’d never experienced in their entire lives. We were suddenly in a world where man had walked on the Moon. Other Apollo missions would follow before budget cuts ended the Apollo program in the 1970s. It would be more than 50 years before we ventured into lunar orbit again.

Apollo 11 was one for the history books for all of mankind. It would be more than 50 years before we ever went back.

Artemis I and II are the beginnings of our return to the Moon, with Artemis II being another NASA launch for the history books, putting human beings the farthest from Earth that mankind has ever been. This has been but a reminder of how tiny we are in a vast cosmos, watching Earthrise from a different perspective this time around from the dark side of the Moon.

Artemis II was something of a “test drive” into lunar orbit to see how NASA’s latest and greatest achievement performed. The crew did some sightseeing and then came home from the most remarkable journey they will ever witness in a lifetime of service to country. Unless you’ve ever strapped millions of pounds of both dead weight and brute thrust to your backside, you will never understand what it was like for four remarkable space patriots.

At its origins in 2017, Artemis II was known as Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), with the objective of validating the Orion spacecraft’s systems and function. Think of this as the foundation for longer lunar missions and exploration, with the ultimate destination being Mars.

Four crewmembers, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Reid Wiseman, embarked on this mission with a great sense of awe and adventure.

In their close lunar flyby, they achieved the greatest human distance ever from planet Earth – some 252,756 miles from the Earth’s surface – which surpassed Apollo 13’s 248,655 miles. There will be more Artemis missions to the Moon, with humans touching the lunar soil in due course. We just have to be patient.

This is a reminder that although we have serious problems to solve in America at this time, remember we remain the Champions, cognoscente of who we really are as courageous patriots who will collectively rise again.

Who could forget the zany “Adventures of Ozzie & Hariett,” which aired on ABC from October 1952 until April of 1966? I suppose it could be easy to forget – the once popular television sitcom that couldn’t have tried harder to wear out its welcome.

Ozzie & Hariett lasted 14 television seasons.

An inside look at the Nelson family could be considered television’s first “reality” show, which wasn’t reality at all – but instead fiction – starring the “entire Nelson family” – Ozzie, Hariett, David, and Ricky. It began as a long-running radio program, segueing into television in 1952.

The radio Nelsons launched in March of 1944 when legendary comic Red Skelton was drafted into World War II. “The Adventures of Ozzie & Hariett” debuted on CBS radio in Skelton’s absence, eventually moving to NBC in 1948, then back to CBS in 1949. In the end, Nelsons had produced 402 radio broadcasts.

As radio evolved into television, the Nelsons followed suit by moving their program to ABC TV in 1952. I suppose the Nelsons were right for the time, with plenty of witty banty amongst the cast in family situations, which included Don DeFore as neighbor “Thorny,” who moved on to “Hazel” in 1961 to star as prominent lawyer and boss, George Baxter. David and Ricky Nelson joined the radio cast in 1949 at ages 12 and 8. It would become their constant companion for the next 17 years.

Because Ozzie was both an entertainer and a successful businessman, he founded Stage Five Productions, convincing ABC to sign a 10-year contract that kept the Nelsons flush with cash whether the series continued or was cancelled.

They couldn’t lose.

Though “America’s Favorite Family…” attempted to look like real life, it was anything but. The Nelson’s home, which was in the opening theme, was located in the hills above Hollywood and Los Angeles. Most of the filming was performed at the General Service Studios Stage 3 sound stage where Ozzie recreated the interior of their home while most exterior shots were in Los Angeles instead of a studio backlot, which offered realism to the show’s fictional community of Warfield.

Nelson family storylines were typical of the era, with domestic issues most experienced at the time. It is true most of these scripts were taken from the Nelson family’s personal lives. The cast of characters increased when Rick married Kristin Harmon and David June Blair, who appeared in the show as themselves.

Like Ward Cleaver of “Leave It To Beaver,” no one ever really knew what Ozzie Nelson did for a living though his role as a bandleader was mentioned periodically. Although Ozzie pursued an education in law as a young man in New Jersey, he wound up with a career as a bandleader, actor, and producer. Ozzie wrote most of the shows for the series’ entire run, which might explain how dry they were.

The show needed sensational writers.

Rick Nelson launched his music career on the show, appearing at each show’s ending before the closing theme. Rick’s career continued into the 1980s until an unfortunate and tragic plane crash ended his life in 1985. David continued in the entertainment industry as a director. He passed in 2011. Hariett did occasional acting, retiring to the Nelson family’s Laguna Beach home where she lived until her death in 1994. Ozzie was plagued with malignant tumors that ultimately led to his death in 1975.

Although “Ozzie & Hariett” appeared an intimate look into a wholesome American family, it was never what it appeared on screen. Although Ozzie appeared the easy-going husband, father, and neighbor, he was quite the high-achieving taskmaster. It has been written he robbed David and Rick of their childhoods, stressing the importance of their obligation to the show. This may explain the somber mood in some of the shows and the blank facial expressions. These young men were not actors, nor do I believe they ever even wanted to act. The stress and pressure of a grueling weekly shooting schedule had to have taken its toll, which makes you wonder whatever happened to their dreams.

It can safely be said “Ozzie & Hariett” wore out its welcome long before it finally wrapped up in 1966. The theme and content never left the 1950s. What’s more, it was never high in the ratings. The best it ever did was 29th in the Nielson ratings. It made the transition to color in its final season. Too little too late.