One thing age gives us is perspective. Time and experience educate us.
There was a time when the 1960s seemed like only yesterday – moving into a new home, watching those silly sitcoms (“The Monkees” and “Bewitched” come to mind) we used to engage on weeknights with the family, boarding a warm school bus on a bitter cold morning for the five minute ride to school, the thrill of jumping into a pool on a hot, sticky summer day, escaping the parents on a new Sears bicycle, and the bittersweet moment when I realized high school was over, the future beckoned – and I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do next.
As if overnight, the 1960s have faded into deep history, with little meaning these days. My grandparents are gone. The folks – long gone too.
I wonder when I will ever get used to their absence.
At age 19, I hadn’t the faintest I idea what I wanted to do with my life. In the summer of 1976, I had quit my job to chase a perceived love interest who lived far away in Florida. I’d learned quickly never to fall in love with anyone hundreds of miles away without a realistic plan. I had none. She decided to move on, and I was left empty handed without a job – brokenhearted. I floundered in sadness that summer and sat around the house day to day and without a plan.
I was young, naive, and lost.
My mother, rather disgusted with me, asked what the hell I was doing and what my plan was. I had none. With a whole lot of tough love and intestinal fortitude, she called me a bum, told me to get off my backside, and stop feeling sorry for myself. Although I was insulted and didn’t want to hear it, she had done me a great favor. Her words and raised eyebrow prompted me to think about what I was going to do with the rest my life. It was time. I managed to find employment with a marine engineering firm as an administrative assistant – making thousands of copies, running blueprints, and learning the ropes of the defense industry.
That worked for a while.
It was when I was introduced to a client as “our office boy…” by an associate when I realized I was going nowhere fast. What to do when you are 20 with no idea of how you want to earn a living? I had always wanted to be an architect, but was terrible at math. I knew I liked working on cars and had developed a passion for commercial aviation. I investigated aeronautical schools and getting FAA certification as an airframe and powerplant mechanic, which proved too expensive for my beer and pretzel budget. I joined the United States Air Force, got my schooling and experience, with a plan to work for the airlines.
USAF Aircraft Maintenance Tech School – Chanute AFB, IL – 1977
I did my four-year stint in the USAF, got my licensing, and left the service only to discover the airlines had all the help they needed, “Thank You Very Much for applying…” I couldn’t even land a job with the smaller airlines. I returned home to Maryland, again without a plan, and floundered as a diesel truck mechanic before finding my true calling in life in automotive journalism.
How does an airframe and powerplant mechanic become an automotive writer?
At the time, I was freelance writing for a car club newsletter and automotive magazines. Never dreamed it would become a lifelong passion and career. Through dumb luck or fate, I found work as a magazine editor with a publishing house in Florida, then later found home with a prominent automotive publisher in Los Angeles a continent away. It was dreamy – and frightening. Being an East Coast boy, I found Los Angeles something of a culture shock – vastly different from my D.C. roots.
What began as a gamble far from home wound up where I would be living the rest of my life. Los Angeles became home though it was never a place I wanted to live. When I joined the company more than 30 years ago, I had a five-year plan, intending to return to the American heartland to continue a journalism career.
I checked into the Hotel California in 1990 and haven’t been able to leave yet. In 1998, twice divorced, I married an L.A. girl and have remained in Southern California ever since. I am blessed with three grown children in Tennessee, now well into adulthood with families of their own and a terrific late-in-life son coming of age at 17 in high school here in California about to enter college. Add to the mix six grandchildren ages one through one in her twenties.
Life has come full circle. I am both a father and a grandfather – and with any luck, may wind up a great grandfather before I jump off of this apple.
On a windy Friday afternoon on the high desert north of Los Angeles, I am reminded of the passage of time – also bittersweet. An entire lifetime has passed since I was a kid growing up in the 1960s. I concluded long ago that life is a series of chapters. My life reads like the Brooklyn Yellow Pages, with more chapters than my Commodore 64 mind and memory can absorb.
I can vividly remember the events of 60 years ago yet cannot tell you what I had for breakfast, nor can I relate the names of friends I’ve had for 30 years.
In little more than a week, I become 70. Seventy is something your parents and grandparents were – but never you. Age 70 was way off in the future. I admit to lying awake at night thinking about 70 and how much life I may have left. So much to do and suddenly less time to do it.
Emotionally, I find myself doing what my ancestors have done for centuries – reflecting over their lives – lamenting what they had not yet accomplished – and thanking God for their blessings.
Now that’s a good idea…
Boomer Journey... 